This is a working survival guide I update regularly, as the New Zealand startup scene continues to evolve. 🌱 If you have a question not covered in

The Kiwi Startup Employee Survival Guide 2025

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2024-09-20 16:00:05

This is a working survival guide I update regularly, as the New Zealand startup scene continues to evolve. 🌱 If you have a question not covered in this guide or a suggestion for something that would help startup employees and should be included here, I’d love to hear from you! Please email me at deanrobertwatson@gmail.com

I’ve worked in Kiwi startups for 10 years as an employee and one of the most common things I find myself saying is, “How did I not know about this?!” This survival guide exists to put everything useful in the one place, to give you the best opportunity to live a successful, full life as a startup employee working in New Zealand. 🇳🇿

There are around 2500 startups in New Zealand. [1] If each startup has 2 co-founders, that gives us a total of 5000 founders. Now, guess how many people are employed by startups in New Zealand? I couldn’t find any exact figures on this, so let’s back-of-the-napkin this.

Conservatively, if each of these startups employs 2 people, that makes 10,000 startup employees. The real number of startup employees in New Zealand is likely to be significantly higher.