Jaylen-Blaze: Inventor
Meet the teen inventor behind Mediglow
Ever wanted something to change and realised you could be the one to make it happen?
That's exactly what happened to Jaylen-Blaze Daane.
His mum asked an online diabetes community what a person with diabetes would love to have, and someone suggested a caddy to keep gear by the bed. Jaylen-Blaze took it from there. "A couple of people said a nightstand thing, and then I had the idea to make it glow in the dark," he says.
That's Mediglow. A nightstand caddy that glows in the dark, no cord or plug, just sunlight or a lit room to charge it. Designed, he says, to help people with diabetes and other medical needs have a safer, more comfortable sleep while waking with hypoglycaemia.
It started as a school project, and Jaylen-Blaze wasn't expecting much from it. "I thought it would just be a school thing, and then I got all this great positive feedback and I was like, oh wow, it's actually something that could do well."
He's CEO and sole trader of Mediglow now. Seed funding from Young Enterprise helped him develop prototypes, he tracked down suppliers to actually produce them, and he's started selling across Aotearoa. The Mediglow name is trademarked across Australasia, and he keeps tweaking the design as customer feedback comes in.
There have been a few milestones along the way. He represented Southland at the Entrepreneurs in Action event in Wellington, one of 5000 applicants selected to spend three days working through business challenges with mentors and other young entrepreneurs. He was also picked for the Konaki 2026 business development team, working alongside Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka (University of Otago) students to push Mediglow further.
Not everything has been smooth. Finding somewhere reliable to 3D print the caddies has been his biggest headache so far, something he's chipped away at by reaching out to mentors and businesses around the country. "I learned a lot about perseverance and listening to experts." he says.
There's also a lot going on outside the business. He's studying te reo Māori, with a Merit in NCEA Level 1 already behind him and full immersion Level 3 and 4 underway, aiming for a Level 5 diploma next yea. His mum, who advocates for the diabetes community herself, is doing the journey with him. This year the two of them have been learning te reo side by side.
Perseverance and community come up a lot when Jaylen-Blaze talks about what matters to him, along with mana and whanaungatanga. He spends time with people newly diagnosed with diabetes too, showing them the diagnosis doesn't have to hold them back.
"I want to get this positive good news story into the medical and wider range media, to show how living with a medical condition does not stop you from aiming high and achieving your goals."
If funding came through, he'd put it toward more prototypes, trialling other products for the diabetes community, and chipping away at his own academic goals, including studying entrepreneurship at the University of Otago.
If any other young people are sitting on a similar idea, something that could help people with medical needs, Jaylen-Blaze encourages them to just go for it. It could, in his words, be worth everything they give.