Ben Young

Updated 25/10/14.

I am a kiwi entrepreneur living in New York building Nudge, a spin out product from the digital agency Young & Shand, Duncan and I started in New Zealand.

I’m an avid traveller; getting into whiskey, big reader of books (and listener of podcasts), this year I’m focused on health & well-being, angel investor in NZ & US companies.

In the past projects I’ve been involved in:

  • Mentor at LightningLab (the NZ YCombinator)
  • Judge & mentor at StartupWeekend in NZ
  • Co-founder of Auckland Tech Startups meetup, with Glenn McGlinn
  • Held the The Best Ideas are Free segment on KiwiFM with Glenn Williams for over 102 shows.
  • This Week in Digital Marketing Podcast (way back)
  • Published The Best Ideas are Free book
  • A Pay What You Want Marketing Advice experiment.
  • Playing with video interviews, Tom Peters, Michael Gerber & Jack Daly.

My story is one of perseverance, a strong sense of impatience whilst being patient, and getting on with it – nothing frustrates me more than lack of movement or inefficiency.

I’m also an avid supporter of Kiva, which supports entrepreneurs in developing countries through micro-finance.

Favourite Quotes

Being a huge fan of quotes to inspire others his favourite are:

“perseverance is genius”

“be so good they can’t ignore you” -Steve Martin

“stay hungry, stay foolish” -Steve Jobs