Moving beyond Start-ups

An Interview with Taria Tahana

Senior advisor, Hui Taumata secretariat.

April 2006

Māori women need more help to get their businesses past the “start-up” stage – and it’s not just a question of money, Taria Tahana says. While there is a lot of money going into helping start-ups, that needs to be complemented by more enterprise training and business “incubators”, says the Wellington business consultant of Te Arawa descent.

“Personally, I think a lot of the focus in terms of Māori interventions have been very much at the start-up phase and I believe that there needs to be more assistance given to people that have already been in business and shown a capability to be competent business people, so that we’re actually growing. I think it’s actually more important that we have fewer successful, sustainable businesses than lots of start-ups,” she says. Tarana speaks from a wide observation of business in action that includes eleven years spent working in corporations in New Zealand and North America, as well as three years managing her own consultancy business. 

Initiatives that get Māori to embrace entrepreneurship more widely and at a younger age are helping. It is encouragement and support at iwi level that will build enterprise culture, she says. “Where I think the big difference is going to come is if we can focus on the rangatahi…and actually build really strong skills.” 

Tarana is involved with Hui Taumata, where she is charged with implementing Māori economic development initiatives outlined by their 2005 conference. “We [Hui Taumata] just sponsored a couple of weeks ago a programme called GYM-E, which is Growing Young Māori Entrepreneurs – that is a programme to bring kids for a weekend and you give them an entrepreneurial experience where you develop a product.” 

Tahana didn’t see young women holding back in the programme. “When they did the previous one in Auckland one of the mentors said she found the Māori girls weren’t particularly confident, but I would say from my experience of the weekend down here that that wasn’t necessarily the case. 

“My feeling is that Māori women are pretty strong.”