Movac general partner Mark Vivian says the Government's fresh support for Elevate "is a sensible and pragmatic approach".
Elevate gets an unexpected elevation. Technology Queenstown adds big names to boost its $1 billion push. NetComm NZ hits the wall.
A Crown-backed venture capital fund has received a top-up. It’s not nearly as much as some say is needed, but it’s a step up from the general Budget 2025 expectation, which was nothing.
Finance Minister Nicola Willis said today the Government will supply an extra $100 million for Elevate, managed by the Crown-owned NZ Growth Capital Partners.
Elevate was set up by the previous Government with $300m allocated in 2020 (the final dollop of funding not arriving until 2023).
The aim was to pep up New Zealand‘s sluggish venture capital scene by contributing to funds raised by local VC firms – and those attracted from across the Tasman – so they had more funds to invest in local start-ups.
The Startup Advisory Council, formed by the last Government and Blackbird Ventures – Australasia’s largest VC fund, was among those who thought Elevate should be refreshed to the tune of $500m.
It argued the amount was needed to better fuel the high-paying tech sector’s rise to be one of our largest export earners.
In the event, the now nearly spent Elevate was topped up with a fifth of that amount.
“I’m hugely supportive of this news and happy to hear that National is supporting Elevate,” Global From Day One managing partner Vignesh Kumar told Tech Insider.
“That said, I am a little disappointed it wasn’t a full refresh top-up. GD1 Fund 3 received $45m from Elevate in late 2021, and without it we would not have been able to raise our $150m fund.
“The Government’s support was invaluable in attracting private capital into our funds, and so for every $1 we raised from the Government we raised more than $2 from private capital sources, which was a strong showing of support – enabling us to invest in iconic Kiwi companies such as Auror, Dawn Aerospace, Basis, Vessev, Runn, Foundry Lab, Ivo, and many, many more.”
“We think this is a sensible and pragmatic approach towards building a mature tech ecosystem with a number of capable and component NZ venture firms,” Movac general partner Mark Vivian said. His firm is New Zealand‘s largest VC outfit.
“NZGCP made meaningful investments in Movac funds at a time when institutional investors weren’t prepared to. That is, they helped give us scale.
“Today, a number of institutions have made investments into a number of NZ venture firms – including Movac – another indication of the industry maturing.”
Movac has consistently delivered strong investment returns to NZGCP, Vivian said.
He said: “It’s important that any investment into funds goes to venture firms who are committed to being in New Zealand in the long term, and not simply venture tourists.”
Angel Association of NZ chief executive Bridget Unsworth said: “AANZ were really pleased to see the support of the Government to this asset class through their commitment of $100m, which will lead to greater capital available and increased investment in early-stage start-ups, providing them with the necessary capital to grow and scale.
“This commitment will also help attract more private sector participation, fostering a more robust and self-sustaining venture capital market.”
Blackbird Ventures partner Phoebe Harrop said: “A virtuous cycle of New Zealand tech companies being founded, scaling globally and contributing talent to the next generation of start-ups is well under way. But our ecosystem needs continued investment in the local venture capital managers who invest in pre-seed and seed-stage companies.
“KiwiSaver funds must pick up this mantle, but for now Elevate plays a critical role.”
Willis said Elevate had “committed $221m across nine funds and attracted $536m of private capital – a ratio of $2.4 of private equity for every $1 committed by the fund”. Notwithstanding the Finance Minister’s praise, the $536m in matching funds is still shy of the target $800m.
NZGCP chief investment officer James Pinner said alongside the $100m top-up with Budget 2025, Elevate would be boosted by $23m in “recycled capital” generated by earlier investments.
Technology Queenstown has named five trustees to boost its mission to build a $1 billion local tech industry over the next two decades. They are:
1. Claudia Batten, a Victoria University grad who made it big in the US and recently returned to NZ. The one-time Russell McVeagh intellectual property lawyer founded Massive – a network for selling ads in video games – then sold it to Microsoft in 2006 in a reported deal worth up to US$400m. Batten was latter involved in a string of start-ups then served as NZ Trade & Enterprise’s director for North America for three years from 2014.
2. Katrina Barry, a University of Auckland grad now resident in Sydney as chief executive of Webjet. The winner of the Deloitte Fast50 Australia Female Leadership award in 2023.
