FKA 😇 Advice, Connections and Funding for NZ Startups

Another FKA Friday ● 4 September 2026#31

4/9/2026

«	4 September 2026 #31	»
	1,657 Readers • 51% Mailchimp • 49% LinkedIn

OMG, Nicole is hiring for marketing. Not junior. Not super senior. Someone in that magic middle. Kind of chic, she reckons.

Carissa had to hire burly men to help collect the funds of the first close. FKA was leading the round and 37 individual investors delivered collectively $282k. Thank you, Mark Robinson, for driving the DD process and for taking up the role of investor director.

Big balls is where Terry's passion is at. He and his team are getting increasingly better at selling them around the world. More here! The round is still open to help them spin faster □

Encouraged by the positive reception of her first AI Law workshop at Outset, Anna has taken the bait from last week's newsletter and she will run another one for the FKA network. Pencil 15 September □

Modest NZ startup prizes can pay back years later in more ways than one! Paying it forward, with the Velocity (formerly Spark) Challenge of the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Auckland. HERE

Beware of the advisors who have not walked to walk. Those types run around in New Zealand with invisible egg on their faces or your face if you're not careful. Oh, no!

«Can someone explain to me the difference between Elizabeth Holmes claiming that she was gonna stick a whole LabCorp in a thimble and Wario claiming AI is gonna cure cancer in 5-10 years? Or how about Elon and SpaceX saying they're gonna have data centers in space, where cooling is only possible with radiation?»

Victor Moreno is asking pertinent questions and shares his surname with the editor's tip cafe in Auckland!

Last Friday's drinks were on Andrew Steele and Guardian Flame. That launch felt a bit like a fashion show. Yesterday's ADI.Clinic may have already surfaced the much needed diversity this flaming team needs. SPECIALIZED Mark will connect.

Tomorrow is FKA 1st Saturday Drinks □ 16:00 onwards, see here!
All welcome. Dress code, as usual, is casual □

Another FKA Friday ● 14 August 2026#28

14/8/2026

«	14 August 2026 #28	»
	1,657 Readers • 51% Mailchimp • 49% LinkedIn

Mike and Dave have been working together to stand up the first joined Pitch Night on Tuesday, 18 August. It will be a slightly different format and accommodate remote participants much better. A good number of deals, split across Wellington and Auckland. Attend in person as usual, virtual spectators should ask Dave or Mike for access. Of course, other investors are very welcome. □

Anna & Colin are also partnering for strength. They reckon that easier trading of 2ndaries can unlock value for investors and founders alike. More on that and how you can have your say!

Mark from FKA and Gregory from Apercure have beavered away since last month's pitch night to sort out the nuances of this co-investment opportunity. But see the pitch video first!

VC AI investment activity has grown since 2016 to over $400B, only dipping slightly since the Covid craze. More than half though is going to only two players: OpenAI and Anthropic. More from PitchBook.

Cleantech leads every sector in the unicorn market, with a median relative velocity of value creation of nearly 330% in the first half of 2026. This should see the peeps at Motion Capital smiling in little old NZ □ PitchBook, June 20, 2026

It is neither raining men, nor pizza. Some may remember us looking at pizza delivery by drone in November 2022. We didn't invest. SkyDrop (formerly known as Flirtey) filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and shut down in February 2024 after running out of money. See how this space has evolved, HERE. Working but still a fuzzy business model.

Sadly, there is some truth in this! HERE. Lead investors like FKA try to spot great startups before they raise and are easily seen by everyone.

Another FKA Friday ● 7 August 2026#27

7/8/2026

«	7 August 2026 #27	»
	1,641 Readers • 49% Mailchimp • 51% LinkedIn

Mindful Muslim came from the AUT Showcase 2020. MM is no more but who knows what this year's showcase will surface. REGISTER.

Misha fielded all questions in the Q&A earlier this week. No million dollar question but then he has raised just over $1,000,000 □ The round is closing today.

Terry from Eight360 is never short of an honest answer. He is running a Q&A for investors this Wednesday. Details are posted on Catalist.

GEN NZ’s Unconference and Awards this August. Join founders, investors, operators and ecosystem builders in Wellington on Monday 24 August. Find out more and get your ticket.

Angels, no risk, no fun. Caramelising sugar with 80% rum (Feuerzangenbowle), no problem. Encounter with a bench saw, a bit of a problem. Hence a shorter newsletter this week.

Another FKA Friday ● 31 July 2026#26

31/7/2026

«	31 July 2026 #26	»
	1,641 Readers • 49% Mailchimp • 51% LinkedIn

Steph from Bonnet has raised truckloads in record time and closed the round. Now, by popular demand she has reopened the round for a short time! □ BTW she now has 100,000 vehicles under her bonnet.

B2C is so different. See how it is done. Go Nicole!

Vince has found a new path to market. They need to unlock the commitments. The round closes at the end of today!

Naftali notes that even the government seems to understand that there is a fundamental shift in customer experience and acquisition in tourism. Investors stand to learn from the Q&A session he has organised for next Monday with Misha the founder of AuraScope. Find out more!

Troy and Phil are providing the thread that is stitching together disparate marketing system into a powerful and intelligent platform. But hear it from them HERE. Hugh from FKA is ready to lead DD. Get in touch to HELP!

If you missed the investment, that's too bad. But you can still catch Hengji and Alliv on Thursday, 13th August. More HERE!

Everyone! FKA Drinks are on this Saturday. See where and when, HERE.

Big wins are often just the math of enough high-quality attempts. So true!

