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.
Kate Radcliffe-Reid | Backkr
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
NZ’s Most Comprehensive Collection of Kiwi Start-a-Startup Case Studies
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🎡 New Zealand Start-a-Startup Wiki
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
Part 1: What to Ignore (For Now)
Skip the admin, focus on validation.
Don’t waste weeks registering companies or designing logos before you’ve proved your idea.
Part 2: The Only Thing That Matters
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.
Part 3: Kate’s 5-Step Get-Off-the-Ground Roadmap
A lean process to test your idea without drowning in admin.
Test your idea in five simple steps — from spotting the problem to making your first sale — without wasting time on admin.
Part 4: Early Actions vs What Can Wait
Know exactly what to do now — and what to push later.
A NZ-specific startup checklist showing exactly which tasks to tackle first—and which ones can wait until your startup is actually real.
Part 5: The 60-Day Startup Roadmap (NZ Edition)
A practical timeline for testing, selling, and scaling without admin overload.
This is not theory. It’s what actually works. Kate built this guide for real founders starting from scratch in New Zealand.
Master List: Start a Startup Links, Tools, & Resources
Click-by-click links to NZ-ready tools, templates, and software for MVPs, marketing, banking, legal setup, and community building.
Foundational Setup
Site | What You Will Get | URL |
Companies Office (NZ) | NZ company registration: incorporation, filing, name reservation, annual returns | https://www.companiesoffice.govt.nz/ |
Emerge Banking | NZ business banking and payment setup | https://www.emergebanking.com/ |
Stripe | Online payment processing for NZ and international businesses | https://stripe.com/ |
Xero | NZ-based accounting software for startups | https://www.xero.com/ |
M.G Hadfield Accounting (Kellie Hadfield) | Accounting support for founders and small business operators | https://www.mghadfield.co.nz/ |
Duncan Cotterill (Rachel Triplow) | Legal support for IP, trademarks, and startup law | https://duncancotterill.com/ |
Customer Discovery
Site | What You Will Get | URL |
Google Forms | Free survey tool for customer discovery and validation | https://forms.google.com/ |
Calendly | Automated calendar booking to schedule interviews | https://calendly.com/ |
The Mom Test (Book) | Guide to asking better customer questions | https://www.themomtest.com/ |
BANT (Sales Methodology) | Sales qualification framework: Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline | https://www.gartner.com/en/sales/topics/bant |
SPIN Selling (Methodology) | Sales framework: Situation, Problem, Implication, Need-payoff | https://www.hubspot.com/sales/spin-selling |
ChatGPT | AI tool to prep interview scripts, personas, ideas | https://chat.openai.com/ |
MVP + First Experiments
Site | What You Will Get | URL |
Lovable (No-Code Builder) | No-code platform to prototype and validate startup ideas | https://lovable.dev/ |
Canva | Visual design tool for pitch decks, social posts, branding | https://www.canva.com/ |
Plan on a Page | Simple, visual business planning tool | https://businessbutbetter.co/ |
Marketing + Community
Site | What You Will Get | URL |
Substack | Email newsletter platform to build early audience | https://substack.com/ |
LinkedIn | Professional network to share progress and attract early users | https://www.linkedin.com/ |
Your digital marketing agency in a box.
Backkr takes the guesswork out of marketing. Instead of paying thousands to agencies, you get sales-focused strategies built for your business — no jargon, no wasted spend. From SEO to automated content, Backkr helps you get discovered by the right customers, turn posts into paying clients, and connect with the audiences most likely to buy. Smarter marketing, without the overhead.
