Hawke's Bay man makes it in Big Apple

Jonty Kelt misses Hawke's Bay but Manhattan is where his life is now with a new multimillion-dollar company chasing the success of Groupon, which recently rejected Google's offer to buy for $7.7 billion.
Groupon, and Mr Kelt's company, Group Commerce, use the internet to offer discounted goods and services. Once enough potential purchasers have signed up for a discounted item, the deal is triggered.
"Groupon have ignited a certain type of e-commerce - it is a revolutionary concept," Mr Kelt said.
Group Commerce was not building its own brand but providing group-buying facilities to publishers which already had an online community, such as its client, the New York Times.
Wairoa-born Mr Kelt went to Hereworth School and then Kings College - his parents having moved to a King Country farm.
After a commerce degree at Otago University he worked for Macquarie bank in London.
His first start-up company provided online marketing, his second marketed touring entertainment in China such as Cats, Phantom of the Opera and Mariah Carey.
He was shoulder-tapped to help an American company entering the UK.
That company was bought by internet ad-management gurus DoubleClick, which was in turn bought by Google for nearly $4 billion.
"After that I took some time off and moved to New York with my wife - she's from New York," he said.
They have a 1-year-old son and another on the way.
Family is important to Mr Kelt.
He talks fondly of his late grandfather, Ian Kelt, who died in 2009.
He was a WWII bomber pilot who carried out 44 raids.
"He was a great guy and had fantastic war stories. I have his log book, which is amazing to read through."
Ian Kelt was involved with the amalgamation of Hawke's Bays Tourist Motors and MJ Kelt into Tourist Kelt Motors, which became one of New Zealand's largest Todd Motor Dealerships throughout the'70s and'80s.
Local financier Sam Kelt was his father's cousin but they had never met.
Jonty's father, John, broke his neck in a water-skiing accident on Lake Taupo, which helped him decide he should look for a different direction to farming.
"When my sister had their first child in Dubai, my parents decided to up stakes and move to the Middle East for a while," said Jonty.
"My father now works for a New Zealand company called Structureflex that engineer fabric-covered structures."
It was a proud father who tipped off Hawke's Bay Today about his son's success.
The US market for internet-group buying was projected to soon be worth many billions of dollars and Group Media' point of difference, and the quality of its directors, had turned heads.
With fellow former Google and DoubleClick executives David Rosenblatt and Andrew Glenn, they raised $8 million in capital.
Mr Kelt said their group-buying model using publishers would succeed because publishers were trusted.
He was "tied up right now" with his new company and new family but planned to bring his Big Apple family back to the fruit bowl to show them their heritage.
"I know where the good paua are," he said.
Hawke's Bay Today's publisher, APN, operates an internet group-buying programme offering deals, called GrabOne.