ICYMI: Startup news and resources from the week that was
What you might have missed last week on Caffeine.
Welcome to Monday!
Hope your weekend was full of whatever relaxes you and whatever you have your plate today is just hard enough to be fun and no harder.
As always, on Monday we recap a few of our favorite stories or resources from the week that was.
Premium subs can check out our exclusive interviews with Bizzy CEO Cori Stukan tomorrow morning and Twitter founding employee Rabble on Wednesday.
Have a great week,
Finn and the Caffeine team
7 Lessons in 7 Years: What I learned building Easy Crypto (and selling it)
Easy Crypto just joined forces with Swyftx to create a new crypto powerhouse, but while that headline might look like an overnight success story, it’s actually 2,556 days of relentless building, betting, breaking and becoming.
Rob Everett to chair board of Simplicity: While ‘former financial regulator to chair non profit Kiwisaver provider Simplicity’ might sound like relatively dry news for a founder, it’s important to pay attention to what’s happening in this space because it could have some pretty interesting implications for the broader capital environment for startups.
Rob Everett headed the Financial Markets Authority for seven years before leaving in 2021 to lead the VC group NZ Capital Growth Partners. HIs appointment is effective from today, replacing Joy Marslin who has been in the role since 2016.
The Simplicity Private Equity Fund holds 4% of Icehouse Ventures Limited and invests in their VC funds, with a longer term goal of $100m invested in local startups. Government has also floated changing Kiwisaver rules to remove some of the barriers to private investment and consultation is underway on those proposals.
If these massive funds (carefully) move towards opening up to more private investment, could be an immense boon for innovation across the country. RNZ has a good quick wrap here.
Event: Growth Jam Kicks off in Wellington May 22: Wellington Caffeinators, it's time to JAM. There’s an impressively stacked lineup of tech leaders ready to share their best growth stories in the capital so get along if you’re around.
Don’t miss this opportunity to hear from some of the best in the business as they unpack the power of competitive advantage and how it’s fueled the rise of some of New Zealand’s most successful tech companies. Join to hear from:
🎤 Emma Procter - Research Manager at PikPok
🎤 John Mitchell - Founder of Arlo Training Management Software
🎤 Alliv Samson -Co-founder and Chief Growth Officer at Kami
🎤 Shane Bartle - CEO at Storbie
🎤 Alex Burke - CEO at Optimal
🎤 Sarah Berkowski - CRO at Timescapes (ex Tradify)
Get your ticket here.
How to build a community of 10,000 marketers: Friend of Caffeine and all around legend Simon Pound was back at it over the break and we wanted to make sure you didn’t miss out on any goodness.
In this episode of Business is Boring, The Marketing Club founder Chanel Clark joins Simon to discuss what it takes to build community, and how listening to that community is the key to success.
The bizarre problem of AI being pathetically agreeable: Anyone who has read the newsletter for a while knows I am an optimist when it comes to AI but we’re starting to run into a problem that I really hadn’t expected - AI being too nice to us.
OpenAI had to scramble an update this week (by rolling back a previous update) to address AI ‘sycophancy’. Essentially, users started realising the chat bot was starting to be pathetically agreeable with them no matter how deranged their prompts were. Social media is full of funny/strange cases of the chat bot telling people their IQ is ‘clearly over 150’ or praising them for losing their temper or offering unhinged solutions to thought experiments.
Of course there’s a more dangerous side of an AI that always agrees with you, as one Reddit user described an interaction where the bot celebrated their decision to stop taking medication. Particularly as these tools grow in power, we need to know they can have a backbone.
If someone starts suggesting something truly dangerous in a chat and a bot is just there telling them how correct they are, isn’t hard to see where it could end up. Read OpenAIs full blog addressing the issue here.
Want to get in touch with a news tip, a slice of feedback or just to chat? Email hello@caffeinedaily.co