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Check out the finalists for BNZ’s Start-up Alley: Start-Up Accelerator edition

Six teams have put in the proverbial hard years to make it to the finals of the event and will duke it out for prizes in two categories: Start-Up Accelerator – taking New Zealand to the world (aimed at tech businesses who have developed an innovative tech product and have their sights on potential growth and expansion beyond the Land of the Long White Cloud) and Social Enterprise Kick Start – making New Zealand a better place (aimed at start up social enterprises with a technology component).

The prizes are well worth fighting for – including twenty thousand dollars, mentoring and more. But to win those prizes, teams will have to impress judges including PledgeMe founder Anna Guenther, CD Baby creator Derek Sivers, Head of BNZ Small Business Harry Ferreira, and Breaker CTO Leah Culver.

Let’s first take a look at the Start-Up Accelerator finalists.

CoHired

The challenges for HR and recruitment teams are huge. Unconscious bias. AI. The gig economy. Disruption. Retention. Team culture. Staff development.

One thing is for certain: HR and recruitment are going to be significantly disrupted by technology. And the biggest risk is we dehumanise the interactions with job seekers in the process.

That’s where coHired comes in – the company uses tech to significantly shorten the recruitment process for customers and to continually match jobseekers to new jobs as they come up. Pretty nifty, right?

As the company claims: “Our software automagically shortlists hundreds of applicants to provide the recruiter with a top five who have the experience, skills and are a cultural fit with the client. We believe that great jobs plus great companies plus great teams bring great dignity for the jobseeker. That’s why our mantra is to ‘match people to jobs they love’. Because just getting a job doesn’t mean you will enjoy working there.”

Investify

Investify seeks to make it simple and affordable for retail investors to participate in the share market by providing engaging research and flat fee transactions that are enabled by the latest technology. In essence, it helps people invest for the price of a Netflix membership.

Kitt

Kitt is a landlording/property investment toolkit. It was built specifically for self-managing landpersons and property investors, but is not restricted to those parties. Kitt provides tools needed to manage properties while saving time and money – two of an investor’s most valuable assets. Those tools make it easier to manage and communicate with flats, dealing with tenant-landperson issues, getting paid securing landperson investments, promoting and listing properties. In sum: no more inconvenient visits from landpersons demanding rent at 3am. Hopefully.

May the best team win… though in our books, all of the finalists are already winners with their ambitions, dedication and sense of greater purpose. Sounds like a metaphor for New Zealand as a whole.

Want to check out Start-up Alley for yourself? Hop on over to the St James Theatre in Wellington on starting from 6pm on Thursday, February 15. Oh, and it’s FREE.

One of the talented Idealog Team Content Producers made this post happen.

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