CO-FOUNDER - CORPORATE LEAD

Jane is an internationally experienced leader and mentor with specific expertise in leading strategy, innovation, transformation, and customer experience programmes. She has more than 20+ years NZ, AsiaPacific (based out of Singapore) and London-based, global experience.

Jane focuses on innovation via people-centred, design-thinking and disruptive approaches to problem solving. While in London she led an internal innovation programme within a global corporate. Her NZ startup experiences include mentoring an IceHouse founder, StartUpWeekend- & MashUp- organising and mentoring.

Jane's beliefs that NZ's economic future stems from a strong 'all of New Zealand' approach allows her to effectively engage with ZPV's corporate and regional partners, working with them to bring innovative thinking and startup approaches to their organisations.

She strongly believes in education being the key to unlocking potential and providing opportunity for all. So, she volunteers time each month working with the Springboard Trust. She is a programme facilitator for their year-long Strategic Leadership for Principals Programme, working with Principals in Waikato, Gisborne, and Napier.

CO-FOUNDER - STARTUP LEAD

Dan is an internationally experienced founder, technology entrepreneur, mentor, and startup coach. He currently helps early-stage startups and large enterprise to build new ventures and accelerate venture growth using best-practice startup acceleration techniques.

In 2012, he designed and led Lightning Lab, New Zealand's leading investment accelerator, specifically to speed up globally scalable seed-stage technology ventures. He recently co-authored the playbook for other top venture accelerators around the world, working closely with the Global Accelerator Network. And in 2010, he helped 'co-found' Startup Weekend in NZ, assisting the organisaon create a now world-leading presence.

He is a sought-after speaker & writer, and leads thought on the early-stage innovation ecosystem in New Zealand in press, through public speaking, and through grassroots community support.

Prior to this he has been a C-Level exec of two venture-backed technology startups, consulted to various national and international digital agencies on innovation & programme design; and was part of the founding engineering team who designed and built Europe's largest pre-Facebook social network, overseeing development from zero to millions of users and eventual acquisition.

CO-FOUNDER - STUDIO LEAD

Lenz has started his first company straight out of school, joined mid-size companies in Germany and Austria after that to learn more about building teams and robust infrastructure. In 2002 he joined his first startup and was hooked by the pace. After moving to New Zealand he started a consulting firm and a domain registrar, both are still going strong and springtimesoft consulting is now operating in New Zealand and Australia and iwantmyname is a global player in the domain industry.

Lenz has been an organiser, mentor and facilitator of Startup Weekends since 2012 and spoke at many conferences about open source and other geeky topics. He has also been involved in a great number of hackathons, meetups and other community building activities. Lenz is a grassroots guy that has never waited for official permission to build a thriving community - a punk that will get his hands dirty to make sure people around him have the means to build their dreams.