Blog Archives

Newsletter ➢ ᴀFKAғ•2018#17

25/5/2018



	25 May 2018#17

The results from the DD Votes following our May Pitch Night are in.

Sadly, Black Pearl Mail did not get enough support to proceed to DD. Thank you to Josh for bringing Nick to the group for a pitch, a very dynamic and confident pitch that showed a strong US influence ?

Better news for Yabble! Of the 26 votes that we received every single one was in favour of DD, a great result. Watch the pitch video from CEO Kathryn to see for yourself. Cornelius will be leading DD and Debra, Jackie, Steve and Uli are helping. However, first up Cornelius and Kathryn have to settle the question of premoney.

Great news: Cornelius has finally turned himself into an employee after the last stage of the sale of his business with the catchy name went through. He is NOT late with his exit, he is just so much younger than many other angels. Helping to dispel Debra's «pale, stale and male» statistical stereotype. Just having completed DD on the founder side of the table, he will now jump on the other side to lead DD on Yabble.

Congrats from all of us at FKA! Remember we have the 3 ticks rule at FKA and the 3 months rule. The FKA honour calls for the lucky beneficiary of an EXIT to shout an unsolicited drink to any other FKAngel, on sight, for the 3 months after EXIT ???

Loving you Cornelius, not just for the next 3 months

Phil Southward, not Backward, our FKAngel in Munich is married to Sauerkraut (The Frau) and has written a whole book about it. So it is little surprise that his trip report from the ACA Summit in Boston nearly amounts to another book. Worth a read, he is a good writer!

10 Aɴɢᴇʟɪᴄ CPD Pᴏɪɴᴛs for reading his report on US trends, valuation methods, case studies and more.

But wait, there is more, Phil rants on. The above webinar is from the two Seraf investors who presented at the ACA summit. Tim W and I attended the session and it is outlined in my trip report. Both were really good presenters and the valuation method and spreadsheet they provided are pretty good.

I’m not 100% convinced of their method as it seems a bit complex and at such an early stage, valuations are a bit of finger in the air stuff. However, the Berkus method is more subjective than their method and perhaps also too simple now. I’d like to try the Seraf method on the next DD and compare to Berkus.
☞ Be nuanced and register here for this early morning webinar!

What are John and Suse at AANZ making a song and dance about? Finally, the Startup Genome benchmark results for NZ have come through. An Interesting read!

1) Global Report 2018 2) NZ Ecosystem Assessment 3) NZ Video Commentary

Note: Our Chief GIF Maker realised too late that genome ≠ gnome.

Garth and Tim G are already working with Arien after he came to ADI∙Clinic. Mitali reckons AUT Ventures has more gold and wants to open the treasure trove for FKA. Rudi is meeting her on Monday, 11:00 at AUT, CBD campus. Would be great to have some other FKAngels come along. Mitali will likely shout us coffee and we get to see some interesting early-stage businesses. Just ping Rudi.

Then at 13:00, interviews to help Janine, an Irish Academic in Auckland, with her research about the NZ angel world.

Put this one in your diary! KiwiNet helps us and other seed investors with the personality assessment of founder teams. However, primarily they are about helping with the commercialisation of IP that is generated at NZ universities.

Hot Lime Labs, our portfolio company #12, has come via KiwiNet. The day session will be full of new smart ideas and is well worth attending. The evening is all about celebrating success.

☞ Find out more and register here and bring another HLL to FKA!

FKA's concession to the GDPR is a more prominent unsubscribe button, placed right at the beginning of the newsletter with a flashing skull. More about this in the LinkedIn post.

Newsletter ➢ ᴀFKAғ•2018#16

18/5/2018



	18 May 2018#16

Tuesday was our FKA Pitch Night #040 with 50+ angels and guests, 2 pitches, 1 investee update, and 1 cake as it was also Jackie's birthday. She is still the same YOUNG! Happy Birthday! Sadly, our Chief Cat Herder failed to protect the cake.

