"There's no reason that a city like Dunedin can’t create a company like Samsung."
Petridish co-founder Jason Lindsey is an enthusiastic advocate for Dunedin, saying there are ways around its limitations of a small population and access to talent and resources.
What it did have were lots of "really clever, driven people", a description that could equally be applied to Mr Lindsey and his wife Kate who have poured copious amounts of money and energy into their own special project in the city over the past five years.
Not only have they continued to innovate and expand in the face of Covid-19 uncertainty and all that the pandemic has brought to businesses, they have also been bringing one of Dunedin’s historic commercial buildings back to elegant and purposeful life while fostering myriad start-ups with all the wider benefits that brought.
And, as a friend pointed out, retaining unshakeable good humour while also living with possibly the most unfortunate, but coolest, brand name ever during a pandemic.
Just how Petridish — the co-working space at 8 Stafford St — was conceived has its origins more than 18,000km away when the couple first met in Italy when Mrs Lindsey was doing her OE and Mr Lindsey, an American, was studying in England.
"I married a Kiwi girl; that’s the short story," he quipped.
The couple moved to New Zealand in 2006. Having spent almost a decade working in film and television in Los Angeles, they decided it was time to move their family to Mrs Lindsey’s hometown of Christchurch.
Mr Lindsey, who spent about 18 years in the film industry, commuted to Los Angeles for about four years, while his wife looked after their children. But it got to the point where he did not want to do it any more.
"Anyone that does that kind of travelling will probably tell you it takes a real toll on your family relationships at some point," he said.
When their youngest child was about 5, Mrs Lindsey began training to be an air traffic controller.
The intention was for her to stay in the South for about six months, get her rating at the airport and move back to Christchurch. But, while living at Brighton, she called her husband and suggested he visit.
Within about 12 hours of arriving, he was thinking about putting their house on the market when he returned to Christchurch.
"Christchurch never felt like home for me but there was something about this city," he said.
He never had that experience except where he grew up in Nebraska.
Mr Lindsey worked as an editor and creative director at Natural History New Zealand for about five and a-half years. Eventually, with the instability in the media industry — "you’re always wondering where it’s heading" — he decided he needed to look for something else to do.
He had always loved old, heritage buildings. He recalled saying to his wife when he first moved to Dunedin in 2010, that he did not understand why there were all the beautiful heritage buildings on the south side of the city, but everything was populated to the north.
"It didn’t make sense to me. How could they possibly be sitting here unused?"
Little did he know that the likes of Stephen McKnight, Lawrie Forbes and Ted Daniels were "fixing up" some of those buildings.
In 2014, Mr Lindsey saw the price had dropped on the former Ross & Glendining textile manufacturing building in Stafford St, a Victorian factory dating back to 1866. He had been looking at it for a couple of years.
As the couple stood outside, his wife was "a bit overwhelmed" and said "you’re crazy". But, once inside, they both realised it was an amazing building.
While Mr Lindsey acknowledged he was very sceptical about why it had not sold, he had always said his greatest strength was "naivety and blind optimism".
So they bought the building with no idea what they were going to do with it.
"I just thought it was a beautiful building and what could possibly go wrong?"
But financing the building was not that easy. They got there "by the skin of our teeth"— no banks wanted to touch it as it was not fully earthquake-strengthened at the time. They would say to come back when it was earthquake-strengthened "and then quickly slam the door".
Even at the 11th hour, they wondered if the finances would go through.
"There were lots of tense moments just purchasing the building," he said.
Then the expectations started piling on to secure long-term traditional tenancies. Back then, there were still not a lot of what could be referred to as A-list, long-term tenants on that south side of town. After about a year, they realised they were not going to get the kind of tenants the banks were expecting of them.
The couple decided to fit out a space to make it look like an office on the second floor, with beautiful views over the harbour, "so people see what we see about this building", and they had some friends take a desk.
Mr Lindsey’s father mentioned how co-working spaces were becoming popular in the United States, so they started doing some research. What they discovered was that co-working spaces attracted diverse groups of people, and people kept saying diversity created a powerful space to be part of and provided perspectives they never had before.
Software development companies might send their projects to their development buddies around the world, but give it to someone who was not a developer, and you got a different perspective. That helped a lot, Mr Lindsey said.
The strength behind co-working was it created a community. Not everyone who came in to Petridish used that community to their advantage; some just liked being around people and not being isolated, he said.
It had not all been plain-sailing, as Mr Lindsey admitted there had "definitely been some very, very tough moments" in the past five years.
"I’m sure I’ve knocked quite a few years off my life expectancy doing this project.
"I’ve sacrificed a lot of time I could have spent with my kids. Fortunately, I work with my wife and get to spend time at work with her."
When it came to Covid-19, he was still "terrified" of what it could mean to the couple’s business.
"You try and plan for the worst and hope for the best. The worst is not a pretty picture. Who knows what’s going to happen?"
Over the past 18 months, Petridish had hovered around housing 50 to 60 businesses, with probably 150 or more people in the building.
It had changed its focus to being more narrow, around product development start-ups. Startup Dunedin was doing a "phenomenal job" handling general start-ups and having two organisations doing the same thing seemed counter-productive, he said.
When it came to his highlights for the year, Mr Lindsey said a lot of his perspective came from someone trying to finish developing the building. So, for him, the stand-out was finishing off the ground floor and getting quarter of the basement done. To have nearly completed all the floors through the building was a "pretty big achievement".
"It’s hard to believe we’ve actually got this far. It’s this blind optimism got us this far," he said.
But it was all about doing this "just a little bit at a time" in digestible chunks, or as he put it, "you can’t eat the whole cow in one bite".
Probably the most exciting development for 2022 was installing the inventors’ lab to help start-ups develop prototypes before going to market. The lab had been one of the things held up most by Covid-19-related supply chain issues.
There had been some "really good wins" in the past year. He always enjoyed watching companies outgrow the building and go on to do great things. That feeling was always bittersweet, as he likened it to children leaving home — and they always endeavoured to make a big deal out of it and celebrate the move.
When it came to what the couple had spent on Petridish, Mr Lindsey acknowledged it was "definitely in the millions". It had been "a lot of money and a lot of hard work".
But while his career in film made really good money, he was not always happy doing that. He had probably never been happier than what he was doing now.
Mrs Lindsey is still working as an air traffic controller.
"She’s pretty amazing, how she gets so much stuff done. I live and work with her — I haven’t figured it out yet," Mr Lindsey said.
The couple loved Dunedin — it had "everything anyone could dream of having in a city". Mr Lindsey preferred smaller centres "because people have to be decent to each other".
"If you’re not, it catches up with you pretty quickly. People take time to look out for each other."
He had noticed a change in the start-up scene and how much people networked in the city. It "just keeps getting better and better".
He believed there was a real turn of optimism after the city’s Gigatown experience, saying it seemed to bring a lot of people together, along with "optimists out of the woodwork".
Regarding next year’s plans, there was a schedule to finish the building by the end of next year. One of the best things of being a heritage building and a co-working space was that "basically anyone can walk in and look at it at any time" and it was nice to share it with the public.
Asked whether he was proud of what had been achieved at Petridish, Mr Lindsey said it was like anyone in the same position, where their business was growing, they were working long hours but always looking forward to the next thing.
"I really struggle to take time out and appreciate it, that’s for sure. I’m always looking forward at what to do next."
