How to measure the metrics that matter in your startup

PLUS: Tech Week is underway, Budget Day approaches and the hunt to hire AI agents.

Good morning startup land,

Happy Tuesday!

Quite a financial theme in the newsletter today, with budget day approaching and me finally delivering part two of my conversation Cori Stukan from Insights Driven PM and Bizzy.

Today in your Daily Shot of news:

• How to measure the metrics that matter in your startup

• NZ Techweek: Global Growth Playbook & Strategies from NZ Tech Leaders

• Budget Day approaches - will there be anything for founders to smile about?

• Who is playing in the FMAs fintech sandbox?

• Firecrawl startup will pay $1m to hire AI agents as employees

Keep your stories, subs and updates coming. We love what you’re building.

Got a press release, startup story, resource or founder you’d love to connect with the Caffeine audience? Drop me a line to finn@caffeinedaily.co

Finn and the Caffeine team

Measuring What Matters: Following your North Star while avoiding vanity metrics and being dazzled by hype

Bizzy CEO and Insight Driven PM Founder Corinna Stukan is a digital product executive, founder and advisor with 15+ years of product leadership across FinTech, SaaS and marketplaces.

Her new fintech business, Bizzy, is building up to launch so I caught up with Cori recently to chat about what unmet need she sees Bizzy filling as well as a fascinating discussion of her work at Insights Driven PM.

In part two of our chat, we breakdown some of the lessons she’s learned from Insights Driven PM and pull out three that founders can take away.

While I would very much recommend anyone curious for a true deep dive picks up her book, for founders in a hurry, three practical tips stuck out to me from my time chatting with Stukan.

• A well-chosen ‘North Star’ keeps you focused on the specific problem you’re solving

• Pruning ‘vanity metrics’ help you measure what actually matters

• Listening to customers first keeps you from dazzled by your own tech solutions

That ethos explains why Bizzy’s mission statement, “helping SMEs access better finance“ fits on a post-it note and why Stukan’s most actionable advice is to always “look a customer in the eyes, ask what’s ruining their lives and offer a solution.”

In a landscape where AI models update weekly and the global economy is on shaky foundations, Stukan’s playbook offers durable clarity: know your single goal, measure it honestly and keep your ears closer to customers than to the hype.

Paid subscribers can read the rest of our conversation below.

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NZ Techweek: Global Growth Playbook & Strategies from NZ Tech Leaders It’s Techweek time and there are more events on can you can shake a stick at. One that caught my eye in particular this week is all about answering the question, if going global isn’t a one-size-fits-all journey, what strategies belong in your playbook? The Global Growth Playbook will showcase the real-world experiences of New Zealand tech leaders who are successfully scaling their companies internationally which we are all about here at Caffeine.

Speakers:

Alliv Samson, CGO & Co-Founder, Kami
Alex Black, CEO, ADInstruments
Matt Hayter, President & CPO, Projectworks
Regan Whitehead, Chief Operating Officer, Tapi

What to expect:

• Practical global growth stories from founders

• Panel discussion on the realities and myths of international scale

• Breakout sessions covering product market fit, the challenges of growth for company management, building a global team (culture and talent), and market selection

• Networking opportunities with founders and ecosystem leaders

Get your tickets (free!) here.

Budget Day approaches - will there be anything for founders to smile about? Back in my TV3 news days, Budget was always a stressful one as we’d be frantically pulling a live special to air the second the lockup ended and the budget documents became available. I much prefer covering it from the comfort of my home office desk on a much more relaxed timescale.

Nicola Willis has already indicated Thursday’s Budget will be a very tight one but there have been some welcome pre-budget announcements from the startup perspective, particularly the $100m top up of the state backed Elevate Venture fund. Stuff has a nice breakdown of where the Govt has already spent money and all up it leaves not a lot of room for anything too exciting.

One thing I’ll be watching closely is whether the Govt has any more money allocated for the Game Sector Tax Rebate to continue. With the film sector scoring a rebate win already, I wonder if this is a sign of parity with the rest of the entertainment sector or of shifting priorities.

Who is playing in the FMA’s regulatory fintech sandbox? Well, because FinTech has been more of a focus on the newsletter recently, I thought now might be a good time to check back in on the progress of the FMAs moves to open up the space by selecting 6 companies to play in regulation ’sandbox’, testing out their services before regulations had completely caught up with them. Incase you missed it, those 6 companies are:

• ECDD Holdings Limited (part of Easy Crypto)
• Emerge Group Limited
• Homeshare
• IIF
• Indigishare
• Tandym Limited

There’s more information on the programme here and my former colleague Simon Shepherd has done a great podcast for NBR subscribers chatting to two of the companies involved, HomeShare and Easy Crypto, about why they want to be involved in the sandbox and what they’re building.

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Firecrawl startup will pay $1m to hire AI agents as employees: Always worth keeping an eye on what's happening in the agentic AI market and this story about a Y-Combinator backed startup putting up a million dollar budget as it advertises to employ 3 AI agents feels like a sign of what’s to come. Here we goooo.

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That’s it for today, thanks for reading. Want to get in touch with a news tip, bit of feedback or just to chat? Email hello@caffeinedaily.co