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Newsletter ➢ ᴀFKAғ•2018#09

30/3/2018

 

30 March 2018#09

All up FKA Nominees Limited has invested $706,740 into FileInvite FKA's PFC#14 on behalf of 44 individual investors. CEO James, now put it to good use! Well done so far, Garth, board work as Investor Rep comes next!
Our joint press release has been picked up by NBR (Pᴀɪᴅ Cᴏɴᴛᴇɴᴛ) and BizEdge. The above image is from our corresponding LinkedIn post.
The Hi-Tech Awards judges have drawn up a list of finalists from which the winners for each category will be selected. You can see the finalists for all categories ☞ here. Congratulations to CEO Ben and his team from Wherewolf, FKA's PFC#12 for making it to the next stage. Thanks also to FKAngels Charlie and Phil who are putting a lot of time and energy into this little lupo.
Let's all give a warm welcome to Cornelius Boertjens. He has cleared the FKA Veto Gate without objections and in a way that only a Dutchman can. For full disclosure, we had one subtle question: "Could the notion of the Flying Dutchman be a bad omen for Flying Kiwis?"

One of New Zealand’s most ardent angel investors, Debra Hall, was awarded the Angel Association of New Zealand’s (AANZ) prestigious Arch Angel Award at the 10th Anniversary NZ Angel Summit on Waiheke Island in 2017.

Now in 2018, she has already spoken with Tim W, Jai and Rudi. Neither of them could find fault with her, except they did find her very outspoken and forthright. She likes FKA's active involvement with founders and has already attended a couple of ADI.Clinic sessions.

If any of you know of any reasons why Debra should not join our group then now is the time to speak OUT. Please raise your concerns in confidence by email with the FKA board.

An Easter blog that we couldn't just resist to post. It is a hilarious video that shows Roger and Jessica Rabbit 30 years on.

Important LP2 Decision
We need all LPs to vote over Easter to get formal support for the FKA board recommendation that was circulated on Thursday. At the time of publishing, we have 15 votes in, all in favour. That makes 17 laggards!

We used the above image to round up extra numbers for our Thursday sessions. We got a good reaction on LinkedIn and more founders came.

Two co-founders called into ADI.Clinc a couple of months back.They had good traction but were considering pivoting into a different vertical due to limited TAM. We connected them with two experts in the new field and Hengjie from Kami PFC#02 who kindly coached them for a Y Combinator interview.

They have since successfully pivoted and this email following our Wednesday session in Takapuna says it all. "I just wanted to say thanks for your time and advice yesterday, I really appreciate you taking the time. We are both keen to move forward with the FKA, so we are keen to begin finding a champion. Let me know what you think a good next step is for us?" 
Lord Mayor of Brisbane's Business and Investment Forum in Auckland
The Right Honourable, the Lord Mayor of Brisbane, the Councillor Graham Quirk is visiting GridAKL, for half a day on the morning of Friday, 13th April. He is on a mission, a Trade Mission. Read more here and here.

FKA's Chief Cat Herder will attend in full regalia and is hoping some other FKAngels will join him in this. However, it looks like John Mactaggart, the leader of Brisbane Angels is slacking, not having dispatched any of his angels with this delegation.
The Treasury is advertising to refresh the NZVIF board. Experience as an angel investor is very welcome but the overall bar is high. Anybody from among FKAngels?

Newsletter ➢ ᴀFKAғ•2018#08

23/3/2018

 
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Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events of money production is purely coincidental.

23 March 2018#08

FKA ?Pitch Night #038.  We had one pitch from Spoke CEO Jason Kerr who wants to rejuvenate telephony and turn mobile phones into a PBX for SMEs and more. Enterprise Angels are leading this deal. FKA will therefore not vote on this as an FKA portfolio company. Rather more, we will share the pitch video and DD report for syndication as a discretionary co-investment through FKA Nominees. More on this when the final report becomes available.
Cornelius Boertjens comes referred by Ngaio Merrick, has invested in FileInvite, has attended ADI.Clinic this week, also he has spoken with Garth, Heath, Phil and Rudi. They all reckon he fits in well, especially Heath would like his support for the all-important customer acquisition piece. Cornelius has not been put off by anything he has seen or heard, in fact, he likes what we do.
Any reason not to have him join FKA? If you know of skeletons in his closet or other reasons please email the FKA board in confidence.
Our new FKA poster boy who made it into the coveted gettyimages collection?
ADI.Clinic was extremely successful this week. 6 booking for Wellington on Monday, beating hands down for the first time the team in Auckland with only 4 bookings.

