What's coming up on Caffeine
Plus: Capital and connections to accelerate the Climate and CleanTech sector.
Good morning Caffeinators,
Read on to take a sneak peek at what’s coming from Caffeine in the coming weeks for our subscribers, a word from our partners at BNZ + a new video segment from the latest Startup Theatre pod, where for some reason I am allowed to ramble about startups that excite me.
If you’ve got a story, press release, interview to pitch or just want to tell me I’m wrong about something - send it over to finn@caffeinedaily.co
If you’re interested in working with Caffeine as a partner, flick Georgia an email on: georgia@caffeinedaily.co
Have a great weekend, look after each other and we’ll see you next week.
Finn and the CAFFEINE team
Coming up on Caffeine:
Interview with Todd Hammington, Chameleon Creator founder: One of my favorite parts of this job it getting to speak with inspiring founders who are wildly successful, passionate aobut what they do and happy to share what they’ve learned with other founders who are earlier in their journey. Todd ticks every one of those boxes, and the story of how he took Chameleon Creator form concept to $2m in revenue and landing major clients like Tik Tok is fascinating and inspiring. Keep your eyes out next week for that one.
Chance for a FREE ticket to Electrify Aotearoa: Electrify Aotearoa is back and this year it is a two day event for founders, ambitious startup leaders, supporters and investors to fuel the growth of women-led high-growth ventures in New Zealand. Caffeine still has a pass to day two to give away, email in to hello@caffeindaily.co with why you want to go and we will select a winner next week!
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.
The greater good: capital and connections to accelerate the Climate and CleanTech sector
At BNZ, we have had a consistent value proposition centred around supporting tech businesses through our expertise, connections, and capital at all stages of their lifecycle. As the technology industry has ballooned into a fast-growing sector of our economy, and technology is increasingly being adopted in all industries, so too has the need for specialist knowledge and expertise among the unique sectors within the technology industry.
A large part of our continued investment comes in the form of our subsector leaders and Charlie Mear leads our focus on Climate and CleanTech.
Charlie has a passion for Climate & CleanTech businesses who are focused on providing consumers and/or businesses with solutions, products, and offerings that positively contribute to being more sustainable as a country (and globally). We broadly categorise Climate and CleanTech businesses into technology and technology-integrated businesses in the following verticals: Agriculture and Food, Logistics and Transport, Energy and Power, Environment and Resources, Materials and Chemicals.
Climate and clean technologies are key to New Zealand and the world in addressing climate change. They support more effective, and often less, utilisation of earth’s natural resources. While many of the climate-oriented standards and regulations have been, or are being, developed offshore (which could change going forward), New Zealand has a genuine opportunity to take a lead in creating climate and clean technology solutions. We have a strong pool of talent and expertise in our growing technology industry, and a unique proximity with an open-door culture between the private and public sectors that allows us to connect and test on a small scale here, and then scale up offshore. We think banks have a big role to play in supporting the growth of this unique sector.
What do tech businesses striving for climate and clean solutions need? From our vantage point, in working closely with the sector and key stakeholders over the past eight years, we see real value in focussing on capital alternatives and connections.
Capital
There’s no doubt access to capital is a challenge for the Climate and CleanTech sector. There’s an overall lack of capital available because the returns are typically longer term, start-up costs are intensive, and as an emerging sector it faces unique technical, regulatory, and adoption challenges. This means that equity capital, alone, may be harder to find.
We think more progressive non-dilutive capital (i.e., capital that does not require giving up a portion of a business’ shares or ownership), both from public sector and banks, is a key part of the puzzle. Non-dilutive capital, such as grants or loans, allow founders and investors to maintain greater ownership of a climate and clean tech business’ intellectual property and future increases in value (and perhaps keeping it in New Zealand longer too). Non-dilutive capital can help make the economics of equity capital investment work.
We are always looking for ways to provide non-dilutive debt capital earlier, particularly in climate and clean tech businesses and we are always open to ideas on this front.
Connections
The emphasis on technology for climate solutions within Government has been building. Renewable energy technologies, such as wind, solar, geothermal, and battery storage, are targeted to generate 100% of electricity from 2030 and it’s essential that the private sector remains close to government to deliver on that.
There’s no shortage of enthusiasm for the sector from key stakeholders, what we need to get better at is capturing and sharing the key data points that help us all to forge a stronger, more connected sector.
Our intention is to spread and embed sector knowledge both internally, and in the market, to grow connections and to get capital solutions to businesses fast and early.
The greater good
At the end of the day, the sector is looking good, but we think it could be great. There are plenty of interested and invested stakeholders in this space, and if we can collaborate to track the growth of the sector, we’ll be able to build the connective tissue we need to find and remove obstacles for Climate and CleanTech businesses to thrive. And if we can fast-track more companies with the right capital solutions, we’ll accelerate our way into the kind of outcomes everyone will celebrate; environmental wellbeing, thriving sustainable businesses, a high-value export industry and new employment opportunities.
Recently, we are delighted to have played a role in supporting the success of ChargeNet: Powering Aotearoa’s EV future - BNZ.
If you want to discuss how BNZ supports CleanTech businesses, please don’t hesitate to reach out to Charlie Mear, Charlie_Mear@bnz.co.nz.
This article is solely for information purposes. It’s not financial or other professional advice. For help, please contact BNZ or your professional adviser. No party, including BNZ, is liable for direct or indirect loss or damage resulting from the content of this article.
New Startup theatre just dropped: Just in time for this newsletter a new Startup theatre podcast has dropped. Check out the video above for my ramblings on startups or check the link here for the full pod with Angie Judge.
Angie Judge is a prominent figure in New Zealand’s technology industry, and she currently serves as the CEO of Dexibit, a cutting-edge analytics platform for visitor attractions. Judge’s entrepreneurial journey has been characterised by innovation, leadership, and a profound understanding of data-driven decision-making.
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. Look after yourselves this weekend and we’ll see you Monday.