What inspired you to start the business?<\/p>\n
Ben and another one of our co-founders were having a hallway conversation, mostly about how big an impact KiwiSaver has in New Zealand and how important it is. They thought there must be some way to build a business around it that hasn\u2019t been done before. <\/p>\n
The model we\u2019ve used works overseas, where people act as their own fund managers, but obviously KiwiSaver is a lot bigger, and everyone\u2019s in it. The more we explored it, the more we saw that there was so much opportunity there to help people. KiwiSaver is good at the moment, but we think it could be great.<\/p>\n
Feijoa works by rounding up your transactions to the nearest $1, $2, or $5. The rounded amount is then paid from your existing bank account and put into your KiwiSaver account.<\/p>\n
How do you encourage people to contribute to their KiwiSaver?<\/p>\n
There\u2019s 40% of people who don\u2019t contribute to their KiwiSaver at all. They\u2019re self-employed, they\u2019re out of the workforce, they can afford it some parts of the year, or the paperwork puts them off because it\u2019s too much hassle. The question was how do you actually get people engaged, and it\u2019s the idea of something really small that you don\u2019t notice.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve called them the \u201cmissing million\u201d, and that really jumped out at us when we started iterating through the ideas. All of these people who have done all the work to get into KiwiSaver now don\u2019t take advantage of it, and they\u2019re missing out.<\/p>\n
So we tried to build an app with as few roadblocks as possible. We did a lot of work on the regulatory side to make sure we weren\u2019t having to get you to scan your passport and find a phone bill and things like that. We\u2019ve actually got an exemption under the Anti-Money Laundering legislation which requires those checks.<\/p>\n
When did you start the business, and what\u2019s been the biggest challenge?<\/p>\n
We started the company in May 2023, so it\u2019s been over about two-and-a-half years we\u2019ve been working on it. The first few months was actually going through ideas and figuring out what we could do, before we settled on the idea of what became Feijoa. <\/p>\n
We\u2019ve spent the last year building it from a technical standpoint, working through all the regulatory issues, and figuring out how we pull a business around it. The biggest challenge has probably been how do we go to market with it, how do we actually tell New Zealanders who we are and what we do in a really succinct way that people from all walks of life understand? <\/p>\n
People get put off with the idea of investment if there\u2019s 1000 new apps on their phone every day, and they don\u2019t know which one to pick.<\/p>\n
What would be your advice to a budding entrepreneur wanting to start a business?<\/p>\n
Mark: I think, come up with a plan and just start working on it. You\u2019ll change that plan 10,000 times, but I think that\u2019s really helped us. The other bit of advice, I think, would be to ask for help. There are so many people who are willing to give their time for people who want to do something. <\/p>\n
Ben: My one would be, even if your idea doesn\u2019t work, you learn a lot along the way. With every setback you learn heaps, and you can apply it to the next thing you do. <\/p>\n
Do you have a small business story you want to share? Send your pitches to tom.raynel@nzme.co.nz.<\/p>\n
Tom Raynel is a multimedia business journalist for the Herald, covering small business, retail and tourism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What inspired you to start the business? Ben and another one of our co-founders were having a hallway…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1443,3017,33147,138,1738,19707,6965,21335,33148,24392,4526,13997,5071,33146,19363,71,33150,3012,24396,5620,6964,3331,5812,32573,9878,111,139,69,24393,2738,24397,24390,5425,24394,4499,11555,6182,3502,11227,165,61,24395,6923,5977,33149],"class_list":["post-35613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-about","tag-ahead","tag-aiming","tag-business","tag-campaign","tag-cofounders","tag-contributions","tag-conversation","tag-davin","tag-each","tag-easier","tag-editorial","tag-feature","tag-feijoa","tag-founders","tag-from","tag-hallway","tag-hopes","tag-inspiration","tag-interview","tag-kiwisaver","tag-launch","tag-make","tag-mark","tag-monday","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-nzmes","tag-owner","tag-possibilities","tag-raynel","tag-regular","tag-showcasing","tag-small","tag-started","tag-stories","tag-success","tag-talk","tag-their","tag-to","tag-uplifting","tag-what","tag-which","tag-whiterobinson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}