Emily Blythe started her founder’s journey at an early age and we started working with her when she joined our first Venture Up young founders programme back in 2015.
Emily has gone on to have a very impressive founder’s journey which includes founding the company Pyper Vision and being named the Innovator of the Year in 2023 by the New Zealander of the Year Awards. We sat down with Emily to help us tell her founder’s journey story.
Beginnings
Emily Blythe could be said to have had a penchant for entrepreneurship since childhood. Growing up in Christchurch, Emily remembers spending weekends picking pine cones up from her uncle’s farm and selling them at the gate and kickstarting a tomato nursery business with her Nanna. It was in year 12 of high school though that things kicked up a few notches. Emily’s first startup, Flatpak, was developed through the Young Enterprise Scheme (YES) and the positive influences of an inspiring economics teacher to solve a real problem – namely how to safely transport tools on quad bikes.
Venturing Up
The Venture Up program run by Creative HQ came along at an opportune time to support Emily. Venture Up was created to help those promising young entrepreneurs from the YES programme to take their ideas even further. The programme helped refine the team’s thinking on product design and better understand their customer needs, and it provided crucial business insights. Venture Up’s emphasis on community building and entrepreneurial thinking significantly influenced Emily’s approach to business.
“Venture Up really just kind of drowned us in all this information of one entrepreneur after another who had typically dropped out of school or found a problem, dug in on it, found a unique solution, backed themselves and just had gone and done it. And so I think part of it was just hearing that repetitive thing again and again and again, that this is possible.”
“Our economics teacher was absolutely determined that his team was going to be solving a big problem and not creating an existing product that’s already on the market.”
Pyper Vision
After the team decided to close down Flatpak, Emily reflected on the many learnings from the experience such as the importance of a scalable pricing model, the necessity of aligning customer messaging with product offerings, and understanding market needs. These insights were crucial in shaping her approach to future ventures.
After a year spent working for a Christchurch R&D company, Emily began breathing life into her next startup – Pyper Vision. This involved addressing a problem that had been on Emily’s mind since right back in the days of the Young Enterprise Scheme, namely the disruption caused by fog.
Flight disruptions due to fog are a common frustration for many and costly to the airline industry. Pyper Vision is focused on addressing this issue, by creating fog dispersion technology to prevent such disruption while also enhancing flight safety.
Evolution, Recognition and Reflections on being a founder
As Pyper Vision has grown and evolved over the last few years, so too has Emily’s role within it.
“My role is less now about coming up with the solution to a problem and more about how can I enable my team to do it”
The startup is going strong, with recognition coming for the business and it’s founder – Pyper Vision were recently named as one of Callaghan Innovation’s ‘ones to watch’ in the Sir Paul Callaghan 100 list and Emily herself was named the Innovator of the Year in 2023 by the New Zealander of the Year Awards.
When asked to think about the learnings from her founder journey thus far, Emily reflected on the importance of having a clear vision and being open to unconventional approaches. She emphasised the value of authenticity, building strong relationships, and being open to collaboration and partnership opportunities. These elements, she believes, are crucial for navigating the complexities of startup life.
“Don’t be afraid to think outside the box or create something that works for you rather than just going off a template that someone else has used before.”