3. The inevitable David Downs – the Aucklander who serves as chief executive of The New Zealand Story, chairman of The Icehouse and a Hi-Tech Awards Trustee, among other roles.
4. Prue Halstead, chief executive of Invest South, an Invercargill-based private equity fund whose cashed-out investments include runaway success story Magic Memories, plus Energia Potior (working on a greener way to smelt aluminium), Starboard Maritime and First Table (a platform for hospitality bookings in off-peak hours).
5. Dino Vendetti, a US and Portugal-based venture capitalist who knows how to take the crunchy with the smooth. His Oregon-based Seven Peak Ventures backed a $14m funding round for Tauranga-based e-motorcyle maker Ubco that went bust earlier this year. Vendetti was also a financial backer and director of Easy Crypto, the Kiwi cryptocurrency exchange bought by Australia’s Swyft in March for a hush-hush sum. He has been a visitor to our shores since 2019, when he was awarded an entrepreneur visa under the Edmund Hillary Fellowship programme.
Technology Queenstown was founded last year but had its genesis during the pandemic when tourism shuddered to a halt and local businessman Roger Sharp (now the non-profit’s chairman) decided there needed to be a plan to grow an alternative industry with higher-paying jobs.
After visiting 12 alpine towns in the US (on his own dime), Sharp, who is the founder of Asia Pacific “technology investment bank” North Ridge Partners and chair of ASX-listed Web Travel Group, settled on technology, and specifically a plan to work with the public sector and corporates to grow tech’s share of local GDP from 2% (compared with a national average 7.5%) to 15%.
In December, Technology Queenstown gained its first chief executive, Sarah Russell, a former ASB strategy manager who has spent the past two decades across the ditch in roles with CommBank and, more recently, fintech AI start-up Elula. She returned to NZ for the role.
Corporate partners had already been signed up including One NZ.
“We have identified cyber security as one of the high-priority verticals that we are testing in our ability to launch in Queenstown Lakes,” Sharp said.
“One NZ’s capabilities in this area will be invaluable as we evaluate the feasibility of setting up a training centre for cyber security skills, as a precursor to building an industry cluster.”
Queenstown and its surrounds has already attracted an array of tech talent, with some restricted to lifestyle or property pursuits (including Kiwi-American billionaire Peter Thiel, who developed then appeared to abandon a lodge at Lake Wānaka, and Sam Morgan, who bought a Wānaka sheep station for $25m-plus) or awaiting extradition (Kim Dotcom). Rod Drury has been recently active on the tech side, backing a pier charging company that hopes to make Queenstown a hub for e-boat development.
If you’re of a certain vintage, and a bit of a geek, then you could have a strong sense of nostalgia for NetComm.
For many in the 1990s, connecting to the internet involved the crackle and screech of a dial-up modem, many of which, in our part of the world, were made by Sydney-based NetComm.
In 2019, the (then) 38-year-old, 300-employee Aussie firm was delisted from the ASX after being bought for A$160m by US firm Casa Networks.
Casa went bankrupt in early 2024 but its administrators kept its NetComm operation trading in Sydney as it looked for a buyer – and it found one in the form of little-known Texas-based networking company DZS, which scooped it up for US$7m.
By then, the NetComm brand was down to one employee – a sales manager – in NZ. But worse was to come.
DZS, in turn, filed for bankruptcy in March this year, with all staff let go.
On May 8, NetCommWireless NZ, fully owned by NetComm Wireless Pty Australia, was placed in liquidation.
Although it lost its nerd cache, NetComm maintained a substantial business, supplying 700,000 routers for the National Broadband Network (Australia’s equivalent to our UFB) and, into 2022 and 2023, supplying hardware for Kiwi internet providers including Orcon and Slingshot (now part of 2degrees) and Nova Energy’s broadband business, with some still in use. And a smattering of its gear is still on sale via PB Tech.
A 2degrees spokesman noted the latest development: a hyper-obscure firm called Zhone has, for an undisclosed sum, bought the assets of DZS and its international subsidiaries, including the rump NetComm operation in Sydney.
Zhone is “actively working to rehire many of the current and former employees”, the company said in a statement.
But Netcomm NZ is not part of the buyout and attempted reanimation.
“We were advised the company was put into liquidation [by its shareholders] because it was not included in the sale of the wider Netcomm business,” liquidator Neale Jackson of Calibre Partners told Tech Insider.
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.
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