Power list
Biggest names in venture capital
New Zealand’s venture capital scene saw 95 deals last year as a record $160 million was invested in early-stage companies despite the pandemic. Or perhaps it was because of Covid-19, given the tech-heavy nature of startup opportunities and the way the outbreak has accelerated the digitisation of business.
The Crown turbocharged its venture capital spending and money sloshed in from across the Tasman, but we also saw a new assertiveness from local fund managers, KiwiSaver funds and company founders — something that’s likely to be amplified over the year ahead, thanks to a string of $100m-plus exits from earlier investments.
Here are the people who will be in the thick of it.
1. Matt Whineray, Stephen Gilmore, Hamish Blackman NZ Super Fund
Whineray is chief executive of the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation, the Crown entity that manages the $55 billion NZ Super Fund — and no organisation looms larger over NZ’s VC scene.
To appreciate the extent to which the Super Fund’s involvement has boosted the government’s direct participation in venture capital, consider that between 2002 and 2019, the Crown vehicle known as the NZ Venture Investment Fund (NZVIF) put a total $173m into local startups, whereas the Super Fund kicked $240m into the $300m Elevate fund, which launched in March 2020, and has control over how that money is spent.
Over the past year we’ve seen big chunks of matching Elevate money go to Kiwi and Australian VC funds for NZ investment.
While Whineray is the top dog, and Stephen Gilmore holds sway as chief investment officer, people in the startup community name Super Fund external investments and partnerships manager Hamish Blackman (ex Craigmore Funds) as a key player in the Guardians’ push into venture capital.
The Super Fund’s recent VC activity is helping to make up for its earlier decision to pass on an early chance to invest in Rocket Lab, which was seized by the Australian Government’s Future Fund super scheme, which is now poised for a big payday from the satellite launcher’s US$4.1 billion Nasdaq listing. With matching capital from private players, the Super Fund says Elevate will provide a total $600m in venture capital for NZ startups.
2. Phil McCaw Movac
One of the grand-daddies of the local VC scene, Movac grew out of a company founded by McCaw in 1998, has since invested more than $150m and has more than $250m in its current fund.
Along the way, McCaw has been joined by partners (and fellow Wellingtonians) Mark Vivian, Mark Stuart and David Beard, who have in turn become some of New Zealand’s most influential VC figures.
As with any venture capital outfit, there have been some misses (seen anyone riding a YikeBike lately?), but Movac’s list of exits is one of the most impressive in the business. It includes major wins from early investments in Trade Me, Auckland’s PowerbyProxi (bought by Apple for more than $100m in 2017), Unleashed, and this year, Timely, Vend ($455m) and Coretex (sold just last week to NZXlisted Eroad for $158m).
And for an oldie, it still shows a lot of vigour, with recent investments in the likes of Aroa Biosurgery, Mobi2Go, Portainer, Tradify and Dawn Aerospace.
There’s also been refreshment over the past years, most recently with Lovina McMurchy coming onboard last September as a partner. McMurchy has previously held senior roles with Starbucks, Microsoft and Amazon in the US.
Movac’s latest fund — the $250m Fund 5 — includes up to $20m from Elevate.
3. Danny Lee, James Pinner, Matt Ocko, Dana Settle
NZ Growth Capital Partners
NZGCP — the re-tooled successor to under-performing Crown VC agency NZVIF — is still looking for a new chief executive following the departure of Richard Dellabarca close to a year ago ahead of a sharp culture review conducted by former Employment Court Judge Graeme Colgan.
In the meantime, VC insiders say it’s the three independent members of NZGCP’s investment committee — Danny Lee, Dana Settle and Matt Ocko — who hold the most sway over the supersized $300m Elevate fund, which contributes matching amounts to private VC funds, and the smaller Aspire fund, which makes direct investments (it has recently put money into Aroa Biosurgery and online education startup Kami).
Lee runs Hong Kong-based private investment company Blue Pool; Imax Corp director Settle is a founding partner with LA-based VC firm Greycroft; and Ocko is co-founding managing partner of Silicon Valley VC outfit DCVC, an early backer of Rocket Lab. He was an early backer of Uber (getting on board in 2011) and an angel investor in Zoom in 2012.
And while NZ companies backed by one of his Silicon Valley VC peers, Vinod Khosla, have a habit of decamping to the US, Ocko has developed close ties to this country as a frequent visitor (he has residency), his NZGCP role and his support for the fight against kauri dieback.
On the NZGCP team itself, Todd Corporation alumnus James Pinner is seen as the rising power player.
4. Paul Dyer, Martin Goldfinch
ACC
ACC’s chief investment officer, Nicholas Bagnall, grew the state accident insurer’s assets under management from $1.05b in 1995 to $46.7b in 2020. He then exited stage left to found his own firm, Te Ahumairangi Investment Management, which handles some $1.8b of ACC’s offshore investments under contract.
Bagnall was replaced by Paul Dyer (an ex-chief investment officer for the NZ Super Fund). The other power player is Martin Goldfinch, who has served as ACC’s head of private equity since 2008, with his role expanded to head of all private investments in 2018.
ACC is something of a sleeping giant in venture capital. One member of the VC community complained to the Weekend Herald that, unlike the NZ Super Fund, it does not put money into local funds, and it’s a fact that most of ACC’s direct equity holdings in some 1800 companies are offshore.
But ACC has put money into earlystage companies, including Rocket Lab and air-quality detection firm Syft Technologies.
A number of the young techs it invested in have gone on to NZX or ASX listings (including Eroad, Pushpay, Plexure, Serko, Gentrack, Straker Translations and Vista Group) and its two freshly-minted “impact” funds — one focused on health and safety (already launched), the other on climate change tech (launching in the third quarter) — are both venturecapital friendly.
