[[Home|🏠]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> [[Interviews]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> July 3 2025 **Insider**: [[Peter Beck]] **Source**: [The Office of the Mayor of Auckland](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca1hFzlDnqE) **Date**: July 3 2025  🔗 Backup Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca1hFzlDnqE ## Transcript ### Opening Remarks on Competition and Innovation (0:00) **Peter Beck:** My two competitors, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. I am not going to outspend those people. We have to out innovate them. Every organization becomes bureaucratic after a while. This country thinks it's a rich country and we're not. The cones are the symbol for the waste. Even the university saying this is anti-mining. Why do you think these are going to be made out of carrots? You learn more building something in your backyard really sitting in a degree. ### Mayor's Vision for Oakland Innovation (0:27) **Mayor Wayne Brown:** Peter, I can't believe I'm so lucky to be here. This is so exciting to me. I just love positive things. I love being around cleverer people. Someone analyzed Auckland last year and they had all the good things about it and it was average out here and oh below average here and it was innovation. And I'm thinking we've got some innovators here. You're an innovator and I want to use the position the power of my position not just to keep rates down but to actually fix that lack of innovation thing in Auckland. How best can I help that happen than you think? **Peter Beck:** Yeah, I mean it depends on kind of the circles you travel in I guess because you know I work with a lot of entrepreneurs within Auckland here. There's a lot of really cool companies and really cool stuff. The best you could do is just promote it. I think that's I mean you can't force like... **Mayor Brown:** No, no, I don't want to force it. But if you just if you just make it a thing and sometimes if you just talk about something enough it becomes true. **Peter Beck:** Yeah. Well, I thought that might be the best thing for me. And then try and kill off sort of dumb stuff with where like hearing a head of the university saying that she was anti-mining. I think what do you think these are going to be made out of carrots or something? Um, if you've got any ideas, any hesitation and don't hesitate to ring me and say help here. I'm trying to help. I'm trying to be an engineer. ### Engineering Mindset and Problem-Solving (1:47) **Peter Beck:** Yeah. As a mayor and an engineer is a pretty rare thing. Yeah. I was thinking about that the other day actually. But the unique thing about an engineer is that you start with the end you know the solution first like if you're going to go and you know put water into a subdivision or something the first thing you do is you get a set of requirements and you understand what the pressure in the flow needs to be at that particular end point. Then you size the pipe and then you buy the pump and what so you start off with the end requirements and you kind of work backwards. So number one is identify the problem you're going to fix and if you can't identify the problem stop doing anything you won't do anything. ### New Zealand's Space Industry Scale (2:30) **Mayor Brown:** Is there anything you'd like to say to Aucklanders and New Zealanders to a second extent there's a third in New Zealand 40% of his GDP here anyhow but about the space industry that they should know that would impact and help you and us? **Peter Beck:** Um I think most New Zealanders you know don't realize how large the space industry is in New Zealand. Um so you know that I mean I've been shocked and I've been exposed to... Yeah. Yeah. I mean we are we the little Mahia Peninsula is the third most frequently launched launch site in the world right now. So it goes America goes Elon uh China and then then Mahia then um Russia then Europe. So you know there's a tremendous amount goes on here. ### Workforce Requirements and Innovation Strategy (3:11) **Peter Beck:** Um and I think the other misconception is that everyone thinks you have to be a rocket scientist to work here and it's not true. You have to be the best at what you do. No argument, but you know, some of those guys are clever fitters, really, aren't they? Exactly. Yeah. No. Yeah. So, whether you're a fitter or a technician or a constant technician, um, as long as you're the best at what you do, then everybody here, I imagine, learns every day. ### Competition Strategy and Innovation Imperative (3:35) **Peter Beck:** Well, I mean, we're always pushing the boundaries, right? We're always innovating and stop. Well, that we can't. So, the two my two competitors in this industry are Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. So, I'm not going to outspend those people. We have to out innovate them. That's the only way that we can be successful and that's why we've been successful to date. So, you know, we can't stand still and this is an industry it's like the semiconductor industry when it first