
WELLY Forge
Before COVID it felt like Wellington was extremely inter-connected, everyone knew everyone, everyone knew what was going on, and you couldn’t walk out the door without meeting someone useful. That changed with COVID and afterwards we realised:
Numbers of people in the CBD were down as people worked from home
Interesting talks were taking place with poor audiences, mostly because people weren’t being told in advance
Good news stories about Wellington companies and science institutes were not making our local papers
Numbers of Wellington start-ups coming to local angels were low
We now issue a weekly newsletter covering Wellington wins & events, and we host an event every 6 weeks which aims to entertain, teach, meet and generally let everyone have a good time.
Meet Our Founders
WellyForge was founded by 4 people across the science-tech eco-system who all recognised the same issues and decided to do something about it, namely, create an ecosystem of tech, science, founders, investors and operators to forge new paths ahead for the economic prosperity of Wellington:
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Dr. Ralph Highnam
FOUNDER
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Dr. Ipshita Mandal-Johnson
FOUNDER
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Kevin Sheehy
FOUNDER
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Dr. Maddie White
FOUNDER
We host regular events at the intimate bohemian style book store, Undercurrent.
No slides, props allowed, with two aims for each talk:
Teach us one thing
Entertain us
Join the newsletter to get the info on talk dates and speakers.
Join THE Community
Bringing together science & city to create a more connected Wellington via a weekly newsletter celebrating local successes and a regular meet-ups. Let's really get Wellington moving and forging new paths.
WELLINGTON SCIENCE, TECH & INNOVATION DIRECTORY:
AngelHQ for contacting the local angel community
Atom at Victoria, contact Entrepreneur in Residence, Adiraj Gupta
Glean Report for a full round down of knowledge events in Welly
LabMates for scientists of any career stage to connect & collaborate
MacDiarmid Institute invites companies with R&D challenges to present to their Science Advisory Panels for science matchmaking
Momentum for students with ideas
Morgo for NZ entrepreneurs (run from Wellington by Jenny Morel)
Movac, Wellington’s local VC
Start-Up Coaching (Free, via CreativeHQ)
Start-Up Wellington (the people behind Start-Up Weekend)
Taiawa Wellington Tech Hub (WCC/Vic), run by Dascha Cooper
Virtual CXO’s, you can filter under each role for Wellington
Wellington Start Up Collective to meet non-advising fellow start-up nuts
WhatFoundersWant useful stuff from Wellington-based Lane Litz