For a bit of fun, CCH Rudi has posted three comical car hack videos to promote ADI.Clinic. The LinkedIn posts refer to these three blog post:
  1. ADI.Clinic ☆ Tips and Tricks #01
  2. ADI.Clinic ☆ Tips and Tricks #02
  3. ADI.Clinic ☆ Tips and Tricks #03
Julia works for Moxion, PFC#10. Her son Josh is a member of the Team Skywalker, who won the NZ Championship title twice in the previous two First Lego League (FLL) robotics competition seasons. Now they have qualified to represent New Zealand in the First Championship World Festival in Houston, USA in April.

There are six in this team from the North Shore. They have built EV3 Mindstorm robots to complete 13 missions in 2.5 minutes. Their focus is on pollution of waste-water from fatty household deposits. Their earlier win in the Hydrodynamics season has qualified them for Houston. The criteria set out by the challenge require that members research, liaise with experts and raise awareness of the issues and potential solutions that surround the problem.

Josh and/or the team can come out to do presentations or can do some work in exchange for sponsorship for their quest. 

Josh Comrie this has your name on it!
Anyone else interested to help? Just respond to this email.
AANZ Governance Course Absolutely worthwhile course, next opportunity in Tauranga in April with Debra Hall and Greg Sitters.
Thursday 12th April 2018, 10:00 - 16:00 
Enterprise Angels Office, 53 Spring Street, Tauranga
$350 per person including GST, lunch included.
 
More info and registration ☞ here.
If you don't get the Evangelist from Suse @ AANZ, see this copy here.

Newsletter ➢ ᴀFKAғ•2018#07

16/3/2018

 
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16 March 2018#07

Next Week ⇰  Mon 16:00  ADI.Clinic Wellington (New record with 6 bookings!) ☆ Tue 18:30  Pitch Night @ KPMG ☆ Thu 16:00  ADI.Clinic Auckland
FKA □Pitch Night #038, Tue 20 March, 18:30.
KPMG □ The Black Room, 18 Viaduct Harbour Ave, Auckland 1010
Jason Kerr the CEO of Spoke will speak and pitch Phil our FKAngel from distant Munich is the champion and along with Julian has been helping the DD team at Enterprise Angels. See the brief video below.
Join us as we kick off the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year 2018. We are delighted to have Cecilia Robinson join us for a chat. Cecilia is one of NZ's most successful young female, serial entrepreneurs. She has won more awards than you can shake a stick at, including being the EY Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2013. In a Q&A format, Cecilia will share aspects of her own growth journey, insights into how she continues to innovate and seek out her next opportunities as well as her passion for helping women in business. We will also tickle your taste buds and your eardrums with some award-winning delights from previous EY Entrepreneur Of The Year finalists and winners and hear how their businesses continue to go from strength to strength.

CCH Rudi is one of the judges in the new startup category of this year's NZ Hi-Tech Awards. Lance Wig is sheriff of the judges and has this to say: "Well congratulations to Rudi - who was the only person (including me) to finish on time."  Maybe, the strong German contingent in FKA is for the better?
Normally we only present angel applicants after they had their three talks, ready for the veto gate. However, Paul provides such great images that the editorial team consisting of Rudi and Bublitz couldn't resist this early inclusion. Watch out for Paul at the next pitch night!

