Founder stories without the gloss.
Business Is Boring follows Aotearoa-linked founders and business people through the messy mechanics behind building real companies. Its conversations stay grounded in decisions: what changed, what worked, what hurt, and what comes next.
PRESS PLAY
Business Is Boring is a business interview show about what founders and business people actually do once the idea becomes a company. It is practical first. The conversations circle around product-market fit, funding, growth, customer insight, export ambition, AI adoption, startup finance and the personal cost of choosing a path that may take a long time. Its centre of gravity is Aotearoa, but the scope is global. Recent episodes trace Appetise from free meal planning into FMCG research, Wai Mānuka from a Whakatane New Year's idea into international positioning, and Crimson Education from its founder's admission story into a company operating at major scale. The show is especially good on pivots. It listens for the moment when a business discovers that the useful thing it built is not quite the thing it first thought it was building. That might mean meal-planning data becoming supermarket insight, conversations becoming structured actions, or a beverage brand finding strength in purpose and authenticity. The tone is measured and conversational. Guests get space to explain themselves, but the questions keep returning to the real business tension: how the model works, who pays, what changed, and why the decision mattered. The show is not only interested in success stories. Rowan Simpson's appearance turns being wrong into a lesson about leadership, startup culture, capital and tax, while the Ārepa conversation points toward the pressure of scientific claims and regulators. There is a useful humility running through it. Business Is Boring treats entrepreneurship as a long sequence of imperfect bets, not a neat hero narrative. It works best for people who like candid founder stories, but still want enough strategic detail to make the story useful. It is friendly, specific and quietly demanding.
Made for: Business Is Boring is for founders, investors and startup-curious listeners who want practical lessons from company-building rather than motivational noise. It also suits anyone interested in New Zealand businesses trying to scale beyond their first market.
What sets it apart: The show pairs a friendly interview style with a steady insistence on specifics: customers, capital, pivots, regulation, distribution and the choices behind growth. Its Aotearoa base gives familiar startup topics a sharper local context.
Think business is boring? This podcast proves it's anything but. Join Simon Pound as he talks to everyone from accidental entrepreneurs to industry leaders about their business journeys and what propelled them to where they are today. Made in partnership with Deel.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Simon Pound draws practical lessons from founders by keeping each conversation focused on decisions, customer signals, and the work behind growth.
Business Is Boring turns founder interviews into practical accounts of how companies take shape. Simon Pound keeps the conversation close to decisions: how an initial problem becomes a product, how customers reveal a different opportunity, and how founders learn when to commit…
Butter chicken lasagna meets market research; you get the business story behind the supermarket shelf.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Appetise turns what people cook into practical evidence for food brands.
Business is Boring follows Toby and Elise Hilliam through Appetise's shift from a household dinner-planning idea into a platform for FMCG brands trying to understand what customers actually cook.
Jamie Beaton connects Crimson Education's growth to conviction, compounding, and a broader education mission.
Crimson Education's billion-dollar valuation lands here as a marker of durability, not a victory lap. Founder and CEO Jamie Beaton connects the company's rise to the value his family placed on education, then follows that thread into a business built around helping students…
A grounded episode on how purpose, provenance and early belief shaped Wai Manuka's wider ambition.
Wai Manuka's path from a Whakatane New Year's barbecue to a larger brand ambition gives this Business Is Boring episode a clean, useful shape.
A grounded founder conversation about turning customer conversations into a product's next move.
Business Is Boring frames a practical founder question with useful clarity: can conversations become work teams can act on, without burying everyone in notes?
A grounded conversation about mistakes, unseen builders, startup culture, and the money success eventually has to generate.
Rowan Simpson's conversation uses the value of being wrong as a way into startup life, drawing on his work around Trade Me, Xero, Vend, and Timely without turning the story into a simple victory lap.
A grounded founder story about turning collector retail instincts into Vivi's digital business.
Business is Boring follows David Yu from a Takapuna shop opened in 1997 to Vivi, the digital collectibles company later named New Zealand's fastest growing company at the Deloitte Fast 50 Awards and recognised at the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
A research-born health company turns a stigmatised problem into a practical, wider-reaching business.
FemFit frames pelvic floor health as both a medical and company-building challenge, following a device designed to make urinary incontinence easier to discuss and address. The issue can affect up to one in three women worldwide, and Dr.
Rob Walling on bootstrapped SaaS growth, plateaus, and exits — with founders who lived them.
Abbey Ashley's playbook for turning your job skills into a virtual assistant business.
SaaS operators on scaling, pricing and AI, metrics included.
Alex Blumberg interviews guests like Megan Phelps-Roper and Shane McAnally about failure and reinvention.
Dr.
David Yu, co-founder and CEO of Vivi, discusses his journey building New Zealand's fastest growing company.
Interview with Oxygen advisors about their work as virtual CFOs for high-growth startups, discussing capital raising and financial management.
Simon Pound interviews AI educator Edmundo Ortega about his career in tech and how business leaders can start incorporating AI into their operations.
Appetise starts with the dinner question.
Business Is Boring interviews Jamie Beaton, founder and CEO of Crimson Education, a New Zealand company operating at a $300 million run rate and recently valued at over $1 billion that helps students worldwide gain admission to top universities.
Joseph Harawera says Wai Mānuka started at a Whakatāne New Year's barbecue in 2019 going into 2020 after he complained that pineapple kombucha "tasted nothing like pineapple." He and two mates had no beverage-industry experience, but lockdown in 2020 gave them time to build the recipe, find a consultant and design team, and shape the brand around Aotearoa, Māori culture, "He Tauma No Aotearoa," and a Katsumahi design.
Contented founders Hannah Hardy-Jones and Lucy Pink tell Business Is Boring how an AI tool turns meetings, coaching sessions, and interviews into insights, actions, articles, and compliance records.
Rowan Simpson uses How to Be Wrong to argue that the real builders of Trade Me, Xero, Vend, and Timely are the 'quiet ones' rather than the public founders.
Interview with Oxygen advisors about their work as virtual CFOs for high-growth startups, discussing capital raising and financial management.
Host Simon Pound interviews the founders of Arepa, a functional drinks company, discussing their journey, regulatory challenges, and the science behind their brain-boosting products.