Veteran of Trade Me, Xero wants less startup 'theatre' and more actual startups

Plus: Medtech Global acquired, humanoid robots deployed with impressive new AI model and is woke banking really a problem in NZ?

Happy Friday!

We’ve made it another week. OCR is down and spirits are up, we’re absolutely thriving. We’ve even got a Friday Feature with one of the unsung heroes of the NZ startup scene, Rowan Simpson, who argues there is more we could do to focus on building great startups and not just on that nebulous idea of the ‘ecosystem’.

Here’s your Daily shot of news you don’t want to miss!

• Greenhouse accelerator programme open for clean tech startups

• Banyan Software Acquires Medtech Global

• AI startup founded by 21-year-olds, raises $100M at $2B valuation

• Is woke banking really a problem in NZ?

• Figure’s humanoid robots start taking voice commands, which is hopefully fine:

Thank you so much to everyone who has subscribed already this year and for those who haven’t, if you could recommend the substack or share with friends and whanau that still helps out in a big way.

Finn & the Caffeine Team