started. There's so much innovation. The pace of change is so fast. So, if you stand still you just get run over to be on the steam roll and not in front of the steam roll. ### Building From Scratch - Infrastructure Advantages (4:09) **Mayor Brown:** Did our lack of legacy infrastructure cause help or hinder you? **Peter Beck:** I don't know. Well, there was no space industry, so there was no infrastructure and we just could. Yeah. So, we just had to build it. Now, we built the only and first private orbital launch site in the world. All the other launch sites were all government ranges and government, you know, infrastructures and typically it does take a government to do those things because they're, you know, they're not they're very difficult to do in a financially viable way. But you know when you strip out all of the nonsense then you know you can in fact do it. ### Fighting Bureaucracy and Maintaining Culture (4:46) **Peter Beck:** But we're very unique in the fact that most of our competitors launch from Cape Canaveral. We launch from our own launch site and every organization with its public problem becomes bureaucratic after a while. They do and NASA became hopelessly bureaucratic and worked out even non partisan to it. Well, quite frankly, I mean, I that's I spend a lot of my time making sure that it doesn't happen, maintaining the culture because to your point, like as a company grows, especially the natural thing to do unless it's unchecked is you do build bureaucracy. So, you know, we've got a bunch of rules here that you can't add another law, add another rule unless you take one away. **Mayor Brown:** Oh, bingo. So, I passed that at the council, too. ### Engineering Education and Practical Experience (5:25) **Mayor Brown:** I mean, I went to university as an engineer back in the days when it was much more kind of practical. You couldn't get an engineering degree without being able to weld or run a lathe. And now it's be they become box tickers in my view and I'm not mad about them. And I'm thinking, man, maybe am I the only person like that? I know the guy Zeno, that Russian guy who's quite a nice guy. He doesn't like the ones he gets either. And do you find that you have that kind of unfree thing? I like first principal thinking. **Peter Beck:** Yeah. So, in Rocket Lab, we worked it out recently actually. It's twice as easy to get into Harvard than it is to get into rocket lab. So the engineers that we get here are the cream of the crop. Um you know they're very practical you know thinkers and you don't get a job here by having multiple PhDs and being top of the class. Actually you get a job here by we ask what do you do outside university? What have you done outside you know your education? Because that's the thing that actually we're most interested. ### Hiring Philosophy - Initiative Over Grades (6:24) **Peter Beck:** If you go to university and you get great, you know, great grades and all the rest of it and you present your CV to me, and then someone else presents a CV to me that has got not as good grades but actually has gone out and build stuff, actually made stuff and made stuff happen, that other person will get the job every time cuz they've shown their initial initiative to do mad stuff on their own. **Mayor Brown:** Yeah, love that. Um I started Brown and Thompson Consulting Engineers and um it was in the days when it was a bit more first principles approach to things you know. ### Encouraging Engineering Entrepreneurship (6:57) **Peter Beck:** Well I think there should be a strong focus on first principles. I think you're right. Um yeah, I mean I would encourage entrepreneurism. Like if you want to kill two birds with one stone, you know, encourage entrepreneurism and um but most importantly just encourage anybody who's once an engineering, you know, get in the engineering field. It's like do engineering outside your coursework. Like the true, you know, really good engineers are engineers who engineer all day all night. They're like they're very passionate about that. And you learn, you know, you learn more probably from, you know, building something in your backyard than than you will necessarily sitting in on a degree. ### What's Missing and Risk Reframing (7:37) **Mayor Brown:** So what's missing? The entrepreneurial bit. I think the entrepreneurial bit, but it's there, but I think it could be could be promoted. You're going to reframe risk somehow or other too. **Peter Beck:** Well, so the big the biggest difference, you know, my wife's a mechanical engineer. She talks about it often cuz she's actually gone back to university to do an arts degree. um you know sit she always wanted to do the arts but of course it's very hard to put food on the table with an arts degree when when she was going through engineering school like all nighters and just working crazy hours and it was just really real tough and you know I think we've got to a place at least at some universities if it gets a bit tough you just say it's a bit tough and everything goes okay but the reality is you're not doing anybody a favor because