EY Entrepreneur Of The Year 2022: Meet the finalists

In the final episode of Entrepreneur of the Year ™ podcast series, Darren White talks with an impressive and inspiring group of Kiwis who are finalists in the Technology and Emerging Industries category - James Corbett and Phil Thomson, Co-founders of Auror; Max Ferguson, Founder and CEO of Lumin; Dave Darling, Former CEO at Pacific Edge; and Asantha Wijeyeratne, CEO of PaySauce.

The challenge of solving a problem using technology has motivated thousands of people to become entrepreneurs.

Understand what inspires them to become entrepreneurs and the challenges they face in growing a business – and how they meet them.

“I absolutely love creativity and making an impact. I’m trained as an engineer and so I was lined up to, you know, work in a nine to five job as a structural engineer, which would have been, you know, would have been exciting. But the reality is I saw a few problems in the way we work with documents, and I couldn’t help myself but to go out and try and make an impact and change that. And that started a seven-year long journey that I’ve been on so far building a business that automates and helps with document processes.” says Max Ferguson, Founder and CEO of Lumin

“I think it goes back to this concept of nature versus nurture and I’ve thought a lot about this. And, you know, you can be taught to be an entrepreneur, but it has to be a fundamental driver in the makeup of the individual. It’s a persona. It’s an ideotype, perhaps a phenotype that, you know, that is exhibited in people. They see an opportunity to do something completely novel, maybe inventive, and turn that into some sort of benefit, be it cash or a non-monetised benefit.” says Dave Darling Former CEO at Pacific Edge.

“There’s a skills shortage around great product engineering design talent. I think there’s opportunities about to bring in more amazing people from overseas and I think lifting the boat for New Zealand. I also think there’s a lot of amazing companies the last three or four years already coming through – they’re providing the opportunity for people to upskill here around a fast-growing business”, shares Phil Thomson, Co-founder of Auror.

“The biggest challenge is the scale-up transition,– which is really a tricky one. Not many people get this right. And I have taken it upon myself to be the heart of that business and not to let go of our founding principles, our founding values of, you know, respect and inclusion, fun and fresh, you know, all these key things that make us what we are; that has to be what informs us as a 200-person firm or a 2,000-person firm. That’s the challenge.” Asantha Wijeyeratne, CEO of PaySauce says.