MyMahi’s Jeff King: Starting up in Palmerston North

Cast your mind back to form time at high school and you might recall playing cards or eating your lunch. 

But many schools now use that time more productively, focusing it on coaching and mentoring students – helping with things like financial capability, learning about healthy relationships and defining career goals. 

Jeff King was a deputy principal at Rangitīkei College when he saw opportunities arising from this shift which, ultimately, spurred him to co-found Palmerston North-based edutech startup MyMahi. 

“The problem was there was nothing really there to help young people or to help teachers capture that [coaching and mentoring] information or teach it,” he says.

“For teachers, it was another thing to do, but the big part for me was that, if young people are building these sorts of goals and aspirations, surely that data should belong to them, but it didn't. It was always locked into a student management system. So it belonged to the school, and when they left, it just got locked there and they couldn't work on it in their own time.”

“We wanted to create something that young people owned and that made sense to them.”

Launched in 2019, the MyMahi platform helps students capture information about everything from their school achievements, to mentoring sessions, to pathways that might help them achieve future career aspirations. 

At the end of 2023, 60,000 students were active on the platform, and King is confident that number will reach 100,000 this year. 

Schools pay to sign up to MyMahi (currently around 135 New Zealand secondary schools do so) and the startup also generates revenue by delivering sponsored content on the platform. MyMahi is also used by about a dozen schools in Victoria, Australia.

The startup currently has a team of eight, four of which (predominantly development staff) are based out of its Palmerston North office – including King, who rates the city’s proximity to Wellington, founder and investor networks, and appeal to staff.

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Why did you start your business from Palmerston North? 

My background is 25 years-plus as a teacher, and then as a deputy principal. I spent about 20 years in Wellington, and then I was in the UAE, Japan and the UK then I came back in 2012, and sort of ended up here. My last role was deputy principal at Rangitīkei College, which is how I fell into this. 

There’s also the proximity to Wellington. I'm in Wellington tomorrow and again next Friday. It's only a couple of hours down the road, with the new motorway, so it's really accessible. One of my colleagues is in Paraparaumu and we often go in [to Wellington] together. 

The other thing is, schools are everywhere. And it was the regional schools that picked up our product and ran with it to begin with, more than the urban schools.

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‍How has the business been funded to this point?

We bootstrapped it for a long time, but then we took on investment. That was from professional investors including Manawatu Investment Group [MIG Angels], who we connected with through The Factory, Enterprise Angels, Canterbury Angel Investors, Angel HQ, and K1W1 was in there too. That was our seed round, at the end of 2022, and we raised $750,000. A lot of the employees have also invested, so everybody's kind of got a stake in it.

Having professional investors based in the Manawatu, and having that ecosystem available, has been hugely beneficial. You've got some very experienced people there and those people are also part of the angel network nationally, so they feed that back. 

I've talked to people, for example, in Whanganui who want to do something similar, but they don't have that network or that kind of group available to them and it makes it so much more difficult. But we’ve had that advice there all the time and that has been fantastic.

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‍What other agencies, organisations or others in your region have helped you on your journey? 

There is a really great network of startup founders here who we get to talk to and share war stories with. In Palmy it's easy to catch up because everywhere is so close. To grab a coffee with someone is very easy, or we're just online, asking each other questions. 

There's also ManawaTech, which is trying to raise the profile of tech companies in Palmerston North and also supporting the recruitment side of the industry, so they're really good. 

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How often do you travel?

I’d say I travel once a fortnight – depending on the time of the year and the project that we're working on – so it's not onerous. Also, Palmy has an airport, so getting to Auckland is very easy although not necessarily affordable especially at the drop of a hat. 

But since Covid, people are prepared to jump on Zoom a lot more than they were beforehand. It [building business relationships] often starts off online to scope things out, and then you end up going to Wellington or elsewhere to meet face to face. 

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‍What has worked for you in terms of attracting and retaining staff from your location?

Some of our staff are young, but to buy property and live here is a possibility; they can do that and they are doing that. That means it's easier to keep them, potentially, than being based somewhere else.

Our staff are from the area itself. We have the local polytech and Massey University, and there are good graduates coming out. And there are other tech companies here that are growing the ecosystem.

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What advice would you have for other founders considering starting up in a smaller city or regional location?

That it's not going to hold you back. If you know your product and you know your market, anything is achievable. And for some of that other stuff that you don't have the skill set for, you can reach out to people who are willing to help. 

We don't view it [our location] as being a disadvantage by any stretch of the imagination; if I have to go to Australia, which I do now and then, I still have to fly to Australia, whether I’m here or in Auckland or in Wellington.

As told to Caitlin Sykes