they come into the real world and it's a bit tough that's just life go with that. ### Government Funding and Innovation (8:22) **Mayor Brown:** Government's kind of like look to have shell out cash for winners. Mhm. How do you feel about how that whole side of things goes? Should they be there or where should help come? **Peter Beck:** It's so yes and no. So if you have suitably qualified business and entrepreneurial people making the decisions then yes but if not then it becomes a little bit more oblique. You know, the reality is that Rocket Lab received government funding when we first started. And you know, I was working for industrial research at the time and I actually was helped a lot of companies get government funding. And then when I started Rocket Lab, I was like, "Oh, so I'm assuming this is innovation. This technology, this is fine." And you know, they took one look at it and said, "It's a rocket. There's no way." And then unfortunately for them sometimes, you know, no, it's just not the right answer. and just kept on escalating and escalating and escalating until ultimately you know Wayne Matt the minister made the decision that yes they would give a small amount of government funding to rocket lab and if you look at the return on the investment it's been phenomenal absolutely. ### Inspiring the Next Generation (9:44) **Mayor Brown:** What do we do for our kids how do we kind wake them up to the more engineering? **Peter Beck:** Yeah. Well, what we do is we have a schools program and we go around a whole bunch of schools and we send generally send staff out to do it. And I tell you that there is not a kid in the room that doesn't get inspired in some way. Like you can take the most glazed over uninterested kid at the back of the room, hand them something that's been to space and back and just watch their eyes sparkle. And this is something that you know NASA realized very early on like NASA is 50% there for the science and research and 50% there to promote STEM simply because of the missions and things that they do. So the space industries and the space you know agencies have a responsibility to kind of you know promote that. **Mayor Brown:** But what I'm hoping is that you can that kid that you've glazed up there might suddenly think man I could make a new milking machine or something. **Peter Beck:** Exactly. Exactly. And so yeah that's good. I think we should all try and leave something little thing of what we do. ### New Zealand's Entrepreneurial Spirit vs. Scale Challenges (10:43) **Peter Beck:** It comes back to the entrepreneurial tick box quite frankly and it's funny because New Zealanders are very entrepreneurial like you know New Zealanders will give anything a go and you'll take more risk or she will take more risk and and have a go. It's the whole, you know, you don't get contractors in to remodel a bedroom. You just go down to Bunnings and sort it out yourself, right? Whereas, whereas in the US, it's probably you more likely to get a contractor in and and stick in your own lane. So I think New Zealand is which I was ironic because New Zealand will take huge risk on technologies and huge huge risk on kind of initial businesses, but then kind of, you know, won't take the the necessary the big risks and scale. ### The Traffic Cone Problem (11:28) **Mayor Brown:** Despite what you've said about all risk and everything, we've ended up with the most con ridiculously constraining traffic management system on the entire... I've started our traffic. I fight those idiot cone industry things every day that bloody week. If you can actually get rid of 50% of the cones, like it is it is ridiculous. **Peter Beck:** Oh, tell me about it. I mean, I hate it, but and what can we do about it? **Mayor Brown:** [Discussion about Auckland Transport] Don't you just make a decree in this end of it but I don't even have control of Auckland transport because when the city was set up it was set up stupidly by people who had read a book about management... I will get control of it by the end of the year in which but already I'm telling these people you got to stop it and they're saying oh we've got rules so I commissioned a report an independent report to to write up what I know anyhow to be is that the rules are set up to produce a lot of cones. ### Cones as Symbol of Waste (12:32) **Peter Beck:** Yeah. And so I go to the government. It's your stupid rules. And because Oh no, somebody might die. I mean, if the government passed rules about your things, your rockets would never get off the ground because they had to be so thick there that they wouldn't rise. **Mayor Brown:** Yeah, that's right. And because you know that you're in 1.2. So, but we're talking about cones, right? Still not finished with the cones. Oh, no. The cones are the con the cone the cones are the symbol for the waste. They're like a beacon symbol for waste. ### Absurd Example - Power Pole Incident (13:05) **Mayor Brown:** Oh, I'll give you an example. So, outside my house, a the main line going to going to the house under the road shorter to earth set the powerpole