Kavinda Herath/Things
Kate Martin, left, and Kirsten McKenzie say that young people starting companies like Social Sisters will diversify Southland’s business landscape and add new perspectives.
The ability to work anywhere, anytime encourages young people to enter the business world, adding new perspectives to Southland’s business landscapes.
Kate Martin and Kirsten McKenzie each have full-time jobs, but after 5 p.m. they are chief executives of their own company: Invercargill-based marketing agency Social Sisters.
The duo, aged 24 and 27 respectively, regularly work during lunch breaks, late evenings and weekends to build their business.
The Angel Association New Zealand, an organization that connects both national and international investors at an early stage, found in its latest ecosystem analysis for startups in 2017 that the median age of founders in New Zealand was 35, lower than the global median. age of 36.
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Young Enterprise Scheme CEO Terry Shubkin has said that the number of young people between the ages of 18 and 30 who are running their own businesses is increasing, and many are involved in targeted business space, largely due to an increase in support available†
Social Sisters focuses largely on small businesses, who may not have the capital for large marketing campaigns and need more flexibility in pricing.
The agency has onboard entrepreneurs from across the country, including major clients in Auckland.
“It’s not even based in Southland at the moment, but that’s the flexibility we have where everything can be done online and at any time,” said McKenzie.
Both felt that companies like theirs had the potential to diversify Southland’s business landscape by making it more reflective of the general population.
“It’s important to have a mix of ages, ethnicities and genders, and sometimes in Southland we don’t have that balance quite right. But with access to new technologies and opportunities, it’s helping young people step into that landscape,” Martin said.
They have credited an increase in available resources for their business growth.
“When you start a business, you have to reach out to a lot of different people to find out… [like] how do you register a company? Do we need a bookkeeper? And that’s where organizations like COIN South [Invercargill business networking company] point us in the right direction.”
COIN South’s community manager, Fran Hesp, said that up to half of the activator sessions, where entrepreneurs can talk about the progress of their ideas and get advice on how to make them reality, were now under the age of 30.
“It’s exciting to see how many young people have ideas that they’re passionate about and are eager to turn into reality, and it’s a great sign for the region as it moves into the future,” she said.