Lessons from New Zealand
What a transformative experience in Wellington taught me about adaptation, resilience, and building things that last.
In 2019, I traveled to Wellington, New Zealand, for an intensive technical program. I expected to sharpen my skills. I didn't expect to find the philosophy that would guide everything I'd build afterwards.
The Whio Cohort
In the program, each cohort was named after a native New Zealand species. Ours was the Whio—the Blue Duck.
At first, it seemed like an odd choice. Ducks don't exactly project the "move fast and break things" energy you might expect from a tech environment. But as I learned more about the Whio, I understood why they chose it.
The Whio lives in New Zealand's most challenging environments: fast-flowing mountain rivers that would sweep away other birds. It doesn't fight the current. Instead, it adapts. It reads the water, finds the calm eddies, and navigates complexity with a kind of meditative grace.
Learning to Go with the Flow
The program was intense. Twelve weeks of deep immersion, building projects under pressure, solving complex problems late into the night. My instinct was to fight through it—more coffee, more hours, more brute force.
But that approach was unsustainable. The people who thrived weren't the ones who worked the hardest. They were the ones who worked the smartest. They asked for help early. They took breaks. They trusted the process.
Like the Whio, they found calm in the chaos.
Adaptation as Strategy
The tech industry loves its metaphors of disruption and warfare. We "attack" markets, "crush" competitors, "move fast and break things." But these metaphors don't reflect how sustainable businesses are actually built.
The companies that last aren't the ones that fight the hardest. They're the ones that adapt the best. They read the market like the Whio reads the river. They find their niche, serve it well, and evolve as conditions change.
Building BlueDuck
When I started BlueDuck, the name was obvious. It had to honor that cohort, that philosophy, that little duck navigating the rapids.
The principles I learned in Wellington guide everything we do:
Patience over urgency. The Whio doesn't rush. Neither do we. Good software takes time.
Adaptation over force. When something isn't working, we don't push harder. We find a different approach.
Calm over chaos. The rapids are always rushing. Our job is to bring stillness to the people we work with.
Sustainability over speed. The Whio has survived for millions of years. We're building companies meant to last.
The Deeper Lesson
Looking back, the most valuable thing I learned in New Zealand wasn't any particular programming language or framework. It was a way of approaching challenges.
When you're in the middle of rushing water, the instinct is to fight. To swim against the current. To exhaust yourself trying to maintain position.
But sometimes the smarter move is to read the water, find where it's going, and let it carry you there.
The Whio is endangered now. Climate change and introduced predators have reduced its population to fewer than 3,000 individuals. Conservation efforts are underway, and there's hope.
Every time I see our logo, I think about that. About resilience. About adaptation. About the importance of protecting what matters.
And I think about a group of ambitious technologists in Wellington, learning to build while named after a duck that found a way to thrive where nothing else could.
That's the spirit we try to bring to everything we build.