Beyond Startup Hype: 5 Founders on Real Difficulties
Mark Pavlyukovskyy and Hendrik Remigereau host TechMates, the NZVC podcast. The guest on this episode is Shaun Quincey, CEO of Simfuni; Liam Kampshof, Founder of Bovonic; Nick Damiano, Co-Founder of Andromeda Surgical; Steven Zinsli, Founder of Extraordinary & Anna Henwood, CEO of Stickybeak, and it went out on 30 October 2025. It covers the NZVC portfolio companies Simfuni, Bovonic, Andromeda Surgical, Extraordinary and Stickybeak.
- Guest
- Shaun Quincey, CEO of Simfuni; Liam Kampshof, Founder of Bovonic; Nick Damiano, Co-Founder of Andromeda Surgical; Steven Zinsli, Founder of Extraordinary & Anna Henwood, CEO of Stickybeak
- Date
- 30 October 2025
- Companies
- Simfuni · Bovonic · Andromeda Surgical · Extraordinary · Stickybeak
- Watch
- YouTube
- Listen
- Spotify
This highlight episode brings together five New Zealand-linked founders at different stages: Shaun Quincey, Liam Kampshof, Nick Damiano, Steven Zinsli, and Anna Henwood. It covers selling into enterprise, building brutally simple products, and staying alive long enough for compounding to work. Segments include enterprise infiltration, cowshed prototypes, pivot discipline, the moment an engineer decides to become a founder, and loving uncertainty.
- Enterprise infiltration: map budget cycles, find the true decision-maker, ask for money early.
- Prototype grit: shower tests, mastitis milk samples, and a raincoat-and-laptop cowshed setup.
- Pivot discipline: stop doing the wrong thing, survive, and let time create trust.
- Founder trigger: when a recap pushes a product-first engineer to build their own company.
Companies in this episode
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Simfuni
Fintech
Simfuni is an Auckland-based insurtech company that builds cloud software for life insurers to run premium billing, payments, reconciliation, and arrears management.
Read about Simfuni
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Bovonic
Ag-tech and Climate
Bovonic is a Bay of Plenty agritech company that makes QuadSense, an inline milk sensor system that detects mastitis in dairy cows during milking.
Read about Bovonic
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Andromeda Surgical
Bio and Healthcare
Andromeda Surgical builds autonomous surgical robots, starting with endourology, using a software-led, human-in-the-loop system that gives surgeons GPS-like spatial navigation through anatomy.
Read about Andromeda Surgical
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Extraordinary
Fintech
Extraordinary is a New Zealand company that runs a flexible health and wellbeing allowance platform for employers.
Read about Extraordinary
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Stickybeak
AI and B2B SaaS
Stickybeak is a consumer testing platform for marketers, brand teams and agencies that tests products, campaigns, packaging and concepts with real consumers and returns feedback in hours rather than weeks.
Read about Stickybeak
enterprise sales, product-market fit, founder mindset, medtech, AgTech, fintech, insurtech, market research