Why NZ is a perfect home for emerging tech + Projectworks win streak continues
Plus: Claude has it's own blog now and events to check out for founders in June + July.
Happy Thursday!
Good morning Caffeinators. We hope your short week is treating you well. Plenty to chat about today in startup world so let’s just hop straight into it shall we?
Here’s what’s brewing in your Daily Shot:
Projectworks goes from strength to strength with Series A extension
Event: Presenting and Pitching for Founders in Queenstown
Event: Legal Clinics for Startups: Navigating Business Law with Confidence
Partner content: Why New Zealand is an ideal home for emerging technology creators
Anthropic’s AI is now writing its own blog
As always, thank you to everyone who has upgraded to a paid subscription or simply recommended Caffeine to friends and whānau. We couldn’t do any of this without you.
Finn and the CAFFEINE team
Projectworks goes from strength to strength with Series A extension: I love it when we can start this newsletter on a high note and few startups are soaring higher than Projectworks. Fresh from its win at the Hi-Tech Awards 2025 where it nabbed ‘Emerging Company of the Year’, they’ve now closed a beefy $12m(US) Series A extension raise to expand product development, go-to-market and customer success teams.
With the funding, the company is particularly focusing on developing generative artificial intelligence tools for the platform, such as time tracking and proposal generation. Founded in 2019, Projectworks has ridden the emerging tech wave to great success through automating cloud-based professional services and this new funding will not doubt let them leverage the power of rapidly advancing AI to make their suite of services even more comprehensive. Congrats to the team and we love to see it. Read more from Silicon Angle here.
Event: Presenting and Pitching for Founders in Queenstown: I am an absolute sucker for the art of the pitch and events like this are a perfect chance for founders to sharpen that most essential skill. Queenstown founders should check out this event on Tuesday June 17 where you’ll learn how to pitch your startup like a pro.
The Details:
Tuesday 17 June
Queenstown; Location TBC
10.00am - 1.00pm
$69 per person
Limited spots available — ideal for early to mid-stage founders looking to refine their public speaking skills.
Secure your spot here.
Event: Legal Clinics for Startups: Navigating Business Law with Confidence: You can blame AUT for my presence in your inbox each morning, as they gave me the postgrad diploma in journalism which set me on my current career trajectory. They’re now doing something even more useful for founders in a legal Clinic session, where they bring experts in to take a deep dive into how to create successful and sustainable businesses. This session is designed to address the critical legal challenges faced by New Zealand startups, providing practical insights through real-world scenarios.
According to AUT, the clinic will cover appropriate business structure, managing co-founder dynamics, safeguarding intellectual property and implementing effective capital-raising strategies.
You’ll also explore the fundamentals of contracts, including shareholder and employment agreements, while uncovering common legal pitfalls that can impede growth or compromise investment readiness The seminar will even examine funding frameworks, equity dilution, exit strategies, and compliance with privacy and consumer laws. Check out more details and secure your spot here.
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. This week we’re looking at why New Zealand is such an ideal home for emerging technology creators.
Why New Zealand is an ideal home for emerging technology creators
The world of EmergingTech is, ‘emerging’ – in every sense – from the regulatory, ethical, social, political, and environmental landscape around it, to the very nature of the products and services created. Across all of these aspects, New Zealand offers unique advantages for this sector.
EmergingTech refers to technology businesses that produce – or have core to their offering – general purpose technologies that are new and exponentially growing. This includes, but is not limited to advanced manufacturing, robotics, aerospace – many of which are fast growing in New Zealand. While we refer to the above as EmergingTech, businesses in this area will often be referred to as ‘deep tech’.
The New Zealand Opportunity
New Zealand is a trusted business partner on the world stage, with robust export controls and strong values around protecting people and place. A key advantage that many tech leaders globally recognise in New Zealand is the proximity between the public and private sector, including capital providers. This is a particular advantage in this context, given the heightened potential regulatory, political, and social considerations for emerging technologies.
Historically, New Zealand has been recognised as a great testing ground for new technologies, in part due to our population size, demographic, and diversity. These ingredients still seem to hold true, which means we are fortunate to have a valuable testing ground in our front yard.
Baked into the New Zealand psyche is the ability to improvise. There’s something about being left alone to get on with things that has turned our (relative) geographic isolation into an advantage.
Take the Gallagher business for example, it started – quite literally – with number eight wire (fencing) and has since transformed into a leading global exporter of cutting-edge security solutions. Fisher & Paykel is also notable with its transition from refrigeration to healthcare, and for nurturing talent who have gone on to work in a myriad of emerging technology start-ups.
In more recent times, New Zealand boasts world-leading examples of avatar development, nanofiber, aerospace, satellite propulsion, and prosthetics to name a few. While this is evident all over the country, there’s a particularly strong and growing EmergingTech foothold in Christchurch – home to the impressive Engineering School at the University of Canterbury. This is where we are founding and growing BNZ’s EmergingTech focus, and is where Jason Hill, BNZ’s Head of EmergingTech Business is based. Jason’s focus is supporting the growth of the industry in New Zealand through non-dilutive financing, expertise, and networks.
Investing in specialist knowledge and expertise among unique sub sectors, at a leadership level, is a key part of how we support New Zealand’s growth sectors. Jason has seen firsthand the region transition from more traditional manufacturing to high tech and advanced manufacturing with a growing reputation as a global leader in aerospace, among other things. Much like the rest of the technology industries, EmergingTech and emerging technologies are evolving quickly, both within New Zealand and overseas. With this, we will continue to face new challenges, including how we, including us as a bank, think about and mitigate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations risks.
At BNZ, we are taking an open-minded approach and realise that this changing environment may require us to adapt internal bank policies to cater for new opportunities and risks as they arise. We are continuously learning, and will remain adaptive, so that we can play a meaningful part in supporting the growth of our customers within this sector. In addition to the above, we recognise that growing an EmergingTech business tends to be particularly capital intensive; and capital is a big part of what we do. We have a range of funding solutions in order to support with capital earlier than a more traditional banking approach. These include revenue-based financing, contract-receivables financing and an initiative we call Project Scale Up. For any business or stakeholder operating in the EmergingTech space please reach out to Jason Hill, our Head of EmergingTech.
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.
Anthropic’s AI is now writing its own blog: Last week we talked about how AI generated video was giving the fear and this week I thought we could mention how AI generated text, which feels almost quaint by this point, is still improving at a wild rate. Now Anthropic has quietly released ‘Claude Explains’, a blog where it’s flagship LLM will write on ‘every topic under the sun’ (with some human supervision).
It’ll be interesting to learn exactly how much of the writing is coming from Claude and how much is tailored by humans because as we all know, while AI is getting better at sounding human every day it is also getting better at confidently inventing things and presenting them as facts. Check out the blog 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