Keep up to date with all of the latest ThincLab Canterbury news and announcements.
Keep up to date with all of the latest ThincLab Canterbury news and announcements.
Paul Spence is a business advisor and programme presenter with ThincLab at the University of Canterbury Business School. What do an image stylist and a home handyman have in common? The answer is that they were both among a group of diverse and highly motivated Work and Income clients looking to improve their situation by […]
The recent announcement of a government backed joint venture to develop an aerospace centre at Kaitōrete Spit is significant on many levels. Not the least of which is that the project wisely takes a stewardship approach in conjunction with local Māori. But in order to fully realise this exciting opportunity, we need to redouble our […]
You see big companies do it all the time, particularly in the tech sphere. They continue to evolve, testing new products and new markets, attempting to spread their tentacles far and wide with new and exciting ideas. In today’s fast-changing marketplace, constantly churning out and acting on business ideas is becoming critical to business success. […]
Last week saw the culmination of an eight week accelerator journey for our Food, Fibre and Agritech Supernode Challenge participants. The programme was designed and supervised by Dr Rachel Wright at University of Canterbury Centre for Entrepreneurship (UCE) and was co-presented by ThincLab advisors Paul Spence, Geoff Brash and Neil Hamilton with the support of […]
New Zealand Growth Capital Partners analysts Maria Jose (MJ) Alvarez and Byron van Vugt dropped by ThincLab during a flying visit to Christchurch. The pair have been out and about meeting early stage founders and talking about their role within the innovation ecosystem as seed co-investors. They are part of the young and talented team […]
“Where there’s muck, there’s brass”. So the saying goes. But in the case of University of Canterbury technology startup Zincovery it’s more a case of, wherever there’s horrid industrial waste there’s zinc. So when chemistry student Jonathan Ring and his Masters supervisor Dr Aaron Marshall discovered just how much of that waste was going down […]
In late 2019 Sam Yu found himself in the executive suite of a well known global airline pitching Karen Walker designed wool-filter face masks to a senior manager, with the goal of convincing the airline to include a mask in every business traveller’s goodie bag. The management team appeared a bit sceptical and ultimately passed […]
The rampant pandemic and a problematic previous administration were major setbacks for the world’s largest economy leading to a lengthy period of nervousness among economic soothsayers. But there are now early signs of green shoots. Recovering economies in both China and America appear poised to drive an uptick in global business activity. In the meantime […]
ThincLab at the University of Canterbury Business School is a founder-led incubator that supports ambitious founders to validate, build and scale business ideas and to commercialise new knowledge and create extraordinary economic value for our region. With company formations currently at record levels and our academic and research institutions bursting with ideas, we’ve seen unprecedented […]
Flatmates Guido Loeffler and Nick Lee needed a new dining table during the 2020 lockdown. So with plenty of time on their hands, they set about building one for themselves in the backyard as a challenge. Their friends were all highly impressed and the idea for a business began to coalesce. Fast forward a year […]