With Velocity event, Christchurch software firm Jade aims to retake its place on national stage

"Kiwis are naturally very humble. We have to be comfortable about wanting to win," says Jade Software chief executive Justin Mercer.

“I want to double the size of the Jade community, really re-establish ourselves as a company of national significance, and be a little bit more audacious and outspoken about the role we play and how we believe we can contribute to a prosperous New Zealand,” says Justin Mercer, who became the Christchurch software firm’s chief executive in 2023.

He’ll have a shot at influencing the national conversation today with his firm’s Jade Velocity 2025 event at Te Pae, which features speakers including Christopher Luxon. The Prime Minister will talk for 15 minutes before fielding 15 minutes of Q&A and mingling.

The speaker lineup also includes Facebook Marketplace founder Bowen Pan (recently appointed to Herald publisher NZME’s board), Steven Joyce (ditto), Sharesies co-founder Brooke Roberts, One NZ Warriors CEO Cameron George, super expat Claudia Batten, Valocity founder Carmen Vicelich, Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu chief operating officer Kendall Flutey and Xero’s general manager for technology research and advocacy, James Bergin.

What will Mercer say if he gets the chance to bend the PM’s ear?

“Ultimately, for us, talent is going to be a big thing. So the more we can do to encourage Kiwis to get into tech, show pathways to tech, is great,” Mercer says.

“Infrastructure is also a key part of tech – and AI [artificial intelligence], energy, and data centres are fundamental to that. To take the next leap forward, we need longer-term thinking about infrastructure.

“I wanted to gather key decision makers and influencers across New Zealand to really lean in, to explore and own the responsibility of driving our nation forward. And I believe tech has a key role to do that, both as an enabler for productivity and our big heavyweight categories like dairy, meat, tourism, horticulture, but also as a category in its own right.”

The CEO says he invited “glass-half-full people” who could talk about success.

“Kiwis are naturally very humble. We have to be comfortable about wanting to win here and abroad.”

He hopes the likes of Meta and Stripe alumni Pan will both inspire attendees to lift their horizons and provide some practical tips.

Hero clients include Fonterra, aviation support services company ISS, British-based DB Cargo, insurance giant Allianz (which used Jade to create a self-service platform for small businesses), The Warehouse Group, Ministry for Primary Industries, Woolworths, AgResearch (where Jade contributed to Project HyperFarm, a tool that lets farmers digitally visualise their land in different ways) and StaffSync (which uses a tool built on the Jade Platform to help more than 1500 organisations across Australia and New Zealand to manage rosters and staff schedules).

“If you find yourself in a big red box retailer on the weekend, Jade systems help keep inventory on the shelf,” Mercer says.

“Fonterra’s entire registry system runs on Jade; we help all the farmers get paid. If you fly to the Gold Coast or Fiji for a holiday, a Jade system helps calculate all the payments for the air crew. If you’re a construction company that needs a new digger, a Jade system helps process the loan. We help a lot of local manufacturers, like Original Foods in Christchurch, which makes 70,000 doughnuts a day. If you stop in a BP around the country to grab a pie, it’s a Jade system that helped its traceability.”

Jade has customers in 70 countries for its software which helps businesses to fight financial crime, loans get processed for first home buyers, retailers stock shelves and containers flow through ports.

Jade’s revenue dipped 1% to $45.3 million last year, while pre-tax profit rose 10% to $2.9m (tax involved a credit, lifting total income attributable to owners Skipton to $4.9m compared with the year-ago $3.8m. Notes with the accounts say, “During 2024, Jade Software Corporation Limited continued its tax-loss sharing arrangement with Northwest Investments NZ Limited, a company that is also 100% ultimately owned by Skipton.”)

“Last year was tighter trading conditions, but we’re already seeing growth and we’re forecast to grow on last year’s revenue and drive further profitability,” Mercer says.

In a 2024 refresh, tech entrepreneur and investor Guy Horrocks (also an NZME director) and former Xero NZ managing director Anna Curzon joined the board.

Jade founder Sir Gil Simpson in 2023 with his yellow Mini, which featured in the classic Kiwi movie Goodbye Pork Pie. Photo / Shayne Currie

Jade was founded by Kiwi tech legend and Hi-Tech Awards hall-of-famer Sir Gilbert (Gil) Simpson in 1993. Simpson teamed with Peter Hoskins in 1978 to develop Linc, software used to write programmes for huge Burroughs mainframe computers in more than 4000 organisations. It was a mainstay with the major banks, telcos and others. Rights were eventually sold to Burroughs (later renamed Unisys), with Aoraki Corporation contracted to continue support Linc through to 1999.

By that time, the firm had switched to the more future-focused Jade software platform – a more modern take on software for making software.

“We’ve done some great innovations and some great products, and also had some missteps along the way,” Mercer says.

The highest-profile misstep was Wynyard Group, a maker of a corporate crime intelligence tool spun out of Jade in 2011. Wynyard listed on the NZX in 2013 at a $118m valuation but was placed in voluntary administration in 2016 and in liquidation in 2017 after racking up millions in red ink. It pushed Jade into the red.

In the same year, British non-bank lender Skipton Building Society, which first took a stake in 2005, bought 100% of the Christchurch firm for an undisclosed sum. Skipton, which has around £39 billion ($89.5b) in total assets, remains the owner today.

“They’ve been very supportive of growth for Jade and backing us to be more audacious. We’ve got an independent board and run our own ship, but with the financial support of the Skipton group.”

Jade got back into the black in 2022, and former NZ Trade and Enterprise manager Mercer has big expansion plans.

“We’ve got 250 staff, predominantly in Christchurch but also in Dunedin, Auckland, Sydney and York. We’ve got about 200 in Christchurch. I’m really passionate about having our engineering base here – but it’s also really important that our staff get the opportunity to work at other sites around the world.”

By “doubling the Jade community”, Mercer means boosting everything across the board from customers, to education partners, to staff, to revenue, to products.

AI assistant

“For us, it’s also about bringing the next wave of Kiwi entrepreneurs on to the platform,” Mercer says.

“So we’re launching our new online course modules with an AI assistant to help them learn Jade. And we’re also expanding the number of NZQA-accredited providers next year. Alongside the likes of the University of Canterbury [where Jade software is both taught and used for student management] and Massey, we’ll be adding three additional providers next year.”

Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.