Tonight is the night, WellyForge, get a ticket (approximately 2 left), come along, be entertained, meet people, and let the magic of networking take place and start forging the future of Wellington and the world. Pleased to say the event is sponsored by LabMates, thank you Maddie White!

Note: a couple of events listed below have changed location and/or day & time so please do re-check.

Relevant Wellington News

Start up rule #1, celebrate the wins:

• Advemto (Victoria start-up) run by Justin Hodgkiss has been selected for the 2025 BioToolsInnovator cohort - a US life sciences accelerator.

• Predator Free Wellington wins the “Excellence in Environmental Leadership” award at the NZ Local Govt Excellent Awards, and Makara Peak Mountain Bike Park (what an awesome asset that is) and TrackDem were nominees for other awards.

• Victoria’s UniVentures has announced a partnership with UK clean tech company, Hyflux to develop next generation aviation electronic propulsion systems.

• Victoria’s UniVentures, Paihau-Robinson Research Institute and Zenno Astronautics have also joined forces to advance the development of superconducting magnets for space.

• Wellington Gold Awards finalists announced (see below for event details), includes several sciency ones Uunafit, Evithe, Goodnature, Village Goldsmith and many more great companies, established & coming up.

Got a win? Tell us!!

Wellington Events Coming Up 

Weds, June 18th, 6-8pm, WellyForge’s first in-person meeting, sponsored by LabMates to be held at Undercurrent at 118 Tory Street, a bohemian style book store, perfect for story telling. We’ll have two short, topical talks and various networking things. Tickets have just about gone but you might get lucky. The speakers will be:

• Ian Douglas, Founder, Village Goldsmith (winners Hi-Tech Awards 2025)

• Professor Emily Parker, Science Advisor to MBIE, co-founder of Bontia Bio, who just raised $1.25m to get nature’s bioactive armour up and running.

• And 3 lucky PhDs (Marissa Dierkes, Taran John, Shae Patel) who will distil their life’s work down to 2 minutes in simple terms for us….

Weds, June 18th, 6pm, Talk by NASA astronomer, Dr Michelle Thaller at the Royal Society

Monday 23rd June, 3-6pm, KPMG Office on Bowen St, Wellington start-up Wellbeing Protocol is running a session on “A Smarter Way to Fund Social Good”

Tuesday 24th June, 4.30pm, Quantum Investments & Startups at BNZ, 1 Whitmore Street, hosted by IBM’s Quantum Ambassador, Sara Bilal [LOCATION & TIME CHANGE]

Tuesday 24th June, 5.30pm, Lenny’s Newsletter MeetUp at St Johns Bar for product people

Weds/Thurs 25/26th June, Electrify “supercharging NZ’s most ambitious women founders”

Thursday 26th June, 2-5pm, Climate Accelerator Aurora by CreativeHQ at Michael Fowler

Weds 2nd July, 6pm -, Wellington Gold Awards, Embassy Theatre

Thursday 3rd July, 4.30-6.30pm, BioTech & Beer, Venue TBC [DATE CHANGE]

Thursday 26th June, 5 - 7pm, Gen AI Engineering Meet-Up (Sold Out!)

Thurs/Fri, 3/4th July, 9am- Wellington Bioimaging Symposium at Vic

Thursday 31st July, 4.30-7pm, Wellington Start Up Collective at CreativeHQ

Weds Aug 13th, NZ Energy Excellence Awards in Wellington

Aug 27th-30th, RustForge is in Wellington run by Tim McNamara with plenty of Wellington speakers, including your run of the mill nuclear fusion start-up, OpenStar.

Nov 19th-21st, Synbio (synthetic biology) is in Wellington, organized by Mark Calcott from Vic Uni.

Got an event coming up? Tell us!!

Other Stuff

• Rod Drury’s vision for Wellington (hint: urban adventure capital of the world - that, to me, ties in extreme weather, start-ups, risk, outdoor sports, an exciting place to live)

Got other stuff? Tell us!!

Useful Links

• Glean Report for a full rundown of Wellington events including humanities

• WhatFoundersWant useful stuff from Wellington-based Lane Litz

• AngelHQ for contacting the local angel community

• ADI Clinics in Wellington (Angelic Drop-In)

• Morgo for NZ entrepreneurs (run from Wellington by Jenny Morel)

• Wellington Start Up Collective to meet non-advising fellow start-up nuts

• Start-Up Coaching (Free, via CreativeHQ)

• Taiawa Wellington Tech Hub (WCC/Vic, over near Beehive)

Got other links? Tell us!!

WellyForge