Start-up

accidental

The accidental entrepreneurs

For Northland couple Trevor and Danielle Beatson, a personal weight-loss journey led to an idea for a coaching app, which led to a mid-life crash course in entrepreneurship. In terms of career changes – this one is about as scary as it gets. It involves Northland-based couple Trevor and Danielle Beatson – both in their mid-to-late 40s and with four kids.  Trevor has a 21-year police career behind him, while Danielle has been a schoolteacher for many years. So how did a couple hooked on relatively ‘cushy’ jobs and regular ‘Ministry’ pay cheques end up as tech-entrepreneurs – and completely out of their comfort zone? It all began when Trevor left the force two and a half years ago. For

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Working to a different beat

Making flexible working acceptable in every New Zealand workplace by 2025 – that’s the audacious goal of Freerange Works’ founders Sarah Brooke, Aimee Mitchell and Kerryn Strong, and they are more than up for the challenge. Workin’ 9 to 5 is enough to drive you crazy” – that’s how US singer Dolly Parton summed up the workplace way back in the early 1980s. Now, almost 40 years later, three young Kiwi mums are making an all-out assault on inflexible workplaces around the country, which are still driving many ‘9 to 5’ workers crazy. Flexible workplace advisory Freerange Works is the brainchild of Sarah Brooke, Aimee Mitchell and Kerryn Strong – three women who all realised that lots of Kiwi workplaces

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Backing a great idea

What do you get when a successful entrepreneurial investor teams up with a clever inventor? Outstanding business outcomes. Meet StockTrim – the SaaS-based inventory forecasting system set to take on the world.  When serial entrepreneur Dominic Sutton decided to team up with software engineer and inventor Paul Simpson it was almost a no-brainer. Dominic had been looking for an investment opportunity and had put a message on a technology start-up page on Facebook outlining what he was looking for. With his experience in marketing and in building and selling businesses he was looking for a new challenge and wanted something that was globally scalable and based on the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model with a recurrent revenue stream. Dominic also wanted something

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Creating a market within a market

It’s one thing to create a new service or product, and another to create a market for what you’re offering. Welcome to Chris Buhmann’s entrepreneurial journey.

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Job Done

Joblist co-founder Brittany Earl sacrificed her law career for a shot at entrepreneurship, and together with co-founder Taylor Abernethy-Newman she’s loving the whole experience. Today the platform is getting jobs off ‘to-do’ lists nationwide.

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