It's worse than that if you want to get to anywhere other than the major cities. If I want to visit my grandmother in Motueka, I need to fly BOS->LAX->AUK->NEL, and then drive an hour from Nelson. That appears to be the most direct route, and with flight schedules being what they are generally takes a couple of days.
Exactly. I just moved from Takaka to Seattle, and still have to travel there from time to time. SEA->LAX->AUK->NEL. My last trip was from Nelson to Connecticut: NEL->AUK->LAX->ORD->LGA->BDL. Ugh.
Invercargill would proberly be a pretty good place for it, If they have decent DSL or better. I'm expecting it to be a good combination of cheap living with the benefits of a (small) city but may be wrong on both counts!
I have looked into doing startup work in NZ. Try getting a visa. As a U.S. citizen, I can get a travel visa. To go that route, I have to leave every few months (I forget which it is, but even 6 months is too often/costly). As a visitor, you can't do lots of things a startup might need (bank account, home DSL modem, house lease, etc).
Options on permanent residence or long term stays are limited. NZ has a great visa program for attracting qualified folks for hard to fill jobs. But that doesn't fit for doing a startup.
I was hoping this blog post had some new info like "NZ creates a tech startup visa"
Maybe it's just more likely that people in the 18-29 age range will be actually going there to vacation while maybe picking up a part-time job to earn some cash and/or interact with the locals/local culture. If you're over 30, maybe there's an expectation that you have the earning power to be able to save up for such an excursion without needing to raise extra funds along the way?
Oh, how convenient! Only 24 hours by plane? ;)