‘Genetically Modified Optimist' David Downs on how good storytelling can help NZ both boost business and save lives

From working at Microsoft, being a published author and professional comedian, to surviving terminal cancer by becoming a literal genetically modified organism, it’s fair to say David Downs has a more interesting story than most. 

Now, as CEO of NZ Story, Downs is on a mission to help businesses and startups tell their stories more effectively, informed by his life experience and cultural heritage.  

“My parents are Irish, and in the Irish tradition, very much like the Māori tradition, most wisdom is passed down orally,” Downs told Caffeine.  

“Stories explain the world. The Māori history and legends are not just made up things, they’re actually an attempt to explain the world and carry knowledge through the ages. In thousands of years of telling each other stories, it’s still a visceral part of our core being and who we are.” 

According to Downs, telling a good story about your business or service is also core to success. On the other hand, not being able to tell a compelling story can doom even the most promising product. 

While Kiwis’ reflexive humility and dislike of arrogance are generally good things, Downs says sometimes we take them too far. 

“You’ve got to bring a level of ambition and confidence to your storytelling, that isn’t arrogance,” says Downs. 

“I’ve got so many stories of seeing New Zealand businesses who have genuinely world-leading or game-changing technology that often undersell, and either they’re shy about it or they’re trying to be too humble, and they sometimes shoot themselves in the foot.”

Part of building that confidence is not shying away from tying your startup’s story to the broader New Zealand story. Downs says we sometimes forget how much of an asset, not a liability, coming from down under can be and how fascinated overseas markets are by Kiwis. 

“A few years ago, every New Zealand business in the tech sector used to literally get a PO box in the USA and try to adopt a slight American accent and they answer the phone because they all thought that no one would want to work for a New Zealand tech company,” Downs laughed.  

“We’re seeing the data now, that kind of research data tells us that buyers and consumers actually see things from New Zealand as an asset for a company. That’s probably one of the biggest attributes that we New Zealanders get to talk about is that when you come from literally the easiest place in the world to do business, literally the least corruption, high transparency. All of these positive things like energy, security, safety.”

Of course just seeming confident isn’t enough either. As we discussed with Simon Shepherd in ‘what makes a start up a business story’, choking your narrative with technical details is a surefire way to lose an audience. 

“I worked at Microsoft for a long time and one of the challenges that we always saw there and at other businesses is that they typically get really into this sort of feature mindset, like the way they market their product very much built on ‘here are the things that you need to know about how it works. That’s not really the right way to do it.” 

Instead, Downs advises telling human-centric stories of what tangible good your product does in the world to make it tangible and resonate with investors and customers.

When it comes to telling human stories about using technology to do good, it’s hard to imagine a more powerful example than what’s happening in the medical field.

Recent advances in genetic engineering have enabled a new form of cancer treatment called CAR-T therapy.  During this treatment a small section of the patient’s immune cells are removed, genetically edited and reinserted. 

This reprogrammes their own immune system fight cancer without the ruinous side effects of chemotherapy. In many cases, as Downs himself experienced, it can eliminate the cancer. 

Downs was diagnosed eight years ago with blood cancer and after exhausting all treatment options, was told he was out of other options and would soon be out of time. 

Then, a ‘miraculous’ message from a stranger online led him to a clinical trial in the US.   

“That was eight years ago, at that time, it was very groundbreaking. Now, it has become such an effective treatment in the rest of the world. It’s proven to be so good at what it needs to do that almost every country in the world is adopting this in their health system.”

But in New Zealand a longstanding suspicion of genetic modification technologies has made us lag far behind our peers when it comes to embracing advancements in the field.

When returning from the US, Downs jokes that he wondered if he would have to declare himself a genetically modified organism at customs based on our existing restrictive laws on GMOs being allowed outside of laboratory settings. However, if he is to be called a GMO, he prefers ‘Genetically Modified Optimist’. 

But that optimism can be hard to maintain in New Zealand, as currently, the only way to access life-saving CAR-T therapy is through strictly controlled trials, which are very limited in availability. 

Downs says he speaks to patients nearly every day who face heartbreaking choices about accessing the care they need. 

“I recently met a single mother whose husband had died of cancer himself.  A few years earlier, she contracted lymphoma. The only option for her was to go overseas for treatment. She’s a mom of a 10-year-old, she can’t do it, and she’s financially unable to pay the money that would require.” 

“She was fortunate to be able to get on the clinical trial which literally saved her life. But if it hadn’t been for that struggle, that would be that she wouldn’t have had any option but to basically leave the child in Auckland. That story is being repeated again and again and again.”

But there is some hope that New Zealand’s story on gene technologies could be getting a new, more hopeful chapter. The Government has announced it will roll back some of our most restrictive laws and open up the space for more research. 

The Enable CAR-T trial, run by Wellington’s Malaghan Institute of Medical Research, recently concluded Phase 1 trials and is now being expanded to Phase 2 with more patients, potentially saving a lot more lives.

“The thing is the opportunity, in this space here, to leapfrog where we are. The only advantage of being very far behind is we can see what everyone else did and get ahead again.”