The tech bosses and business leaders joining PM Jacinda Ardern in the US - and who they will meet

Get your motor running: Katherine Sandford, CEO of Tauranga-based electric motorbike maker Ubco, is one of those joining the PM's US tour. Photo / File

A mix of tech entrepreneurs and leaders of more established businesses will join Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on her trip to the US - the PM's first American tour since the pandemic began two years ago.

The tour is aimed at drumming up new export business, and encouraging the return of tourists to NZ as border restrictions ease.

The party landed in New York this morning NZ time, and will make their way across the US to San Francisco.

Will it amount to more than show-pony photo-ops? One of those picked for the jaunt, Straker Translations' founder Grant Straker, says his experience on similar tours in the past proves they're worth their salt.

Some of the agenda is still under wraps (and you could say a work in progress, given a meeting between the PM and President Joe Biden is yet to be confirmed).

But it has been confirmed that, among others, the group will meet with executives from Amazon and Microsoft - which both have action in the other trade direction as they spend collective billions on new "hyper-scale" data centres in northwest Auckland.

More curiously, a meeting with Twitter executives is on the agenda.

In September 2019, Ardern met then Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey at the Beehive for a post-Christchurch Call pow-wow.

But in November last year, Dorsey quit. And his replacement, Parag Agrawal, had spent just months in the CEO role before Elon Musk made his takeover offer.

Things turned fraught for the new Twitter chief executive last week when Musk complained about the number of fake accounts on the social media platform.

Agrawal tweeted a nuanced thread about steps taken to deal with the issue. Musk replied with a poo emoji.

Shortly after, Musk, who has also flamed other Twitter executives, announced he would step in as interim CEO if the deal goes ahead.

Grant Straker. Photo / Michael Craig

So that will be an interesting situation for the NZ group to step into when they meet with Twitter execs at the company's San Francisco head office.

Certainly, events have conspired to make that leg of the trip a complete waste of time.

But Straker says such trips are very worthwhile overall.

"When I did a Māori tech mission to the US in 2018, I was introduced to Ubco [which had a partner on the US west coast], and my wife and I invested personally in them as they were doing an early investment round.

"Roll forward to today they now have 100-plus staff, are going incredibly well and also on this mission. They also signed up US investors on that trip, so the networks and opportunities on these trade missions can be very valuable."

PM's 'brand power'

Next week's trip, "does highlight how frustrating it has been not being able to travel for the past couple of years", Straker says.

Now he's raring to go.

"From a Straker perspective, I see these trips as being able to build out networks at a senior level in the US so that we can showcase what we are doing for the likes of IBM to other leading companies and investors.

"The PM has certainly opened some doors for us on this, and has been very engaged around using any brand power she has to get us in front of people we would like to meet.

"The trick is having a team in the US to act on any opportunities so I have some of my senior leadership from Europe and the US meeting up with me in New York. The mission is good timing for that as I haven't seen some of them for more than two years in person."

From an NZ tech industry perspective, "The tech companies on the tour will be focused on showcasing New Zealand as a somewhere you can build great tech businesses because we think differently - as we have to, due to our isolation and distance from key markets - and how that builds long term value."

Building on City of Los Angeles deal: Parkable co-founder and chief executive Toby Littin. Photo / Dean Purcell

Parkable: Chance to build on LA carpool deal

For Parkable - an Auckland startup that makes a system that can be used to "hot-desk" shared car park spaces, "Airbnb" empty ones and manage EV chargers - the US trip is a chance to expand its US business.

CEO Toby Littin says his firm has just signed a deal with the City of Los Angeles, which will use Parkable's software to manage a pilot programme that sees a number of car park spaces reserved for people who carpool.

Littin says the PM's trade mission is good timing. The Los Angeles deal sprang from the city's desire to find sustainable ways of managing the return-to-work surge. Similar tenders are opening up around the US as organisations look for ways to wrangle hybrid workforces and meet new sustainability targets.

Fonterra: Could be missed opportunity

For another member of the party, Fonterra director for cooperative affairs Mike Cronin, the trip looks like a big opportunity on paper, given America's current baby formula crisis.

Fonterra says it is continuing to look at how it can help relieve the US infant formula shortage crisis but any discussions on the topic during the PM's American trade tour look likely to be impromptu.

Business leaders on the PM's US tour

• Cheryl Adams CEO at the Sir Ian Taylor-owned Animation Research

• Carrie Hurihanganui - CEO, Auckland Airport

• Tom Batterbury, CEO at Auror, which makes tech to stop retail crime

• Kate Bezar – cofounder of Better Packaging Co, a maker of compostable packaging for online sellers

• Mike Cronin - cooperative affairs MD, Fonterra

• Pania Tyson-Nathan - CEO, NZ Maori Tourism

• John Brackenridge - CEO, NZ Merino

• Toby Littin – CEO of Parkable, which makes systems to "hot-desk" shared car park spaces, "Airbnb" empty ones and manage EV chargers

• Simon Limmer – CEO, Silver Fern Farms

• Grant Straker, CEO of Straker Translations, an ASX-listed firm that offers language translation services performed by AIs and humans

• Katherine Sandford – CEO of Ubco, a Tauranga-based maker of electric motorbikes that sees the US as a key market

• Daniel Mathieson – CEO, Zespri International

NZ-US trade & tourism by the numbers

• Two-way goods and service trade valued at $18.5 billion to the year ended December 2021.

• Trade growth has averaged 5 per cent per annum over the past 15 years.

• Tourists from the US comprised 10 per cent of total arrivals pre Covid-19.