Katheren is a Flying Kiwi and always brings a breath of fresh to the room. As exemplified in this TV series, she made on healthy homes in a previous role.

Angels: No risk, no fun. Trust your Chief Cat Herder to safely navigate his bike over the bridge to the nearest EXIT before the fuel runs out. Always good to have a guardian angel though. But then other Flying Kiwis never seem to run out of fuel.

Founders and angels cannot be pessimists! □

Another FKA Friday ● 24 July 2026#25

24/7/2026

«	24 July 2026 #25	»
	1,641 Readers • 49% Mailchimp • 51% LinkedIn

James from Mindhive and Arash from Kara gave a great update each on Tuesday. It is always interesting to see the reactions of new angels who where not around for the earlier rounds. Mindhive has only just raised $5M last year, but Kara is in talks with potential US leads for a round later this year.

AuraScope is first off the rank with the pitch video from Tuesday. Derrek and Mish reckon that AI Search will open a new battle ground between Online Travel Agents and hotel. With AuraScope they are siding with the hotels. Here comes Misha's pitch, and you can also check out Derrek's podcast.

Great pitches also from Apercure and Thread. More from them next week.

Mayor Wayne Brown on our portfolio company Kitea Health. Watch out for the Trump-like linguistic somersault about hydrocephalus. Watch him!

He does all these startup posts, of course, in preparation of the Auckland Startup Week in August. Register for the launch event HERE!

GEN NZ’s Unconference and Awards are in August. Join founders, investors, operators and ecosystem builders in Wellington on Monday 24 August. Find out more and get your ticket. In any case, get nominating, no winners without nominations. GO!

FKA passed on SafeStack before it went on to raise NZ$2.3 million pre-seed round in October 2021, led by Jelix Ventures. SafeStack has now been acquired by NINJIO which raised a US$5.5 Series A in 2021 according to Pitchbook, with annuals sales of US$15m according to zoominfo. Well done Laura Bell and team! □

When your raise well you have a war chest to grow sales and product by acquisition. See more!

Rogue AI Agents are sadly underreported. At Alibaba an AI Agent started a side hustle subverting the firewall and diverting GPU capacity to mining cryptocurrencies. READ MORE!

More than 1,000 startups a year to benefit from refreshed support programme. MBIE giving startups wings. Essentially, Startup Aotearoa lives another day. See more!

Creative HQ spending on advertising with the best of them. That's what every good business does to drive sales, the ROI of advertising. See here!

Another FKA Friday ● 17 July 2026#24

17/7/2026

«	17 July 2026 #24	»
	1,641 Readers • 49% Mailchimp • 51% LinkedIn

Tuesday 21 July and it will be another pitch night. Willy Green gives a fine example of a driven succinct pitch. The business, Party on Demand still seems to be operational albeit with negative reviews, and Willy is OPEN TO WORK.

Wayne on Mindhive! But come on Tuesday to hear more from the Mindhive CEO James, and Arash from Kara. Also, two, maybe three new companies.

Angels, you know where and when. Guests, pls, REGISTER and get venue details!

'nuff said!

Every time we charge for event attendance to cover our costs some of that money goes to support Humanitix causes. $22,715,248, Jack tells you more about it. LOOK!

We don't know if Jenny is a downhill skier, let alone a ski-acrobat, but she is certainly helping founders get up the startup hill with the Morgo program, as testified by several of the founders in the FKA portfolio.

CHECK OUT: MORGO 2026 Queenstown.

A review of 37 studies examining the impact of LLMs on software development found that while AI accelerates basic coding tasks, this comes at the cost of quality, and increases the time senior developers must spend reviewing and correcting faulty code.

In an Upwork survey of 2,500 executives, salaried employees and freelancers, 77 percent of respondents said AI had increased their workload and reduced their productivity.

A 2025 meta-analysis of 371 studies on AI’s impact on labor market outcomes, principally, employment and productivity, found that the mean effect was “close to zero and statistically insignificant.” About AI not by AI. READ MORE

In 2023, Forbes published a "30 Under 30 Hall of Shame", including Sam Bankman-Fried is serving 25 years for stealing $8 billion in customer funds; Charlie Javice faked user data to sell her startup to JPMorgan Chase and faced fraud charges. Martin Shkreli hiked a life-saving drug's price by 5,000% and was sentenced to seven years in federal prison; Cody Wilson is a registered sex offender.

Lucas Duplan, did not commit a crime: he'd raised $30m and built nothing. OMG!

Just like the NINE lives of cats □ This looks interesting!
It will be on 29 July 2026, 10:00-11:30. MORE HERE!

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Another FKA Friday ● 4 September 2026#31

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4 September 2026 #31

»

1,657 Readers • 51% Mailchimp • 49% LinkedIn

Another FKA Friday ● 14 August 2026#28

«

14 August 2026 #28

»

1,657 Readers • 51% Mailchimp • 49% LinkedIn

Another FKA Friday ● 7 August 2026#27

«

7 August 2026 #27

»

1,641 Readers • 49% Mailchimp • 51% LinkedIn

Another FKA Friday ● 31 July 2026#26

«

31 July 2026 #26

»

1,641 Readers • 49% Mailchimp • 51% LinkedIn

Another FKA Friday ● 24 July 2026#25

«

24 July 2026 #25

»

1,641 Readers • 49% Mailchimp • 51% LinkedIn

Another FKA Friday ● 17 July 2026#24

«

17 July 2026 #24

»

1,641 Readers • 49% Mailchimp • 51% LinkedIn

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