on fire with all big palava and all the rest of it. That's all fine. They disconnected, put the fire out, and then the next couple of days, they had all these cars leading up to the power pole. And I live in just an area that is there. There's a park on one side, and there's one road left, one road right, and it's rural. There's probably 20 people on a road, 20 people a day use that intersection, me being one of them. So, 19. And I do it twice, so 18. There was a person with a go a stop go sign on on each one of those three intersections even into this dead end park with a stop go signing outside my house this morning. ### New Zealand's Wealth Reality Check (14:30) **Peter Beck:** And you know the problem is is this country thinks it's a rich country and we're not. We are not a rich country. If you go to a poor country, the scaffolding is made out of bamboo. Rich countries can afford to do all these things. We can't afford to have a cone every 300 mm. **Mayor Brown:** Well, somebody can because we've got this system here that people rules happen and they... that's why I don't like box ticking engineers because they are justifying the silly thinking behind what's resulted in that box. And so maybe I can go back to changing the core thinking at the university. ### Responsible Engineering vs. Bureaucracy (15:09) **Peter Beck:** I think you just have to to blitz the blitz all these regulations. That's what needs to change because if there's no box to tick then there's no box to tick. But when there's a box to tick, somebody's got to tick the box. **Mayor Brown:** Well, that's exactly right. So, we have a thing here called responsible engineers. So, an engineer is responsible for a certain part on the rocket or a certain product or whatever. And the easy thing to do would be to create a whole lot of bureaucracy and make it nobody's problem and just have the bureaucracy be responsible for that particular part. Nobody is ever responsible in Morocco. That's right. But if you make the engineer the responsible engineer, they are responsible for that part. **Peter Beck:** So there's good for two reasons. One, they know that if they screw up, then you know it's their fault. And two, if there's if there's an issue or if there's a good thing, I know exactly who to go and see either way. Like if it's a great job, I can congratulate them. If there's an issue, then we can go and resolve it. ### Infrastructure Project Timelines and Accountability (16:04) **Mayor Brown:** So we need like responsible counselors. Like every council should be responsible for a thing and held truly accountable. **Peter Beck:** Good luck with that. You clearly haven't been to a council meeting. **Mayor Brown:** Well, that's why I never get involved in politics because it would do my head. I'm going to go back and tell the AT guys we because I wrote an article on the Sunday Stars, no one's ever responsible. These big things and they take so long. That's the other thing about 15 days to from go to whoa and there the people who started are still here. Mhm. the way that infrastructure done in New Zealand that sometimes it's 5 years since the first meeting and the last people building it have no idea why it was built in the first place. ### Most Disliked Government Department (17:02) **Mayor Brown:** Last question is, what's your most disliked government department? For me, it's the Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment. The three things is designed to prevent. **Peter Beck:** I mean, look, I'm just uh you know, any entrepreneur will tell you that they you know, the best thing a government can do is just go away. **Mayor Brown:** Oh, good answer. Thank you very much. You know, I hope the council is the same, too. Telling me to bug her off sometimes. ### Closing and Gift Exchange (17:24) **Peter Beck:** Well, no, I mean, but I mean, I didn't ask you how you feel about anything. It wasn't bad going. Yeah. No, you know, no questions about feelings. That's good. **Mayor Brown:** I got you a present, too, Wayne. No. Yeah. Can you grab a present for me? Sure can. Yep. Especially for you. I had it sign written and everything. **Peter Beck:** You've got a wicked sense of humor as well. So have I. She's got a Rocket Lab cone. Rocket Labs RL just for you. Just so you can remember. You put that in your bus and you can remember what the task is. **Mayor Brown:** That's pretty good. I shall tempt to find the person who I'm going to shove that up. Uh, I'm glad you feel bad about those things, too. Boy, they annoy me. **Peter Beck:** Well, like I say, it's not the actual cone that annoys me. It's the symbol. Think the lack of thinking behind the cone is what I hate. **Mayor Brown:** Y look, thank you very much for having me. Uh, I love being here every minute. I could just sit there and kind of smile and stare at those people and feel good about it. And and it makes me feel good to know that there's clever people still here. Very clever people here. I feel like a homeless man now. **Peter Beck:** Cool. Thanks, Wayne. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.