Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by chriselles 2917 days ago
I’m in NZ, and involved in the startup community down here.

Great people, great vibe.

There’s a long history of Innovation down here at the bottom of the planet.

The best example is David Downs book “#8 Rewired” which gives examples of great NZ Innovations such as:

Disposable hypodermic syringe Manned flight(disputed) Jet boat Nanotube Freeze dried coffee(sorry) DNA discovery Splitting the atom(Rutherford) DNA double helix(Wilkins, the DNA Ringo Starr)

Unfortunaly, outside of Xero(Cloud Accounting) there isn’t much of that awesome innovation scaling down here.

Discovery yes, scaling not so much.

3 comments

While these things were discovered by kiwis, their place of discovery was the UK or the US. Wilkins did his discoveries at Kings College, Rutherford worked at the Cavendish Lab in Cambridge, Pickering worked on manned flight in the US (California, Jet Propulsion Lab). I don't think you can use that as an example for innovation in NZ
My bad!

I should have separated NZ Innovations from NZ Innovators, or been a bit more clear about it.

#8 Rewired is chicken full of NZ innovations.

Unfortunately, I’m away from home and my copy.

The electric stock fence comes to mind.

Here’s a link:

http://www.no8rewired.kiwi/nz-inventions/

Some really good ones as well as cringeworthy ones(Martin Jet Pack).

One of the most underated software produced in NZ is Serato - pretty much changed the DJing game.
Funny you mention that - I've recently been tempted to send them my resume.
Yeah serato is huge
We've got rocketlabs, does that count? It's not homegrown but it's based in nz.

Also flying taxis, lol

Rocketlab is homegrown, it's just owned by Americans now.

All the design and most of the build (except the engine, due to American rules) is done in NZ.