About GEN in New Zealand

GEN launched its flagship Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) in 2008. It was an immediate success, and New Zealand’s entrepreneurial community responded enthusiastically with a national campaign in 2009. Because New Zealand sits close to the International Date Line, its GEW events were the first in the world each year and in the early years, GEN President Jonathan Ortmans often started his global GEW tour in New Zealand. The first GEW event in the world in 2009 took place in Wellington, where Prime Minister John Key, Wellington Mayor Kerry Prendergast, and GEW patron and TradeMe founder Sam Morgan launched the campaign with an innovation breakfast organized by GEN’s partner, the Wellington Innovation Network. The 2009 campaign drew thousands of participants, establishing an emphasis on green and workplace innovation that would shape New Zealand’s campaigns for years to come. 

As the campaign matured over the following years, GEN added new partners to its coalition, including Startup New Zealand. Prime Minister Key was a recurring champion, and his leadership helped GEN broaden government participation. In 2012, Steven Joyce, the Minister of Science and Innovation, joined ministers Nikki Kaye and Paula Bennett in backing the campaign with event sponsorship. That year, 38 GEW partners organized events in which thousands of people participated.

The momentum led GEN to work year-round in New Zealand in 2019 by establishing a formal affiliate, GEN New Zealand. Registered as a trust, it was founded by Dave Moskovitz—a startup investor known as the godfather of Wellington startups, Marwan Jamal, Suse Reynolds, Kath Blaney and Pascale Hyboud-Peron. GEN NZ connects the country’s entrepreneurs, investors, ecosystem support organizations, universities, regional bodies, and government agencies into a single national hub. The affiliate and its 200+ ecosystem organization members anchor GEW in New Zealand, and the campaigns proved highly adaptable. When the global pandemic arrived in 2020 and in-person gatherings became impossible, GEN NZ moved its programming online.

Starting in 2020, GEN NZ has run a series of unconferences that convene hundreds of founders and ecosystem leaders to meet, compare notes, and set shared priorities. Participant-driven rather than top-down, this format became a signature of how the affiliate facilitates collaboration across the community. In 2022, with input from roughly 120 ecosystem leaders, GEN NZ crowdsourced a national strategic plan—the Entrepreneurship Manifesto—that contains a comprehensive set of recommendations for government across five key areas: entrepreneur-government relations, support networks, founder education, immigration, and venture funding.

That same year, GEN NZ held its first Entrepreneur Ecosystem Awards, recognizing 14 winners across nine categories. Lauren Peate of the software company Multitudes won Entrepreneur of the Year, and Sarah Colcord of the marketplace Chooice won Social Entrepreneur of the Year. Moskovitz observed that it is difficult to separate the country’s traditional entrepreneurs from its social entrepreneurs, noting that many Kiwi ventures naturally carry a social purpose. Further, with the inclusion of women and Māori founders being a steady thread running through GEN’s work in NZ, the awards included categories for initiatives that reflect the rich diversity of founders across Aotearoa.

A consistent feature of GEN's work in New Zealand is its deep government engagement. Prime Minister John Key participated during GEN’s earliest years, and by 2012 ministers responsible for science, innovation, and social development were taking part in GEW directly. GEN turned these relationships into sustained policy advocacy through GEN NZ’s election Manifesto. GEN has also worked closely with officials at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) who have joined meetings to discuss grants and support programs. In 2025, when the government weighed a shift that would have favored research-based spinouts over founder-led startups, GEN NZ organized a call to action, held stakeholder workshops, and circulated policy briefs advising officials to continue backing startups. New Zealand’s leaders have carried that engagement onto GEN’s global stage as well, sending delegations to the Global Entrepreneurship Congress (GEC) in Riyadh, Melbourne, and Indianapolis.

GEN supports New Zealand founders through its global programs and maintains strong relationships across the country’s entrepreneurial infrastructure, convening angel investors, support organizations, central and local government agencies, and academia within one network. Its partners and members include MBIE, Angel Association New Zealand, NZ Growth Capital Partners, University of Auckland, Phase One Ventures, Auckland Council, and many early stage companies. Its reach extends well beyond Wellington: GEN activities have touched regional New Zealand from Whangārei to Invercargill.

GEN’s president, Jonathan Ortmans, has recognized the impact GEN has had in New Zealand. At GEC Riyadh in 2022, GEN New Zealand won the Country of the Year award—an honor reserved for the highest-performing local GEN operation. Ortmans praised Moskovitz, Hyboud-Peron and Reynolds as leaders who have gone to great lengths to remove barriers to entrepreneurship for their communities.

Current trustees include Dave Moskovitz (Angel HQ), Madison Duffy (Startup Dunedin), Karyn Andreassend (Kāpiti District Council), Nick Gain (Manawatu Investment Group), Jenny Douché (MBIE), Irene Hao (Sprout Agritech), and Marissa Kaloga (University of Auckland).

As GEN widens its reach in New Zealand, it carries the country’s unique perspective deeper into the global network. Its delegations have taken New Zealand's ideas to successive global Congresses, championing indigenous, ecological, and community-centered approaches to entrepreneurship alongside its research and policy work. With a growing membership and a secure place among GEN’s global leaders, the network’s goals in New Zealand remain exactly what they were at that first Wellington breakfast: connecting the country’s founders with the knowledge, networks, capital, and policy support they need to build and scale world-changing companies.

Learn more about GEN NZ in this downloadable PDF