Litmaps and Avasa close raises
PLUS: Last tickets available for our cocktail evening event next week.
Good afternoon Caffeinators!
Welcome to mid week. I can feel spring beginning to be sprung and after what feels like a decade of rain I am here for it.
Good couple of raises from some locals to shout out today, along with a guest column from our friend and JAVLN CEO David Leach on the importance of mastering your tools if you want to lift your game in the workplace.
He also gave me the opportunity to include a Karate Kid image in this newsletter and have it actually make sense, so we love him for that.
Also have another reminder that tickets are selling fast to our founder only cocktail evening next week so if you want to get your tickets to that then act fast.
Here’s what’s in your Daily Shot of news you don’t want to miss
Guest Editorial: Wax On, Wax Off - Becoming a power user at work by mastering your trade tools
Avasa secures first close of its Pre-Series-A capital raise
Litmaps closes NZ$1.4m oversubscribed raise
Event: I Wish I Knew with Penelope Barton
Got a tip, press release or just a comment? Drop us a note: hello@caffeinedaily.co - we love to hear from you.
Finn & the Caffeine team
We’re excited to partner with BNZ. As New Zealand's largest business bank, BNZ shares our mission to support the next wave of founders and operators. Over the coming months, we’ll be working together to share insights, tools, and stories that help you grow smarter and faster. Keep an eye out every Thursday for content powered by BNZ.
Wax On, Wax Off - Becoming a power user at work by mastering your trade tools
By David Leach, JAVLN CEO
The iconic "wax on, wax off" scene is one of the most famous moments from the 1984 film, "The Karate Kid." Mr. Miyagi instructs Daniel to sand the floor, paint the house, paint the fence and wax the cars. Without realising it, Daniel was training his muscle memory as well as developing patience and discipline.
Applying this story to our work and how to be even more awesome than you already are, why not focus on mastering your trade tools, including new AI tools? Just like builders are great with a hammer, and painters are great with a brush, we should be GREAT with the tools we use at work. It might require some patience and discipline, but the learning will pay off for the rest of your career.
Expert "power" users of tools are often more productive, perform better and have greater job satisfaction. Yet so many of us settle for being mediocre users of the systems we depend on every single day For most of us, it means your laptop, mobile phone and software systems at your workplace.
The path to power user status
How do you develop your skills to become a super user and master these trade tools?
The journey starts with mindset and motivation. Set a goal to be GREAT with the tools you need to use in your day-to-day work life. With a growth mindset, embrace experimentation and stay in that magic learning zone for part of your working week. Remember, every expert was once a beginner who refused to give up.
Start with the fundamentals. Your laptop and mobile phone are your primary workhorses. Learn the operating system properly – whether it's Windows or MacOS for 99% of us. Master those handy keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures that can shave seconds off every task. Those seconds add up to hours, which add up to days over a year and even more over your career.
Here's something that might sound basic but is crucial: get your typing speed match-fit. This single skill will pay dividends in time savings for the rest of your career. You'll be faster at getting stuff done, period. In our digital-first world, your typing speed is like your running speed in athletics – it's foundational to everything else you do.
For each software product you rely on, whether it's Microsoft 365 or any other platform, a similar learning approach applies. Try things, learn the shortcuts, click on buttons and see what happens. Read the tool tips and help articles – they're there for a reason. Complete online learning courses when they're available. Don't be shy about asking your software vendor for suggestions – they want you to succeed with their product.
YouTube videos can be incredibly helpful, though you'll need to sift through to find the quality content. And never underestimate the power of tapping your colleague on the shoulder and asking, "Hey, how do you do this?" Sometimes the person sitting next to you knows a trick that could save you hours every week.
As your new superpowers develop, something interesting happens. You become the expert that workmates come to for help. You become more productive and efficient with your time. You know the fastest way to get things done. You know when to use a hammer and when to use a jackhammer, and you're an expert at both.
The AI revolution: Your new power tools
The rise of new AI power tools just reinforces the strong benefits of becoming a power user. So where do AI tools fit into this picture?
