Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Flamingo Scooters co-founders Nick Hyland and Jacksen Love.

Around Auckland lately, and Wellington for a little longer, you might have noticed a bunch of bright pink scooters popping up, and this week’s Business is Boring podcast meets the two 20-something Kiwi guys behind them. It’s no trivial feat to launch such an enterprise, especially when you are taking on some of the world’s biggest and best funded companies. How do they do it?

Co-founders Nick Hyland and Jacksen Love of Flamingo Scooters first got started in Wellington, where, after a long process, Wellington Council approved two scooter companies to take part in an 18 month trial to see how last-mile mobility could work for the capital. One was Jump, a division of Uber, and the other was Flamingo, New Zealand owned, and run by two blokes in their 20s. Their brand is vibrant pink, it uses the same high quality Segway scooters as Jump (better than the Lime ones many might be familiar with) and they do some cool things like offering free helmets for users, and enforcing rigorous rules around safety and parking.

They launched in Wellington in the middle of June, and at the end of July their full fleet of 500 odd scooters arrived on the streets of Auckland.

The chat this week covers how it was that two local chaps came to be taking on the big players, what it takes to get a business like this going, and what’s next for Flamingo Scooters.

Either download this episode (right click and save), have a listen below or via Spotify, subscribe through iTunes (RSS feed) or read on for a transcribed excerpt.