WellyForge - 6th August 2025

Forging a dynamic, vibrant, science & city innovation culture

Author

Ralph Highnam
August 06, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 12 minutes

Hello Everyone:

Thank you to everyone that attended WellyForge2, another great night, see Maddie White or Dascha Cooper’s reports. I certainty learnt something new, met someone new, and was thoroughly entertained so thank you to all the speakers. This is Ratu Mataira of OpenStar Technologies telling us all about nuclear fusion:

WellyForge3 with the WCC mayoral candidates is just 2 weeks away (Aug 20th) and we now have 6 confirmed candidates ready to talk about how they see the economy, science, tech & innovation. This event is already sold out and we do have a waiting list, so if you cannot come please do cancel your ticket so we can release it. FULL INFO & WAITING LIST

For that event, we’re aiming to give each mayoral candidate a briefing beforehand about the science, tech & innovation community in Wellington. This Google Map shows the info that we’ve been able to find about that community so far (that’s you!). Please review and feedback to me on that map! Companies in the harbour are ones we cannot place, and we’ve had to guess start-up/scale-up.

Finally, a few urgent things to note:

  • CreativeHQ applications for Fintech Ignite, deadline is 11th August.

  • StartUp Wellington are looking for volunteers to help with the next StartUp Wellington Weekend (Oct 10-12th), tonight 5pm at Rutherford House [INFO]

  • The Quantum Technologies event on Monday morning is now an open format Quantum 101 event with a focus on infrastructure [INFO]

Rule #1 - Celebrate the Wins

  • Hnry for topping up the KiwiSaver accounts of 500 self-employed customers post recent changes. [NEWSROOM]

  • Wellington Start-Up Collective run by Jimmy McGee and others hosted an awesome event last week where founders (new & old) get together and, well, just talk about the problems of the day, with strictly no-advice given:

  • Angelic Drop In (ADI) clinics run around the country crewed by local volunteers willing to hear your idea and talk things through. Dave Moskovitz runs Wellington’s and having seen the ADI in action for the first time last week, it’s very useful, but we need to get Dave busier and more ideas moving!!

And recent media coverage:

Rule #2 - Meet the Locals

Thurs 7th Aug, 1pm, IBM running a “Integration Lab” at Generator on Waring Taylor Street talking all about data [TICKETS]

Thurs 7th Aug, 11.30am - 6pm, Royal Society, Falling Walls Lab 2025, 21, 3 minute pitches from across the Pacific on ideas to improve society. [INFO] [TICKETS]

Thurs 7th Aug, 5.30pm, at Rutherford House, Booster & Victoria celebrate 7 years of partnership which has seen $7.2m invested into 13 spin-outs, leading to 80+ jobs and a combined enterprise value of over $200m [TICKETS]

Fri 8th Aug, 8.30-12.30, Supercharge your Business Productivity with AI run by Taiawa’s Dascha Cooper and Serge van Dam, at Victoria. [TICKETS]

Mon Aug 11th, 10-1pm, Quantum & Infrastructure Events in Wellington with Dr Cathy Foley, this is now a Quantum 101 event looking specifically at infrastructure. [TICKETS]

Tue 12th Aug at Te Papa, Digital Trust Hui, run by NZTech talking all about digital identify and trust. [TICKETS]

Tue/Wed Aug 12/13th at AWS offices in Wellington, AI Hackathon Festival 2025 run by AI Forum of New Zealand

Weds Aug 13th, NZ Energy Excellence Awards in Wellington

Weds Aug 13th, 6-7.30pm, Professor Richard Beasley will be talking at the Royal Society about his research and how it has directly influenced patient care especially around asthma. [TICKETS]

Thurs Aug 14th, 5.30pm, “Shipping GenAI products that actually work”, experienced product guru Suhel Mangera taking us through how he works today [TICKETS]

Thurs Aug 14th, 7.30pm, Geoscience Society of NZ President’s Lecture at Victoria - “Martian monsters, giant landslides, and recipes for disaster” [INFO]

Mon Aug 18th, 5.30pm, at Victoria, “Earthquake science at the cutting edge” [TICKETS]

Tues Aug 19th, 4pm, “AI in the Boardroom” at BNZ Place, hosted by Serge van Dam but with speakers from Autohive, Law Cyborg, and Tutaki [INFO]

Weds Aug 20th, 1-2pm, AI in Mediation and Arbitration at Denton’s on Bowen Street [INFO]

Weds Aug 20th, 6-8pm, WellyForge3 with Peter Griffin and the mayoral candidates for Wellington City - what are their plans for economic prosperity and how do they see science & tech playing into them? [WAITLIST]

Weds Aug 27th, 5-7pm, Critical Signals - “Songs for my Chatbot” [TICKETS]

Aug 27th-30th, RustForge is in Wellington run by Tim McNamara

Sept 25-27th, NZGDC 2025, the NZ Game Developers Conference at Takina

Oct 10-12th, Startup Weekend Wellington at Rutherford House [LINKEDIN]

Nov 19th-21st, Synbio (synthetic biology) is at Te Papa, organized by Mark Calcott

Recurring Events:

The Atom at Victoria is open for any unfunded Founders (Students, Early Stage, Idea Stage) and is run by Entrepreneur in Residence, Adiraj Gupta - Email [email protected] , or join the Facebook community.

Reminders:

Rule #3 - Understand the Wider Environment

  • The new Applied PhD funding scheme will soon be launching a call for proposals for PhD level projects that are co-supervised by a company and University-based researcher. Projects in the energy sector will be the first cohort, followed by other industry sectors over the 5 years of the programme. Further details to be announced soon via this website: https://applieddoctorates.nz/

Rule #4 - Your Local Community Index

WellyForge