AI has been game-changing for those who have adopted them properly. The most popular for everyday use are Microsoft's Copilot, OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini, but new tools are emerging constantly.
Sticking with our analogy, AI represents a completely new category of power tool. If you already have a toolbox with standard power tools, AI tools are like adding a jackhammer or even a bulldozer to your arsenal. When used to its full potential, it provides enormous step changes in speed and quality, giving us genuinely superhuman capabilities when used properly.
With great power comes great responsibility. That's why having a safe use policy in place is crucial – proper AI governance isn't optional in today's business environment.
At JAVLN, we're driving forward with developing our employees to be "AI natives". We strongly encourage adoption of AI tools specific to each role and provide bite-sized training to build competency. We want our employees to master these AI trade tools using a similar approach to learning any software system: experiment and try things, learn the shortcuts, read the documentation, complete training courses, ask vendors for guidance, watch quality YouTube content, and collaborate with colleagues.
The learning approach remains the same, but the potential impact is exponentially greater.
The future belongs to the masters
Over the coming year (or less!), it would be fantastic to see more kiwi employees become "AI natives", and masters of their trade tools. It's a superhuman boost that can make all of us more awesome at work.
The professionals who master these tools will have a clear advantage – they'll analyse things faster, generate proposals quicker, deploy more features, and solve more problems. They’ll get more done and done to a high standard. This isn't futuristic thinking – these capabilities are available right now for those willing to learn.
Your trade tools are waiting. The only question is: are you ready to master them?
Avasa secures first close of its Pre-Series-A capital raise: I’ve had my eye on medical device startup Avasa since last year and it seems I wasn’t the only one. The Auckland based startup just announced the first close of its pre-series A capital raise earlier this week. The round was significantly oversubscribed and is expected to close at NZD$4.75 million. The round was led by Movac and drew strong participation from existing investors, including Bridgewest Ventures, which led Avasa's seed round, and several new backers.
I like Avasa because while I spend so much time in the squishy world of SaaS products and AI, it’s cool seeing someone at the other end of the spectrum solving a very tangible, specific and physical problem with a specific, tangible and well designed product. Founded in 2018, the company is nearing the launch of its first product, the Avasa Coupler, which standardizes and simplifies the process of arterial reconnections. It addresses a critical unmet need by enabling safe, fast, and standardized reconnection of micro-arteries.
Do I completely understand how arteries and micro-arteries reconnection works? No. But am I glad some is simplifying them the process of reconnecting them? Yes.
I am no doctor but I can confidently say that whenever anyone’s arteries are unconnected they would like them stop being that way as quickly and easily as possible and will pay essentially any amount of money to make that happen.
Litmaps closes NZ$1.4m oversubscribed raise: Speaking of spending time in the AI and software space, some other great raise news came across my desk this morning. While Litmaps might sound like a cartography firm targeted at Gen Z it’s actually an AI-powered research discovery platform which has closed its latest fundraising round on a high note, oversubscribed at NZ$1.4 million.
It has over two million users and helps scientists, academics and R&D teams explore prior research through interactive visual maps, trusted citation data and validated insights. I have a warm spot in my heart for these guys. While watching what AI is doing to our general information ecosystem is often horrifying, its great to see someone turning those same tools towards making facts more legible, accessible and impactful.
Congrats to the team and can’t wait to see what they do next.
Event: I Wish I Knew with Penelope Barton - Join us for cocktails and a raw and real conversation with a successful Kiwi operator Penelope Barton from Crimson Global Academy, who has taken hits, made calls, and kept showing up. This is about the stuff they wish they knew earlier – the kind of lessons that only come from doing the work (and a few things going sideways).
This event is for founders and we are only allowing one person per company, due to it being an intimate event. We screen all registrations to make sure appropriate criteria is met.
Date and time
Mon, 1 Sep 2025 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM NZST
Location
Dr Rudi's Rooftop Brewing Co.
Get your tickets and check out more details here
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
