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Hello, I’m Steve Baron, and I’m a tech geek. I haven’t gone a day in the last year without playing with AI. I’ve been building my own AI-driven applications, wrestling with APIs, and experiencing firsthand the frustrations of repetitive digital tasks. I’m hoping to change the world with my app and become the main driver of New Zealand’s GDP – but I’m realistic enough to know I’ve got competition.
Then I read about two young New Zealanders raising US$5.6 million from some of Silicon Valley’s most prestigious investors to solve exactly these problems. Now that got my attention.
Yang Fan Yun and Shine Wu aren’t just any entrepreneurs – they’re former scholarship champions from Macleans College and Newlands College who’ve built an AI company that’s caught the attention of the same people who created Claude, one of the world’s leading artificial intelligence systems.
This is a story about what happens when New Zealand’s education system works brilliantly, and when talent doesn’t simply drain away but maintains meaningful connections back home. It’s worth understanding how it happened.
Yang Fan Yun and Shine Wu first met at 15, competing in Mathematics Olympiad camps and debating championships. Yang was at Macleans College in Auckland; Shine at Newlands College in Wellington. They developed the kind of friendly rivalry that pushes both parties to excel.
Their academic records read like something from a parallel universe where New Zealand students routinely dominate international competitions. Yang won the Prime Minister’s Award in 2018 – the country’s top scholarship student – with 10 NZQA scholarships, including five Outstanding Scholarships. He went on to achieve the highest GPA in Stanford University’s Department of Computer Science. Shine became Newlands College Dux and Head Boy, collected 12 scholarship awards, and won a Robertson Scholarship to Duke University worth US$400,000.
More important than the trophy cabinet: both stayed connected to each other even as their paths diverged. Yang headed to Stanford, then Uber. Shine went to Duke. When Yang identified a genuine problem during his time at Uber – watching talented people waste hours on tedious browser-based work – he decided to build a solution.
In January 2024, Yang co-founded Composite with Charlie Deane, an American entrepreneur who’d already made waves in the tech world. At just 15, Deane had built a residential proxy startup that raised US$3.5 million. He dropped out of Northeastern University to focus on Composite full-time, bringing crucial expertise in web automation and proxy infrastructure – exactly the technical foundation needed for browser-based AI.
A few months later, Yang brought in Shine Wu. The timing made sense: Shine’s background in economics and analytics complemented the technical firepower Yang and Charlie brought to the table.
Anyone who’s spent hours copying data between websites, filling out repetitive forms, or clicking through the same sequence of actions knows that modern knowledge work includes far too much digital drudgery. Yang observed what he calls “digital factory workers” at Uber – people doing tedious, repetitive browser-based tasks that should be automated but aren’t.
The result is Composite, an AI-powered autopilot for web browsers that runs locally on your computer. It’s privacy-first automation that actually works. Within two months of launching, thousands of users had signed up. As someone who understands the technical challenges involved, I can tell you: this isn’t trivial stuff.
The technology doesn’t just save time. It fundamentally changes what human workers focus on. Instead of being data entry clerks in digital factories, people can concentrate on work that requires judgment and genuine human insight.
When you raise US$5.6 million in seed funding, that’s impressive. When the investors include NFDG, Menlo Ventures, and Anthropic’s Anthology Fund, that’s exceptional. These aren’t casual punters – they’re the people who only back companies they believe represent the future of technology.
AI browser companies are everywhere right now. But it’s this team – two Kiwis and an American with a track record in web automation – that’s attracting the smartest money in Silicon Valley.
Crucially, Icehouse Ventures also invested. This isn’t just Kiwis conquering America and forgetting home. Yang and Shine are building a global company while maintaining substantive connections to New Zealand.
Shine Wu has been explicit about their commitment to raising the profile of New Zealand AI entrepreneurs globally. This isn’t nostalgia or PR spin. There’s genuine strategic value in maintaining New Zealand connections.
Our education system, for all its critics, produced these two. Macleans College and Newlands College aren’t elite private institutions – they’re state schools in Auckland and Wellington. The scholarship system, the Olympiad programmes, the support for gifted students – these things work when properly resourced and taken seriously.
We have form in this space. Peter Beck’s Rocket Lab launches satellites from the Mahia Peninsula. Xero revolutionised accounting software from Wellington. Dave Ferguson co-founded Nuro, the autonomous vehicle company. Alex Kendall built Wayve. The list goes on.
What connects these stories isn’t just individual brilliance. It’s an education system that identifies talent early, competitions that push students to excel internationally, and a culture that – despite our tall poppy tendencies – actually produces world-class innovators with reasonable frequency.
We’re not celebrating these achievements enough, and we’re not learning the right lessons from them.
Politicians talk about attracting foreign investment and skilled migrants, which is fine. But we’re producing exceptional talent domestically, and we need to understand what’s working so we can do more of it.
Yang and Shine both benefited from a scholarship system that’s under constant budget pressure. Olympiad programmes rely heavily on volunteer effort. Support for gifted education gets dismissed as elitist rather than essential. These are false economies.
Business leaders complain about skill shortages. Yet two young New Zealanders who could work anywhere in the world are actively trying to maintain connections here. Shouldn’t we be making it easier for them to establish offices, hire staff, and build their companies in New Zealand?
Brain drain is real, but it’s not the whole story. Yang and Shine could have settled into comfortable careers at tech giants – Yang was at Uber, and Shine could have followed a similar path. Instead, they chose the harder route: building something new. And they’re not pretending New Zealand doesn’t exist.
This is brain circulation, not brain drain. Are we smart enough to facilitate it properly? Do we have the investment capital? The regulatory environment? The support structures for deep-tech companies? The willingness to back young founders who think on a global scale?
Our secondary education system can produce students who compete with anyone in the world. Our young people have the creativity, work ethic, and independence to build remarkable things.
What we lack is the national confidence to back them properly, the infrastructure to support their ambitions, and the wisdom to celebrate their successes without trying to own them.
Yang Fan Yun and Shine Wu are still in their twenties. Composite is just getting started. But they represent something important about New Zealand’s place in the global technology ecosystem.
We’re not Silicon Valley. We never will be, and we shouldn’t try to be. But we can be a country that produces exceptional talent, supports innovative thinking, and maintains meaningful connections with our achievers wherever they go.
That means investing in education, particularly in science, technology, and mathematics programmes. It means venture capital is willing to back ambitious ideas early. It means immigration settings that attract and retain talent from around the world. And it means celebrating success stories like this one.
Two young Kiwis just convinced some of the world’s smartest investors to back their vision. They’re not doing it despite their New Zealand education – they’re doing it in part because of it.
What are we going to do to ensure the next generation has the same opportunities?
That’s a challenge worth debating at the next Olympiad camp.
Steve Baron is a New Zealand-based political commentator and author. He holds a BA with a double major in Economics and Political Science from the University of Waikato and an Honours Degree in Political Science from Victoria University of Wellington. A former businessman in the advertising industry, he founded the political lobby group Better Democracy NZ. https://stevebaron.co.nz