Made in the Mount
Meet the women paving the way for a new tech scene in Mount Maunganui.
Words Lucy Bleakley | Photos Katie Charlotte
What do a chemical engineer, graphic designer and teacher have in common? Apart from above-average smarts and creativity, they are part of a burgeoning, female-founded tech scene coming to life from kitchen tables across Mount Maunganui.
Bonnet, Kept and euulo are three locally made apps developed by women who’ve created beautifully designed, “Why didn’t I think of that?” tech. All from home and with small children in tow.
Each app is impressively thoughtful, and perhaps unsurprisingly, they all have one more thing in common – easing the mental load for their users.
Deftly solving specific consumer problems to make everyday life, and in euulo’s case, life’s harder moments easier.
Bonnet, founded by Steph Kennard, houses vehicle admin in one place when over 50 percent of Kiwis are driving on our roads without a WOF or rego. Kept, created by Nic Winslade and Katie Hunter, is a new marketplace for cleaners, allowing users to book a trusted, peer reviewed cleaner and giving cleaners greater independence in an industry rife with unfair wages and hours.
And Kerriden Edmondson, Renaya Lloyd and Sheree van den Broek have developed euulo, a SaaS product for the funeral industry. euulo is image-gathering technology designed to replace the clunky process of curating funeral photo tributes.
“With backgrounds in fashion, design and engineering, the looks on people’s faces when we explain our technology is not lost on us,” muses Renaya Lloyd, co-founder of euulo.
“But, if you’ve been in the difficult position of organising a photo tribute, you will understand the arduous process and we know we can make a real difference. We’ve spent a lot of time speaking to funeral directors and validating our solution to ensure our technology is easing the burden from all sides,” explains Renaya.
Nic Winslade’s career has been all about bringing ideas to life for clients and Kept was an opportunity to explore an idea sparked from managing the mental load of family life.
“The Mount was the perfect place to launch Kept, with so many busy, self-employed households wanting flexibility. And the focus on quality of life here is also the breeding ground for our innovation. Making life easier, better, and more rewarding for independent cleaning professionals as well as busy local homes,” says Nic.
Like euulo and Kept founders, Steph saw an obvious gap in the market and a way to ease life’s admin overload.
“I’ve worked in the car industry and seen time and time again the barriers to keeping up with car admin for families, heavy vehicle operators and fleet managers – many are still using spreadsheets to manage hundreds of car regos and WOFs. There had to be a better way, and after years of development, Bonnet was launched earlier this year,” says Steph.
Steph says it’s amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it from the Mount.
“Research, development and design have all been done from our home office. With remote working taking off, a Zoom with a web developer or writing pitch decks from home with a walk up the Mount in between is completely doable,” says Steph.
The gumption to do something different has paid off for these tech founders. Bonnet launched as the number one app on Google and in just a few months, over 50,000 cars are being monitored by the app. Kept has launched here in Tauranga, and in new markets across Auckland, Waikato, Wellington and Christchurch, with thousands of cleans booked and several independent cleaning businesses thriving thanks to Kept’s marketplace model.
euulo, the baby of the three start-ups, has recently launched to a waiting list of funeral directors representing almost a third of New Zealand funeral homes, and already have plans to launch in Australia and the UK.
Mount Maunganui has always been a creative haven, but these founders are driving a new type of tech scene forward. One built on empathy, flexibility and bloody hard work.
Steph Kennard, Bonnet
Steph is a digital native through and through, developing Bonnet after working in the car industry with the likes of Jeep and Volkswagen.
Bonnet houses all vehicle management in one place and gives reminders for regos, warrant of fitness, and diesel RUC, using Waka Kotahi data to create seamless reminders. Less than half of New Zealanders remember to do their WOF and registration in time, creating potentially unsafe cars on our roads, and Bonnet aims to change this with a brilliantly simple solution.
Nic Winslade and Katie Hunter, Kept
A housekeeping app that helps local customers find cleaners they trust with an instant booking system.
Cleaners can create their own free online booking platform through Kept, setting their own hourly rates and availability, in a safe, supportive space.
It also changes the game when finding a cleaner for your home. The app enables you to book for your specific needs and offers exit cleans, one-off cleans or regular cleaning. You can also specify which rooms you want cleaned. The booking and payment are completed through the app, so cleaners are guaranteed payment, and peer reviews help regulate the marketplace, encouraging a high-quality service.
Renaya Lloyd, Sheree van den Broek and Kerriden Edmondson, euulo
euulo is a SaaS solution developed to alleviate some of the pressure associated with creating a photo tribute for grieving families and funeral directors. The app features in-built scanning, social media integration, and image editing, giving families the opportunity to gather their photos in their own time and space. For funeral directors, the software gives visibility over the process and specific tools to create beautiful photo tributes with ease.
Technology for the funeral industry is not something any of the euulo team could have foreseen in their future, but here they are, passionately designing a thoughtful way to ease the load for grieving families.