Below are the pitch videos from Yabble and Black Pearl. Our normal voting process is underway to decide if we should proceed and assemble a DD team. Thank you to Debra and Cornelius for championing Yabble and Josh for championing Black Pearl.

Last week's ADI.Clinic in Auckland produced Yabble Julian So ran the Hamilton ADI.Clinic - Hamilton is caught up in Fieldays Fever. Yesterday Auckland looked a tad like Shark Tank with 8 mentors in a glass-walled meeting room. Our first punter was in the second half of the first age-century and we felt it prudent to offer her a glass of water upon the shock of entering the room.

Awesome! Thank you, Julian, mentors, even if you can look scary in numbers.

Arron Patterson
Cornelius Boertjens
Garth Hinton
Genevieve Tearle, regular mentor
Nelson Wang, Zino
Rudi Bublitz
Simon Brown, angel prospect
Victor Tsai, Zino

From June we will run ADI∙Clinic once a month in the evening as an open forum. This will better reach founders in full-time work and those who feel not ready for a 1:1 with angels. It will also provide opportunity for more FKAngels to get involved ?

Special thanks go to Generator and Innovation Captial (Elizabeth + Rory) for making this happen. See more details, join our Meetup group and, most important of all, join us for the first AAA event in June.

Little know fact: Rory can probably pitch the FKA model better than most.

Thank you Nina Le Lievre for this generous invite to EA's awesome pitching and showcase extravaganza at Fieldays that is leaving the showcase of other angel groups in the icy cold. To be sure this is all about high tech AgTech which Bill Murphy has been championing for years.

Sadly he has unsubscribed from this newsletter and will miss out on our reverent GIF. See you at Fieldays, Bill!

The May 2018 newsletter from the Angel Association New Zealand is out.

Phil's observation after last weeks link to the GoBeyond report: I checked them out in Munich last year and decided not to have anything to do with them even though they seem to have good stats.

They charge 20% carried interest on all exits, yet the investors choose their own investments.
High membership fees. If you don’t pay their highest fee, then they charge CHF 100 for visiting every investment evening.
I haven’t been able to find out for sure, but I think they charge fees on every investment. (Yes, 6%)
Then the killer for me - they charge startups to pitch !! The fees I saw were around CHF 250 per session.

Seems they are only interested in clipping the ticket, not in being angel investors.
Note from the editor: Phil evidently has big cat herding skills.

Two great events next Thursday. Click on the images to read more and register. An interesting line up of speakers from Grow North and the end of round one of the Velocity competition. The judges have seen some strong entries, there could be another Kami, our PFC#02 that evolved from that competition.

Interesting article and US data. Revenue has become a much more important prerequisite to funding, in 2010 only 10% of seed or A round funded companies had revenues, today it is more than half.

Newsletter ➢ ᴀFKAғ•2018#15

11/5/2018



	11 May 2018#15

May Pitch Night #040 is upon us, the 3rd Tuesday of the month is already this coming Tuesday, 15 May. Be there for drinks at and on KPMG from 18:30, 18 Viaduct Harbour Ave, Wynyard Quarter, Auckland.

Josh has just renewed our sponsorship agreement with KPMG who have been instrumental in helping FKA become a respected and influential player in New Zealand's startup ecosystem. We should do this again!

Martin wanted to bring GoNativeXP.com, also Jai and Uli have on up their sleeves but none pitch-perfect yet. Cornelius and Dreba might team up to bring a last minute entry. It looks like we'll have our hands full in the second half of the year.

However, we'll have some updates including Moxion and more from Debra, the first FKAngel who publicly outed her grandparent status. Are there others? Tim will give an update on the new R&D subsidies. Let's also brainstorm on "AAA".

Moxion CEO Hugh is in town on a flying visit from LA. He is joining us at the May Pitch Night for an update. As a little teaser watch the trailer of The Meg that was made on a $150M budget and with Moxion. See more of the films that were made with Moxion here. Talk with Hugh on Tuesday!

