Throughout 2024, we at Movac will be hosting the Movac Operating Chapters. These programs have been designed to help Kiwi companies become global leaders by exposing them to world-class functional experts and international best practices.
The four Chapters are each centred around a functional area; the Movac Engineering, Customer Success, Sales & Marketing and Execution Chapters.
Each Chapter is led by a Movac Operating Partner (Ben Gracewood in this case), and features globally sourced leaders, online primer sessions, deep-dive workshops, and the opportunity for peer-to-peer learning.
Come and level up with the best! We welcome ecosystem guests to all of our online sessions (registration details below). Deep dive workshops are first reserved for Movac portfolio companies.
The Engineering Chapter
In the 2024 Engineering Chapter, we aim to help CTOs and engineering leaders at companies unlock opportunities and deal with common challenges that arise when building software products and scaling the company’s technical organisation. The sessions are designed to share live use cases of AI in building (which we think every company should be proactively strategising on!), ‘stuff I wish I knew’ stories from the trenches from local technical leaders and practical learnings from navigating horizontally / intra-function in a scaling company.
Engineers are the force behind any software company’s product, but New Zealand’s software engineering community is underserved compared to some international powerhouses. That’s why our goal is to get technical leaders together in a room to hear tested tactics, anecdotes of victories and near fatal blows from the country’s best. This includes generating peer-to-peer discussions and panel input to get multidimensional views.
Meet Ben
The Engineering Chapter is led by Movac Operating Partner, Ben Gracewood, CTO at Koltar. Ben has experience across multiple sectors including SaaS, finance, and media and while a technologist at heart, his primary expertise is growing diverse, high-performance product engineering teams and implementing the culture, values, tools and processes required to deliver software at pace.
Ben was Vend’s first engineering manager, where he grew the engineering team from 8 to 80, shipped product on average every 6 minutes, and ultimately contributed to Vend’s ~NZ$500m exit. He’s also co-founder of NZ’s largest independent software engineering conference, Codemania.
The line-up
#3 Navigating: Engineers are from Venus, Operations are from Mars
This in-person session will be hosted by Ben Gracewood and Paul Shingles, Movac Operating Partners.
Misunderstandings between Engineering teams and other departments – Operations, Executive Leadership and Sales – are common in many organisations. Sometimes it can feel like you’re speaking entirely different languages.
In this session, Ben & Paul will work through common points of conflict, using real examples from their experience and give you tips and tricks to navigate the weird vibes that can often arise.
We’ll cover everything from KPIs and deadlines, navigating uncertainty, learning from failure, and even try to tackle the age-old argument of which product feature we should prioritise.
Date: Wednesday 16 October
Location: GridAKL, John Lysaght Building, 101 Pakenham Street West, Auckland
Workshop: 2.00pm – 4.00pm
Networking drinks: 4.30pm – 5.30pm
Who should attend: Engineering, Sales, Marketing, and Operations professionals from local tech start-up companies.
SEATS ARE LIMITED. ⭐ Register here ⭐
Past events
#1 Beyond the Hype: Building Real Stuff with AI {Cancelled}
We’ve seen all the hype: AI is going to replace coders and make many other roles redundant. While this might be hyperbole, it’s a fact that LLMs and other modern AI models are the next frontier of software engineering. How are you planning to integrate them into your organisation and product?
Join Ben Gracewood, CTO at Koltar & Movac Operating Partner and Mal Curtis, Chief Architect at Koltar, for a review of the current state of the art for AI product tooling, to work through some common problems you will encounter, along with potential solutions and to share some tips on integrating AI into your product and platforms.
NB: Because this is such a fast-moving space, we also welcome attendees to share their own tips and progress on using AI tools both internally and in product development. Feel free to contact Ben ahead of the session if you are keen to participate.
Who should attend: Engineering leaders and anyone keen to understand the possibilities and limitations of LLM tools, AI, etc.
Format: Online 90 mins including discussion and Q&A
Details: This event has been cancelled
#2 The Movac Engineering Jam
Details: Six world class kiwi engineers telling raw stories, with practical tips and encouragement for the journey on the topic of ‘The biggest lessons I’ve learned as an engineering leader’ in a structured but informal way. We promise ‘no slides!’, plenty of time for Q&A, and a solid slot for mingling with peers after.
Speaker lineup:
John-Daniel Trask – Co-Founder and CEO at Raygun
Annie Vella – Distinguished Engineer at Westpac
Michael Koziarski – CTO at Vend, VP Eng at Lightspeed (post acquisition)
Anna Cupples – Head of Engineering at TradeMe
Andrew McLaren – VP Product & Engineering at Halter
Nat Torkington – CEO at OnTempo, and developer of the first public website in New Zealand
Who should attend: This in person event is solely for engineering professionals in New Zealand-headquartered tech companies.
Registrations have closed – this event has passed.
