Mahesh Muralidhar says share schemes and smart visas can supercharge growth.
Mahesh Muralidhar says share schemes and smart visas can supercharge growth.
THE FACTS
Sydney’s start-up scene transformed with companies like Atlassian and Canva, creating a resilient, high-wage economy.
New Zealand’s start-up ecosystem is growing, with companies like Xero and LanzaTech leading the way.
Key strategies include promoting experienced founders, improving employee share schemes, and targeting immigration for talent.
By Mahesh Muralidhar, CEO and founder of Phase One Ventures
About 15 years ago, Sydney’s start-up scene felt underground. A small incubator called Pollenizer popularised a practical discipline of lean start-up: rapid experiments, tight feedback loops, and a culture that normalised testing, failing, and tryingagain.
Mick Liubinskas and Phil Morle helped codify it. Blackbird was forming. Atlassian’s Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar had already proven you could sell software from Sydney to the world. Uber launched in a no-frills office well away from the CBD.
And after Google acquired Sydney-born Where 2 Technologies (the origin of Google Maps), Google Sydney began pulling global product and design experience into the city. None of it was centrally planned; it was founders learning from founders – and a growing belief that Australian tech companies could play a powerful global game.
Walk through Surry Hills and the CBD today and you can feel the step-change: dense teams, packed meet-ups, and a pipeline of students who speak fluent start-up. Canva, Atlassian and SafetyCulture are but few of the many powerhouses in Sydney.
At UNSW and the University of Sydney, students trade notes on Y Combinator applications and the latest LLMs; entrepreneurship is no longer niche. Across town, the Tech Central district now anchors a large innovation economy, supporting tens of thousands of workers and crowned by Atlassian’s hybrid-timber HQ beside Central.
Sydney didn’t just add many high-productive jobs; it changed its risk profile – a more resilient city with higher-wage jobs, deeper export earnings, and sustained growth that compounds year after year.
And that’s the point for New Zealand: growth and more high-income jobs are the order of the day. Not abstract growth; tradeable, export-driven growth that lifts wages, creates opportunity for graduates, and expands the tax base without raising taxes. The start-up flywheel is one of the few engines that does all three.
Mahesh Muralidhar on stage at the KiwiDreaming tech conference.
When success hits, it recycles. The pattern is simple: founders build; ESOP turns employees into owners; successful owners become alumni angels; angels back new start-ups; specialist services grow around them; global customers follow; and the cycle repeats.
New Zealand’s flywheel is already turning. Trade Me created an internet-native generation. Xero proved a Wellington-born SaaS can go global.
LanzaTech took deep science to Nasdaq. Their alumni and investors have helped seed a new wave: Halter, Tracksuit, VXT, and Ivo.ai – Kiwi companies shipping globally and lifting ambition at home. We have mature homegrown global VC now with the success of GD1, Outset Ventures, IceHouse Ventures, Movac and others.
Our job now is to accelerate that cycle so it translates directly into more high-value jobs and faster national productivity growth.
Here are four practical levers, from a founder’s vantage point:
Put “been there done that” founders and operators front and centre. Make the people who’ve built at global scale even more visible and on the big stages – and give them the space to teach the craft of getting from zero to one and one to many. Treat them as a strategic resource for New Zealand Inc. This global-scale game is still new here; credibility compounds through lived examples, and credibility attracts talent, which creates jobs.
Employee share scheme (ESOP) parity with Australia. Australia’s 2022 reforms reduced red tape and improved access to employee share schemes. New Zealand is consulting on deferring the taxing point of start-up share schemes until liquidity. Keep going and keep it simple. Equity is how you recruit and retain the 10× people who won’t be swayed by salary alone. Get ESOP right and you don’t just hire, you build capability, retain teams, and anchor jobs here instead of offshore.
Targeted immigration for frontier talent. Make it trivially easy for senior engineers, product and design leaders, and repeat operators to base here. Auckland’s Innovation & Technology Alliance is real momentum from local government; pair it with central-government pathways that match Australia’s speed. Immigration Minister Erica Stanford is leaning into growth settings – refreshing business and investor pathways and signalling that New Zealand welcomes builders who bring skills, capital, and global networks. Get this right and you don’t just import CVs – you seed new teams, create downstream roles, and lift the whole wage curve.
Capital density over “customer access”. In 2025, customers are global from day one; what still concentrates locally is capital and community. Back the managers who back founders early, and keep building precincts where students, early founders and capital allocators collide regularly. Capital density speeds cycles, and faster cycles translate into more companies reaching scale, more hiring, and more resilient regional economies.
Most importantly, let’s celebrate our momentum. There’s a growing bench of Kiwi companies kicking on, a deepening connection to our Kiwi start-up diaspora overseas, and unmistakable student energy – Startup Club NZ at the University of Auckland is just one of the student clubs making start-ups mainstream on campus.
Culture is the leading indicator; policy then accelerates it.
On championing, credit where it’s due: Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown is pushing the tech-alliance agenda locally, and at the central level, Judith Collins and now Dr Shane Reti have been critical voices in elevating science, innovation and technology in the growth story.
Our Prime Minister has also been a powerful advocate. Let’s keep that chorus growing.
Sydney’s flywheel started underground and became a significant economic pillar.
New Zealand is spinning – and if we double down on visible role models, equity that works, visa settings that welcome frontier talent, and a culture that treats founders as core to New Zealand Inc, we won’t just catch the wave, we’ll compound it.
More than anything, we need to believe we can produce even more powerful global companies from here – and address the equity and tax plumbing so the system reliably converts ambition into growth and jobs.
Mahesh Muralidhar is CEO and founder of Phase One Ventures, a community forearly-stage start-ups and venture capital funds. He stood for the National Party in the 2023 general election.
Catch up on the debates that dominated the week by signing up to our Opinion newsletter - a weekly round-up of our best commentary.
