Others include Tauranga\u2019s Hadleigh Ford<\/a>, who sold<\/a> his workplace sign-in app SwipedOn for $11m, and medical device entrepreneur Garth Sutherland<\/a>, a former Gallagher Group electrical engineer and asthma sufferer who invented a better inhaler then sold it to a US firm before going on to found The Insides Company, developing medical devices for people with intestinal failure, and Auror co-founder Phil Thomson<\/a>.<\/p>\n From further afield, American entrepreneur Zach Sims, who sold his education-for-the-masses website Codeacademy for US$525m mid-pandemic.<\/p>\n There is some crossover here with the second factor. Sir Stephen Tindall has also backed all four Icehouse seed funds.<\/p>\n (And on a side note, the cheques have been getting progressively bigger over the years. The largest single investment in Seed Fund I, launched in 2016, was $250,000; Fund II $1m; Fund 3 $2.5m; and Fund IV \u2013 so far \u2013 $5m.)<\/p>\n A couple of secondary factors have also helped: the progressive fall of interest rates and the tech stock boom. Some were seeking to rebalance portfolios that had become too heavy on the \u201cMagnificent Seven\u201d, Paul said.<\/p>\n First investments<\/p>\n The $75m raised for Seed Fund IV will be invested in more than 40 Kiwi start-ups across the early-stage spectrum, from founding team to pre-Series A over a three-year period, Paul said.<\/p>\n Already $6.3m has been committed to eight New Zealand-founded start-ups, including artificial intelligence (AI) presentation start-up Aether, design collaboration platform Harth, industrial engineering software maker Spaceproof (still in stealth mode) and fraud-prevention technology start-up, Static Technologies (also in stealth).<\/p>\n Aether<\/a> was founded by TikTok\u2019s former New Zealand country manager, Carsten Gruber<\/a>.<\/p>\n Static Technologies was founded by four ex-ASB staff. The product they\u2019re developing could be described as \u201coffensive cyber security\u201d, Paul said. That\u2019s offensive as in going on the front foot. Its technology will locate threats, then \u201cpoison them\u201d before they can be used to commit fraud, Paul said.<\/p>\n \u2018Simultaneously very strong and very fragile\u2019<\/p>\n In terms of his firm\u2019s entire portfolio of venture capital funds, Paul said: \u201cIt\u2019s been a phenomenal year. We could end up investing more this year than any other year.\u201d<\/p>\n He said the firm\u2019s previous record was $100m. This year it was only a couple of transactions away from $200m.<\/p>\n \u201cThe overall market feels simultaneously very strong and very fragile, and that could change on the turn of a dime \u2013 or one post on Truth Social or a single bad earnings call by Nvidia,\u201d Paul said.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are a lot of people looking for signs of a bubble. The Magnificent Seven [Nvidia, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Tesla] have held up the entire public stock market and Governments don\u2019t have as many options as we thought or hoped to continue to prop things up.<\/p>\n \u201cCombine that with geopolitical risk and another shock could lead to a sustained period of very conservative investing. IPOs would jam to a halt, which would have an accordion effect from Series D down to the earliest stage of venture.\u201d<\/p>\n Paul said a \u201cpersistent investing\u201d approach was best for these uncertain times, or any times \u2013 investing in seed, Series A, Series B and later rounds as portfolio companies grow.<\/p>\n \u201cThis year, we\u2019ve done 35 new investments and 90 follow-on,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Movac also beats target<\/p>\n There was another sign of venture capital buoyancy last month as Movac general partner Mark Vivian posted that his Wellington firm\u2019s Growth Opportunity Fund 1, which had targeted $30m, had closed with $50m in the bank.<\/p>\n Vivian described it as a venture capital secondary fund \u2013 \u201cthe first of its kind in New Zealand\u201d. It would buy shares in New Zealand and Australian growth-stage tech companies that had achieved \u201cminimum $10m annual revenues [and] strong year-on-year growth\u201d.<\/p>\n \u2018Golden Visas\u2019 \u2013 Immigration NZ\u2019s Nov 21 update<\/p>\n As of November 21, Immigration New Zealand said it had received 443 applications for the new AIP visa: 1419 applicants, with 84 in the Balanced category and 359 in the Growth category.<\/p>\n Of the 443 applications received, 50 applications were from applicants transitioning an existing application to the new settings and 393 applications were new applications.<\/p>\n These applications amounted to a potential total minimum investment of $2.635 billion, Immigration New Zealand said.<\/p>\n Of those 312 applications that have been approved in principle, 59 were in the Balanced category and 253 in the Growth category. Three have been withdrawn.<\/p>\n A further 128 applications are still being assessed.<\/p>\n Ninety-three applications have been approved and have been granted resident visas, 27 in the Balanced category and 66 in the Growth category.<\/p>\n The total committed investment from these applications amounts to $594.3m going into New Zealand\u2019s economy, Immigration New Zealand said.<\/p>\n The agency said the majority of the investments to date have been into Invest New Zealand-approved managed funds and bonds.<\/p>\n Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald\u2019s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"1. \u2018Golden Visa\u2019 holders Some $22m has been chipped in by 17 \u201cGolden Visa\u201d investors from China, Singapore,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155143,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[22366,6030,4057,138,1288,3937,12817,102953,3938,88857,295,4508,90907,102952,5832,2190,111,139,69,17357,2515,1974,27244,8258,1361,223,1529,12806,14301],"class_list":["post-155142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-70m","tag-again","tag-behind","tag-business","tag-capital","tag-chief","tag-declared","tag-doldrums","tag-executive","tag-factors","tag-fund","tag-hits","tag-icehouse","tag-iv","tag-july","tag-long","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-paul","tag-raise","tag-record","tag-robbie","tag-seed","tag-that","tag-the","tag-three","tag-venture","tag-ventures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Source \/ Immigration NZ<\/p>\n