Kate Radcliffe-Reid is the Founder and CEO of Backkr, your digital marketing agency in a box. With a background spanning digital marketing, business ownership, and successful exits, Kate has helped founders and small businesses avoid wasted spend and build revenue faster. Obsessed with making marketing simple and actionable, she now equips founders with tools to validate demand and grow without burning cash.
This guide helps NZ founders cut through startup overwhelm and focus on what matters — validating problems, getting first customers, and building traction without drowning in admin. It’s a roadmap built from Kate’s own founder journey, designed for anyone starting from scratch in New Zealand.
From Overwhelm to Action: The Startup Playbook for NZ Founders
Practical, NZ-specific guidance on validating ideas, avoiding admin traps, and building traction before you spend a cent.
How to Get a Startup Off the Ground in NZ
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Part 1: What to Ignore (For Now)
Part 2: The Only Thing That Matters
Part 3: Kate’s 5-Step Get-Off-the-Ground Roadmap
Part 4: Early Actions vs What Can Wait
Part 5: The 60-Day Startup Roadmap (NZ Edition)
Master List: Start a Startup Links, Tools, & Resources
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NZ’s Most Comprehensive Collection of Kiwi Start-a-Startup Case Studies
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New Zealand Start-a-Startup Wiki
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The Most Comprehensive Collection of Kiwi Startup Case Studies (40 and counting)
Learn from the journeys of New Zealand’s most successful founders — what worked, what didn’t, and how to ride the startup rollercoaster with fewer bumps.
Practical lessons, proven tactics, and Kiwi ingenuity to help you avoid mistakes and scale faster
Skip the admin, focus on validation.
Don’t waste weeks registering companies or designing logos before you’ve proved your idea.
Validate the pain, not the product.
Your only job in Month 1 is proving a real customer problem exists and people will pay to solve it.