About Hastings
One of the two major urban areas in Hawke's Bay of New Zealand, Hastings sits on the east coast of the North Island with a population of about 70,600. It's often lumped in with the coastal city of Napier, as they only sit 18 km apart and they have become known as the "The Bay Cities" or "The Twin Cities". A major food production region of the stone fruit sort, think kiwifruit and pome fruit as well as vegetables, Hastings is also one of New Zealand's prime red wine producers. It's one of the two walking and cycling "model communities" in New Zealand encouraging its locals to get out and about in the fresh air. Its largest drawcard for tourists is the city's amazing food and wine. You can actually sip your way around over 75 wineries within its hinterland including taking time out to indulge in some local produce at the oldest winery in New Zealand, Vidal Estate. When you have earned yourself the name of "piggy" then you can take to the hills on a mountain bike, swim at the beach or in a river, or meander around the huge weekly farmer's market. Coworking has opened up in Hastings to give you an alternative to hanging out too much at one of its wineries destroying brain cells.
New Zealand is being touted as the tech crowd's favourite "end-of-days" refuge due to the coveted private jet escape routes from other countries. Whether this is true or not doesn't really matter, but the fact that the number of work visas granted to American techies is on the rise, may raise some eyebrows. New Zealand has become the land of edgy tech stuff that hasn't been tried before amidst the coffee culture of Wellington and the beautiful unspoiled landscape of Queenstown. Once upon a time New Zealand's distance from the rest of the world was a big hurdle, but today there are plenty of high-net-worth individuals relocating to its shores believing that it will be the one place where you can survive the "end of the world" (aka nuclear weapon assaults).
Starting a business in New Zealand can be done in 20 seconds (well almost) and there are plenty of angel investors hanging around its shores looking for the next big thing to put their money into. The country is small and nimble and recently topped the World Bank's annual Ease of Doing Business rankings for being the most conducive to starting a business, registering property and securing credit. With all of this chit chat going on about New Zealand, it's little wonder that coworking venues are overflowing with tech savvy souls who have their bomb bunkers and wine supplies in place.