Newsletter ➢ ᴀFKAғ•2018#06

9/3/2018

 
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9 March 2018#06

Next Week ⇰  Wed 18:00 Velocity 2018 Launch, Auckland Uni ☆ Thu 16:00,  ADI.Clinic Auckland

Beyond ⇰ 20 Mar, FKA Pitch Night #038, Spoke confirmed so far.
This should remind us at FKA that our female angels make up just over 10%. Therefore, let's acknowledge Angela, Claudia, Katheren, Jackie, Jenene and Marisa,
Diverse groups produce better outcomes, make better investments!
Thank you, Greg Young!
Greg has served as our independent director on the FKA board since the first hour. His reason and humour have been invaluable in helping FKA find its form. "Jobby done, time to move on!" he says, but not without making sure his wife Jackie (truly) Young is investing as an FKAngel. 
Little known fact: Greg and Rudi were co-investors in a toilet business and the above footage was taken from their rigorous product testing series. 
2018 Launch of Velocity, the business competition has produced many interesting startups including our portfolio companies StretchSense and Kami. Soul Machines is pretty exciting stuff, see the video. It would be good to see some FKAngles join the ranks of judges and mentors in this year's competition. RSVP for the launch!
ADI.Clinic - Serendipity
John from BoatSecure called in this week, just when we had the CEO of McMullen & Wing attended as visiting mentor. Interesting tech, Uli will follow this one

Agritech New Zealand will describe its mission to work with key stakeholders across the Wellington region to realise this opportunity. Examples of initiatives already underway include:

  1. Increasing investment into the sector e.g. visit of Finistere Ventures and Yamaha Motor Ventures in May 2018
  2. Developing a more consistent and powerful export story similar to Ireland Origin Green or the Dutch Food Valley e.g. crafting the NZ Agritech story with NZTE and NZ Story
  3. Driving international partnerships e.g. cross-seasonal collaboration proposal from Western Growers (USA)
  4. Increasing innovation/technology collaboration across the wider NZ Agriculture sector e.g. joint initiatives with farmer/grower organisations (like Zespri, Fonterra, Federated Farmers) and agritech companies
Check out the roadshow dates here, 22 March in Auckland.

Microsoft has revamped its startup program. The BizSpark program with its traditional focus on Azure credits is making room for Microsoft for Startups with reduced credits and more emphasis on co-selling. Co-selling means leveraging the MS distribution network and market reach to help startups sell.
James from FileInvite is already talking to Lochana @ MS. Worth checking out if this could help any of the startups you're working with.

[email protected] 

Newsletter ➢ ᴀFKAғ•2018#05

2/3/2018

 
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2 March 2018#05

Next Week ⇰  Tue 16:00  ADI.Clinic Whangarei ☆ Wed 17:30  EY Drinks, Britomart RSVP ☆ Thu 16:00  ADI.Clinic Auckland ☆ Thu 17:30   Caltex Spark Accelerator Roadshow

FileInvite $1M round is coming to a close
The legal docs are ready for signing. The last of the money is rolling in. James the founder and CEO has known for a long time exactly what he wants and we have even found a video to prove it. Little does he know.
FKAngels Garth and Phil deserve a big thank you for a sterling job they have done as co-champions. But work doesn't stop here for Garth as he will also step on the board of FileInvite.

Interesting week. Three startups on Wednesday in Takapuna. Thursday morning it looked like Takapuna would beat Auckland which had only one booking at that time. However, by lunchtime Auckland was also at three bookings: i) becsbartells ii) EvNex iii) ASB venture candidate.

If you have a deck with a view then share it. So does Andrew Moorby! EY is expecting 150 clients for casual networking drinks. FKAngels are very welcome and should RSVP to Andrew.

Glaister Ennor
After all those tears about Sarah going to the UK and a false Hollywood alarm re Money Masha, now some more positive news. Mark Hopkinson and Mike Roberton are stepping in to HELP FKA and they will continue to work together with Ah Song and Masha.

Chief Cat Herder Rudi caught up with the Darby brothers Zak and Tom from DCP. They have strong US connections and complement Chintaka's Asia focus with GD1 Fᴜɴᴅ ɪɪ. Their investment philosophy aligns well with FKA. They are effectively an Australasian outpost of Kayne Anderson which brings US money, know-how and connections.
They are filling the all-important gap of follow-on money for angel-backed companies and have offered to help with US intelligence in our DD. GREAT STUFF!
AANZ has awarded three scholarships totalling $5,000 to help Heath, Phil and Tim with the expenses of their upcoming trip to the ACA Summit in Boston. Thank you, Suse and the rest of the AANZ crew, and we wish our three FKAngels a great trip and safe flight. You'll have to tell us all about it!

Ever wondered why you cannot use electronic devices during take-off and landing? This video gives the answer!
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