Startups are all about stretch but where there is stretch there can be overstretch. Sadly, StretchSense had a setback and had to drastically reduce the headcount. Please see Holly Ryan's write up.

The recent months have been stressful, a race to scale up production to satisfy orders for more than one million ZOZO suits. A race that was sheer impossible to win.

Rudi caught up with Investor Rep Chris recently who stepped in virtually full time to help SSL management. Post investment is not always glorious and about exit negotiations but can also involve crisis management. Thanks a million, Chris!
Remember: All press commentary should go via Chris and please do not volunteer conjecture or opinions that could be harmful to StretchSense or reflect negatively on FKA.

Mentoring and/or judging at business competitions are fun and can surface interesting startups. Kami is one such example. Thank you to all FKAngels and partners who are helping and giving their time for this.

Velocity - Innovation Challenge
Ah Song Sunwoo, Glaister ◇ Debra Hall ◇ Hattaf Ansari, NZVIF ◇ Hengjie Wang, Kami ◇ Rudi Bublitz ◇ Scott Campbell

Zino - New Kiwis Challenge
Debra Hall ◇ Rudi Bublitz ◇ talk to Debra to join this great initiative

0. Ventures - Growth Progam
Heath Milligan

Martin is running our northernmost ADI.Clinic in Whangarei. He is consistently attracting younger founders and more female founders than all our other sites. Martin is passionate about autonomous vehicles, a kite surfer and outdoor sportsman. He is one of the German FKAngels.

Thursday 17 May, 7.30 - 9.30am ☞ RSVP
WG308, AUT City Campus, 55 Wellesley Street, Auckland CBD
The most titillating title must be All Yetis Are Sexy! Read more here.

GO BEYOND is a European angel network that was founded in 2006 by Brigitte Baumann. They are highly FKAish in that they are also a highly engaged group. Check out the stats they are sharing!

Newsletter ➢ ᴀFKAғ•2018#14

4/5/2018



	4 May 2018#14

Last week we reported on Hot Lime Labs and one of our bearded angels. Since then our editor has stumbled across an image that humorously combines both in one.

The first HLL quarterly newsletter has also been published since then.

In July last year, our Chief Cat Herder unleashed Gobot on the FKA website to find out how people find us. We have exposed the bot dialogue 2,697 times since then and got 105 responses.

LinkedIn drives a lot of traffic to our site as do Rudi and Josh, in that order. Some more humorous responses included 'referred by God' and 'It was Rudi's particular fashion sense on a forest drive day that drew me to want to learn more :)'.

Entries for the AmCham 2018 Awards are open. Last year Kami PFC#02 won and Wherewolf PFC#09 was among the finalists. Rudi reminisces □Great champagne magnum at the Kami table! Fuel50 PFC#04 were winners in 2015. Who is it gonna be in 2018? Here the most relevant entry categories for our readers. Now, enter it's worth it!

Exporter with Sales of $0-1M or $1-10M
Bilateral Connections or Entrepreneur/Innovator

The dance animation is NOT Mike Hearn but was taken from the film "The Big Lebowski" to represent the joyous awards night.

How do you build the fastest yacht in the world? By going slow!

FKAngel Tim G reckons Kiwi expat Graham Dockrill wrote an interesting article on balancing incremental and disruptive improvement. That's worth keeping in mind when looking at startups!

Bob Stone is the founder of the new New Zealand Innovation Nation group on LinkedIn. Now, he is calling for lunch with MP Nikki Kaye at the Northern Club, Auckland, Wed 16 May, 1200 - 1400. RSVP

Newsletter ➢ ᴀFKAғ•2018#17

25 May 2018#17

Newsletter ➢ ᴀFKAғ•2018#16

18 May 2018#16

Newsletter ➢ ᴀFKAғ•2018#15

11 May 2018#15

Newsletter ➢ ᴀFKAғ•2018#14

4 May 2018#14

Categories

Archives