Lucky in love: How 138 dates helped tech entrepreneur find her feet in business and in life

Entrepreneur and author Rebekah Campbell will be the keynote speaker at the Electrify Aotearoa Women’s Conference on June 19. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Ahead of a conference for women business founders this month, Jane Phare talks to guest speaker Rebekah Campbell about why lessons she learned while searching for her ideal partner can be used to achieve goals in business and in life.

It took three years and 138 dates before tech businesswoman Rebekah Campbell got lucky in love.

Along the way she learned valuable lessons – that tall, fun and smart might not be the ideal wish-list, and that strategies she used to find Mr Right could also be used to achieve goals in business and in life.

That’s the gist of what Campbell, 46, will be talking about at the women-founder conference Electrify Aotearoa on June 19 in Wellington’s St James Theatre. She wants to pass on key lessons she learned and strategies she used to meet her life partner, Rod Lane, the father of her two children, Eve, 8, and Bobby, 6.

Those key lessons can be used to achieve any goal in life from raising capital and building a business to finding the right life partner and building a relationship, she says.

Campbell was 34, focused on her career, hadn’t dated seriously for 10 years and was spending Christmas with her parents in Whangārei when she saw the rest of her life play out in front of her.

“I saw that I was going to miss out on having a family. I didn’t want to have Christmas with my parents for the rest of my life. I wanted to have my own family.”

Rebekah Campbell with her partner Rod Lane, and their daughter Eve and son Bobby. Photo / Melissa Waite

She went away for New Year on her own and decided to apply the same goal-setting techniques she had used in her business career to her personal life.

Her target was to go on one date every week for a year- and stick to it - using dating apps and introductions from friends to fill her dating card.

“From not dating at all for 10 years to do that was really scary.”

Campbell admits the background to her single status was a little more complex than just being too busy to date. Tragically, her first partner died in a car crash when she was in her early 20s. Although they had already broken up, Campbell found herself “stuck” - grieving and regretting letting the relationship go.

“I realised what a huge mistake I had made. He was a very remarkable person and I felt that it was the tragedy of my life to have lost this person, therefore I was never going to find anybody else.

“I got to a point where I realised I had to let go of that relationship.”

Dating may not seem to have much to do with business but Campbell says “not so”.

“I learned a lot about myself through the process.”

Entrepreneur and author Rebekah Campbell. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Her theory is that whatever a person wants to achieve in life, the same lessons apply be they business or personal.

Campbell grew up in Wellington but left for Australia when she was 21, initially working in the music industry managing bands. Later, while raising capital and building tech companies, she lived in Sydney but travelled frequently to the United States. That meant during her search for the ideal partner, she dated men in New York, San Francisco and Australia during what stretched to a three-year search.

Campbell laughs now at her original “tall, fun and smart” dating wish list.

“I was going on these dates and finding that people who were tall, fun and smart weren’t very nice.”

The list changed to caring and kind, someone with whom she could have a good conversation.

“Someone who cared about me was very important.”

She was 37 when she went out with date 138, her partner Rod Lane, in Sydney.

Before then she was busy raising capital - $17 million over five years with Westpac as one of the main investors – for one of her tech companies, an app called Hey You used by city workers to pre-order and pay for food and drinks at restaurants and cafes. Campbell ran it for seven years but although still a shareholder, withdrew from management after the birth of her daughter.

She was also writing a business blog about her experience as a woman starting a tech company. The blog became a column in the New York Times and she was then asked to write a book about her experience.

However, by then Campbell had been on her 138 dates, had met her partner and given birth to her first child.

“So I thought I really wanted to tell the story of how I did that. It just seemed I had created a lot more value for myself, more value than I had by building a career.”

The resulting book, 138 Dates, is not just about finding the right person, she says. It’s about becoming the right person.

“It’s all the lessons I learned about myself.”

A goal of 30,000 tech jobs

Campbell returned to Wellington with her family in late 2020 and now works with WellingtonNZ, the economic development agency representing nine councils, running a strategy she developed to help grow the region’s tech eco-system.

The goal is to create 30,000 jobs in the next 10 years. That’s a big target, she admits, but it’s all the more important given the number of public sector jobs that will disappear.

Campbell is drawing on her experience working on initiatives supported by the New South Wales Government and the City of Sydney to grow a thriving tech industry. She believes the Australian model of a hub where founders, investors and tech experts can work collaboratively to share skills and contacts, with local government backing, is the answer for Wellington.

She’s also working on a biography but can’t say whose until it’s announced next year.

Marian Johnson, former chief executive of startup hub Ministry of Awesome, will speak at the Electrify Aotearoa conference in Wellington. Photo / Dean Purcell

Campbell will join other guest speakers at the Electrify Aotearoa conference including its founder and former chief executive of startup innovation group Ministry of Awesome, Marian Johnson; Māori tech entrepreneur Amber Taylor, whose company Ara Journeys uses digital technology to bring New Zealand history to life for young people; the Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Judith Collins; Irina Miller, founder of Daisy Lab, a science tech business making lab-grown cheese without the animals; Brooke Roberts, CEO of micro-investing platform Sharesies; and Brianne West, founder of regenerative beauty brand Ethique.

Catherine Gray, the US-based executive producer of the documentary Show Her The Money will host the film’s New Zealand premiere at the conference. The documentary addresses how women are attracting less than 2 per cent of venture capital funding despite women-owned businesses growing at double the rate of those owned by men and generating higher returns on venture capital.

The conference will include panels and masterclasses to help founders grow their businesses, pitch themselves to funders and angel investors and how to take a business offshore.

Jane Phare is a senior Auckland-based business, features and investigations journalist, former assistant editor of NZ Herald and former editor of the Weekend Herald and Viva.