ACC says its first impact fund investments include Sir John Kirwan’s workplace wellbeing startup Mentemia and Tauranga’s Robotics Plus, which is developing automated systems to address labour shortages in horticulture.
5. Sir Stephen Tindall, Robbie Tindall
K1W1
Sir Stephen Tindall is the very model of the founder who gives back — via philanthropy, support for sport and, of main concern to us here, supporting early-stage businesses via his family’s investment vehicle K1W1 — of which his son Robbie is an analystturned-director.
The ubiquitous K1W1 has put money into more than 40 startups, from Rocket Lab — which Sir Stephen literally stumbled over when a fledgling Peter Beck was based in a pokey office next to another early investment, LanzaTech — to recent backing for hot startups like Portainer, Spoke Phone, Halter and AskNicely.
K1W1 still holds a stake in Rocket Lab (somewhere under the 5 per cent threshold) so should be in for a big payday from the firm’s US listing.
6. Peter Beck Rocket Lab founder, investor
Through Rocket Lab, Peter Beck drew NZ to the attention of top Silicon Valley venture capital companies DCVC and Khosla Ventures. More recently, he has had the Government’s ear as a member of the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council, and turned into a VC operator himself.
Beck offered money and advice to one of his Rocket Lab engineers, Craig Piggott, a dairy farmer’s son who had an idea for a “smart cow” collar. Piggott’s startup, Halter, recently raised $32m as it began to deploy its product on farms around the Waikato, with Beck again chipping in.
Beck has also backed Offset Ventures’ $10 million fund to invest in “deep tech” (R&D-heavy) startups and put funds into local early-stage companies HeartLab (which uses AI for better analysis of heart scans) and Astrix Astronautics, which is developing cheaper, more efficient solar panels for satellites.
Watch for more investments after Rocket Lab’s Nasdaq listing. If it goes to plan, Beck will be worth somewhere north of $750m and net around $30m immediately if he exercises the right to sell options.
7. Robbie Paul Icehouse Ventures
Paul is CEO of Icehouse Ventures, a VC vehicle majority-owned by longrunning business incubator and investor The Icehouse, but which in 2019 drafted in three marquee minority shareholders: K1W1, Jarden and Sam Stubbs’ KiwiSaver fund Simplicity.
In its broader history, Icehouse has invested more than $190m into 240 startups since 2003. Alongside its regular venture capital activity, Icehouse Ventures’ notable recent efforts include its First Cut fund, which is both run by young entrepreneurs and targeting the same group, and Paul’s ongoing efforts to democratise VC investment.
In an industry where $500,000 is often the minimum, Icehouse Ventures’ investment portal is a vehicle for those with as “little” as $50,000 to tip into a fund.
It’s not quite the Sharesies of venture capital, but that’s the direction Paul is tilting in.
8. Samantha Wong Blackbird Ventures
The last couple of years has seen a growing wave of investment in NZ startups by Australian VCs funds like AirTree Ventures, Square Peg Capital and Blackbird Ventures. Blackbird has become the largest VC player in Australasia, with A$500m being doled out from its current fund.
In 2019 it opened a New Zealand office, headed by Wong, which it said would aim to fill a gap it saw in $1m to $5m rounds “between local angels and accelerators and global growth investors”.
Blackbird created a dedicated $60m fund shortly afterwards, with the NZ Super Fund and NZGCP’s Elevate chipping in $21.5m in September 2020. Blackbird had already made investments on this side of the Tasman, including AskNicely, AO Air and chicken-free chicken maker Sunfed. Meanwhile, back in Australia, Blackbird has also co-invested with NZ Rugby in high-end headphones maker Nura.
9. Arama Kukutai Finistere Ventures
One-time Parininihi ki Waitotara Trust deputy chairman and NZTE regional director Arama Kukutai is now a partner at venture capital company Finistere Ventures, which has offices in Silicon Valley, San Diego and Ireland. Finistere invests worldwide, but one of its specialties has been backing New Zealand agrifood and agritech startups including medical cannabis firm BioLumic. In 2019, Finistere set up a satellite office in Palmerston North, and led a $13m funding round for Christchurchbased food and beverage player Invert Robotics. Kukutai is open to pitches in the sector as Finistere invests US$200m from its latest fund, a big chunk of which he’d like to invest in New Zealand.
During a visit home for Fieldays, the now San Diego-based Kukutai says as well as injecting its own Finistere capital, his international networks allow him to hook up Kiwi startups with multinationals such as Yamaha Motors (which co-invested in Invert Robotics) and Bayer (which supported Finistere’s $6.3m investment in BioLumic).
April this year saw NZGCP’s Elevate put $14m into Finistere’s new $42m Aotearoa Fund, which will target agritech companies needing Series A and B investment.
10. Chintaka Ranatunga, Vignesh Kumar Global From Day One
Global From Day One (GD1) managing partner Ranatunga won the University of Auckland Business School Emerging Leader gong at the 2020 INFINZ (Institute of Financial Professionals) awards on the back of investments in startups like Shuttlerock, Spotlight Reporting, the rebooted StretchSense and Tauranga electric motorbike maker Ubco.
Last year Rantunga was joined by Vignesh Kumar, who returned to NZ in 2018 following senior roles with Apple, with Silicon Valley money bulging in his pockets and immediately began to sniff out local investment opportunities — starting with Formus Labs — before becoming a GD1 partner, which he balances as a director at KiwiNet, which helps precommercialisation research-based companies raise funding, and as a member of the investment panel for Auckland University’s commercialisation arm, Uniservices.
This year is also shaping up to be a strong one. Last month GD1 received $45m from Elevate for its Fund 3, which is set to total $139m. Elevate investment director James Pinner said he was impressed at how GD1 “has matured into an institutional-grade VC manager with Fund 3.”