Building a small tech SME was an invaluable primer for Datacom leadership

Wednesday, 3 December 2025

Peter Nelson is Datacom New Zealand’s managing director.

What was your most formative life experience?

Owning and leading Edtech through a period of fast growth as a small business, before it became a broader term for educational tech, was one of my most formative life experiences. It was equal parts inspiring, exhilarating and terrifying. We firmly believed that tech played a key role in teaching and learning, and that using technology in a smart, purposeful way could make a big difference in empowering schools, administrators, teachers and students. Edtech became early trailblazers in this space by introducing student management systems, accounting services and digital learning in the classroom.

However, while the appetite for useful tech was evident, the budgets in schools were tightly constrained, creating a tricky dynamic for the business to thrive. Slim margins, investment in building software products, and steady growth meant there was always pressure on working capital and cash flow. The leadership team became expert at prioritising spend on research and development, brand and marketing, professional learning for people, and uplift of internal tools and systems, but it was a heck of a ride! One minute you’d be celebrating the latest new record sales win, the next you’d be working out how to pay the wage bill for a fast-growing team.

People sometimes make a flippant comment that owning and running a high-growth small business is like completing an executive MBA, but I actually think it’s not too far off the mark. It meant that I gained hands-on experience in every aspect of leading an organisation from strategy through to legal, HR, sales, systems and software development, partnering, service delivery, mergers and acquisitions, and everything in between.

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Who is your most inspirational figure, and why?

Richard Branson’s book Losing my Virginity captured my attention. He started small in the music industry and built his way up into through a healthy balance of hard graft and considered risks along the way. I loved the creation of a winning brand that could transcend entertainment to the hyper-competitive airline industry.

Peter Blake is also someone I deeply admire because he demonstrates how extraordinary goals can be achieved through vision and commitment to “never give up”, even after multiple setbacks. He’s built world-class teams by empowering people to live up to their potential, fostering trust and creating a culture where collaboration mattered more than individual brilliance.

Favourite book?

Good to Great by Jim Collins, in my opinion, is still the bible for the set of characteristics and ingredients that define winning organisations over those that fall short. I really resonated with the idea of being a level 5 leader, someone who has belief, resilience, the ability to confront the brutal facts, and a genuine desire to make it all about the team

As a leader, how would you address a toxic work culture?

Culture is the result of many interconnected factors, so I’d start by diagnosing the root cause, looking at elements such as organisational vision, purpose and values, the quality of leadership and management practices, or a set of internal and external factors that prevent people from being successful.

I’d then develop a clear plan with targeted initiatives to pro-actively work towards correcting the underlying issues. Whether that involves reconsidering expectations, strengthening leadership capabilities, improving systems and processes or rebuilding trust.

At the heart of it all, people often just appreciate feeling heard, clarity and transparency from leaders.

Hardest decision ever?

The decision to move from working in a business that I owned to a corporate role at Datacom was challenging. You inevitably question whether you have the right skills or attributes to contribute in a meaningful way or whether you’ll even enjoy it!

Thankfully, Datacom’s deep commitment to New Zealand, its entrepreneurial drive and great group of people and customers have made it an incredibly rewarding move. I’ve really enjoyed applying leadership and technology to large organisations in the public and private sectors and found that the skills I’d learned in a SME were completely applicable and useful.

Should billionaires exist?

I respect people who are entrepreneurial and take careful, calculated risks, as this drives innovation, creates careers for others and makes a difference for their customers and communities. In rare cases, those entrepreneurial people will make enough good decisions along the way that they end up as billionaires.

In this scenario, they worked hard for it and created a valuable business that serves people, so yes, they should exist. I’m less enamoured with intergenerational wealth, and I’m against those who made their money through ways that come at a negative cost to society and individuals. Ultimately, anyone with that level of wealth has a responsibility to do good with it.

If I was a billionaire, I would …

Give back in ways that align with a particular passion or have a positive impact on communities. I’d love to be able to work with New Zealand’s hard-working and creative entrepreneurs who desperately need support, the benefit of experience, and capital to realise their dream. I’m also a keen fisherman and diver, so I would look at how I could help address some very real challenges within our marine ecosystem. For example, I would support marine reserves with quota management and specific issues such as the caulerpa (a type of invasive seaweed) invasion, which has already had a massive impact in our oceans, from the Coromandel through to the Bay of Islands.

What is the one thing that could happen in New Zealand tomorrow that would make life better for the most people?

We’ve got to address New Zealand’s productivity crisis that plagues many of our industries and export earners. If we combine our creativity and entrepreneurial spirit with global levels of individual productivity, we’d be in a stronger position to increase wages, improve living standards and sustainably fund public services. There’s no simple fix, but meaningful progress would require a combination of the right policy settings from government, better access to capital for the private sector, and sustained investment in infrastructure and technology is key.

AI has significant potential to assist in addressing New Zealand’s productivity challenges, but only if we have the right foundations in place, including the energy and digital infrastructure, and the right guardrails. It’s important that New Zealand not only keeps pace, but, where possible, leads in implementing AI at scale in ways that deliver real value to our organisations and communities.

Bio: Peter Nelson went from a trainee manager at McDonald’s to a sales rep at Edtech, acquiring a majority shareholding and becoming chief executive of the company in 1997. He joined Datacom in 2014, where he’s held a variety of roles and became managing director in October this year.