Our Story

Nau mai, haere mai, and welcome to Ministry of Awesome.

We're a driving force behind Aotearoa's high-growth startups and innovators.

We equip startups with essential advisory support, expert mentorship, a vibrant community, and strategic connections to accelerate their success.

Ministry of Awesome is headquartered in Ōtautahi Christchurch – New Zealand's most dynamic new city. With its high-performing tertiary institutions, crown research institutes, and thriving tech scene, Christchurch provides fertile ground for ambitious entrepreneurs and high-growth startups.

From our Christchurch base, we proudly serve and support founders across Aotearoa, empowering innovation from Kaitaia to Invercargill.

Our passionate team punches above its weight, driven by our conviction that New Zealand's future success lies with the visionary founders and innovators who are building a better world.

● Ministry of Awesome 1.0

2012: Ministry of Awesome was founded by Kaila Colbin, Sam Johnson, Vicki Buck and Sasha McMeeking.

It was an engine for collaboration around imagining and building a vision for Ōtautahi, which at the time was a city of rubble.

● Ministry of Awesome 2.0

  • 2018Ara Institute of Canterbury

    MoA begins a joint venture with Ara Institute of Canterbury

  • 2019Te Ohaka

    MoA and Ara founded Te Ōhaka – Centre for Growth & Innovation

  • 2020ChristchurchNZ

    ChristchurchNZ joined the partnership allowing MoA to launch Founder Catalyst, an early stage startup incubator

  • 2020Partnerships

    MoA began partners with Foodstuffs, Ryman Healthcare and Orion Energy to deliver high-growth startup innovation programmes

  • 2020HTK

    MoA formed a partnership with HTK, an organisation growing Maori and Pacifica startup innovation

  • 2022Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment (MBIE)

    MoA and HTK partnered with MBIE to deliver unique high growth startup capability building, incubation, and acceleration programming across New Zealand

  • 2022Electrify Aotearoa

    An annual women founders conference designed to address the founder and funding gap in NZ

  • 2022Electrify Accelerator

    The startup accelerator for New Zealand’s most ambitious women and non-binary high-growth startup founders

  • 2024Startup Aotearoa

    Startup Aotearoa fuels the entrepreneurial spirit by providing personalised one-to-one support for startup founders.

● Values

The following values are fundamental to how we act, behave, and work. This means we hire and promote people who exemplify them as well as discipline and fire those who do not exhibit them or cannot adopt them. We’ve made them into a mnemonic so that they can be easy to remember: I CARE

Integrity

Our moral compass is always in our sights, our words are honest, and our actions always back them up.  We are principled, fair, kind, and courageous.  We seek to make a positive impact with others and in the world.

Collaboration

While it may be faster and easier to go alone, the power of working together will bring greater success and reward.  Mutual respect, clear and candid communication, empathy, and humility are critical inputs for successful collaboration as a high-performance team.

Accountability

We trust the intent and own the impact of our words and actions, regardless of their outcomes.  We have a strong sense of personal and professional responsibility.   Each member of our team holds themselves and their teammates to the highest standard in this regard.

Respect

We value the talent, skill, and positive attributes of all the people with whom we work.  We understand that diversity of thought and experience is critical for a successful organisation and value our differences as much as we value our similarities.  We support and empower our teammates constantly and - when there are differences - we seek always to provide immediate kind and candid feedback.

Excellence

We have high standards of performance and are constantly raising the bar and evolving as we learn.  We do not let these standards prevent us from experimenting and, at times, failing, but we always possess clarity of thought and a growth mindset. Similarly, we do not let our commitment to high performance affect our abilities to act quickly. We consistently seek personal and professional self-improvement.  As an organisation, our work output is known as the gold standard.

Together, these values represent our company culturing of caring. Caring for each other, caring for our startups, caring for our partners, caring about the work we do for the broader ecosystem. I CARE.