Our first pitch night in 2020 is next week!

Andy is bringing chnnl - Erick is bringing Dasset - maybe one more.

Great Charlie and Wayne, you were the first to start ADI.Clinic in 2020! ADI Auckland only resumed this week.

However, our investor rep Garth is keeping a cool head escorting his skiing protege daughter on the Northern Hemisphere.

Proud to announce the public release of the NOVA motion platform, the Eight360 team want to invite you to a special launch on 19 March.

"To understand why, we can return to the high-stakes room at the Casino de Monte-Carlo. If you’re a venture capitalist, you are, like James Bond, playing mostly with other people’s money. Unlike James Bond, you’re taking a fee to do it: the more money you start out with on the table (the larger the fund), the more gets slipped into your pocket—and that’s before you play your hand."

NZ Herald ◇ Stuff ◇ Gavin's LinkedIn

Level 3, 125 St Georges Bay Road, Parnell

We had just short of 300 x 20 min sessions at ADI.Clinic in 2019 across all sites. ADI will resume in February 2020 including new sites in Manukau and Nelson.

Yes, many of our investments follow from an earlier engagement at ADI.

The Policy Statement is available here.

DD teams are working away on Hivemind and Koru Diagnostics. The Champions for Eight360, Moxion and Punch will deliver DD packs before Xmas. Some parent Angels have gifted investment funds in the past to fuel to business model conversations around the dinner table.

A special THANK YOU is in order for Jai! In 2019 he has helped every DD team with process advice and the setup of the data rooms.

On the second Thursday of each month, we witness the race between Queenstown and Auckland ADI.Clinic for who is seeing more startups. Yesterday, Auckland saw 1 and Queenstown 3.

Queenstown wins

Charlie in 1994 leaving Clevedon for work or Forrest starting his big run?

The Surprise winner of 50 Angels racing Jaguars was CCH Rudi
Usually, he helps others go faster.

Glen is sharing KiwiNet's Pipeline Post for December. 

A Plug for Sharon and Love My New Zealand

Straight from the mare's mouth

"If you have a small spot this Friday to let Angels know that if they are not convinced by now that Shaz and Love My New Zealand are all about the delivery of the experience then hopefully if they have forgotten anyone who is really important in the run-up to the festive gift-giving, they are welcome to make contact for a tailored budget, tailored experience, tailored execution."

Sharon@LoveMyNewZealand.com

☞ Nominate

The tenor of reporting has changed as the local press is playing catch up.

AngelEquity was borne from the fear of the crowdfunding wave. It closed its doors earlier this year.

The NBR reports for the year to June 2019, there were 34% fewer successful crowdfunding offers and 52% fewer licensed investors investing through the platform. Snowball Effect and PledgeMe, the first to be licensed for equity crowdfunding five years ago, remain the two biggest players.

The NBR report from August highlighted the challenges of operators in this space as all of them keep writing losses.

Not 50 Angels but we have several 50-year-old Angels signed up to jump into Jaguars and i-Pace around the track next Monday. Thank god for Debra or it would be an all-male affair.  We might have some pics next week? Odds are favouring Debra over Garth at this point! So let's see.

It was in June 2018 when Uli Wiehle wheeled in Toothcrush to pitch. We started DD but in the end, the founders decided to go for bank finance. Less than 18 months later they have no sold the business. □□□□□□□!

This is the LinkedIn post by James Hurman. 

Throughout this year Rudi has posted variously about the issue of commission charges on startup founders in the New Zealand ecosystem. News from the recent □□ℕℤ □□□□□□ is that the message has been heard loud and clear It is now over to the individual Angel groups to retune their operations as they gradually transition from fees on founders to fees on investors. This is the LinkedIn post.

He will be mixing it up in NZ with Hillferance VC, announcing the first three events in 2020 to link US investors with NZ founders, separate dinners with investors and founders.

Beware of artificial intelligence ‘snake oil’

Arvind Narayanan - must read!  Synoptic extract or full NBR article.

Mocap is getting better at StretchSense and Ben has now added a face mask. Interesting to watch the journey. Watch Ninja Ben in action! 

The 2019 report on the AUS startup ecosystem. Read here why the Aussie VCs are coming to NZ to hunt for deer and unicorns □□

Sad news from Finland - Santa bankrupt! This is his official statement. 

Thank you, Joe. Thank you, MIG, for bringing your portfolio company to FKA for this round.

FKA is a labour of love and only possible with a division of labour amongst our Angels. The new fka.nz/roles page attempts to show who is taking care of what at the moment. GIF alert!

A big THANK YOU to all who have, are or will take on such roles from time to time to share the workload.

Wayve is dedicated to accelerating autonomous mobility and has raised a US$20M Series A round. Co-founder Alex Kendall took his first entrepreneurial steps at Velocity.

This is why FKAngels help every year with judging and mentoring at the Velocity's $100k Challenge - a breeding ground for startup founders!

Garth is our NZVIF Rep and makes sure that FKA and NZVIF will continue to work together closely on diligence to co-invest in great deals.

1. Having one voice for the NZ startup community to policymakers is key.  This voice only needs to focus on 3-4 key high priority/mutually agreeable actions to lobby government, not try to get wide approval on too many issues (to hard considering the diverse interests at play). And this voice must include founders and/or ‘founder come funders’.  The primary voices in NZ, AANZ and the emerging Startup Leadership Group, are both lacking in the latter and arguably may not be the best vehicle for this voice (just my opinion)…
2. Establishing communities, especially around key subsectors (e.g. fintech, creativetech, agritech, spacetech etc), is critical in fostering innovation and growth.
3. Involving corporates, not just superficially, is the next level.
4. The 100 (1, 9, 90) rule. It only takes one leader, nine key do’ers, and 90 supporters to influence and create change in any ecosystem!  You just have to give it a crack.

We had five great pitches, two are looking for FKA to lead the round and will go to the vote to confirm support for full DD. The three others will be circulated as a co-investment opportunity in due course.

Thank you, to our hosts at KPMG and everyone who came out to make this a great night.

In the meantime, watch the pitch!

Your feedback is very welcome! See the updated IMO ☞ here.

See this funny interview ☞ here.

If you're interested ping Rudi.Bublitz@fka.nz

Tuesday 19 November, 18:00 is our last Pitch Night in 2019. Hosted generously by KPMG, 18 Viaduct Harbour Ave, Wynyard Quarter, AKL.

Guests by invitation from our Angels or sponsors KPMG, LoJo and Potentia are always very welcome.

Great to see Terry win the engineering award and progress to pitch.

James at KPMG is working through the red tape so they can bring a real cow for a practical demo to the townie Angels in Auckland.