Top 50 Software Angel Investors in New Zealand in January 2025

Venture Capitalist, Managing Partner, Chief Technology Officer

Emlyn is a successful founder and investor with personal investments in fast growing tech companies like Kami, A.Kin, MealMe, Segna, and EnsuredIt. Managing Partner at CP Ventures and the founder of OpenMarkets Group, Australia's second-largest retail broker. He was former CEO of the National Stock Exchange of Australia, Australia’s secondlargest listing stock exchange, for four and a half years. Prior to that he was Head of Business Development at LCH.Clearnet for equities and CFDs in London for nine years, the world’s largest independent clearing house. He has four finance related degrees: Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), Masters Business Administration (MBA), Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance and Investment (GDAFI), and Bachelor of Economics (BEc).

Chintaka Ranatunga

Peter Beck is the founder and chief executive of Rocket Lab, a space systems company and the world’s leading dedicated small satellite launch provider. Rocket Lab provides end-to-end mission services, including complete satellite build and launch solutions, that provide rapid, frequent and reliable access to space. Rocket Lab has been launchingsince May 2017, delivering satellites to orbit for commercial and government customers, including DARPA, NASA, the NRO, the United States Air Force and more. Since founding the business in 2006, Peter has grown Rocket Lab to become a globally recognized industry leader in space and a billion-dollar company employing hundreds of world-class engineers. In addition to creating Electron, the world’s first fully carbon-fibre orbital launch vehicle, Peter also oversaw the development of the world’s first and only private orbital launch range, located on New Zealand's Māhia Peninsula. He played a crucial role in establishing international treaties and legislation to enable orbital launch capability from New Zealand.

Founder/CEO of ThisData, a login intelligence and contextual authentication platform. Founder/CEO of Litmos.com, a leading SaaS Learning Management System that was acquired by CallidusCloud (NASDAQ: CALD) in 2011.

Alex Rigopulos Co-Founded Harmonix in 1995 with the mission of inventing new ways for non-musicians to experience the joy of making music. He was CEO until 2014. Now, as CCO, Alex is responsible for ensuring the creative excellence of all Harmonix products. Prior to co-founding Harmonix, Alex studied computer music at the MIT Media Laboratory andmusic composition at MIT.

Phil McCaw - Managing Partner @ Movac

Shane And Vanessa JOHNSTON

Jonathan Hendriksen - Founder | CEO @ Shuttlerock

Maurice Eng

Akshay Kothari is the co-founder of Pulse, a mobile application that allows you to read all your favorite content in one place. Pulse began as a class project in the Launchpad class at Stanford University, and has grown to over 30 million users today. It won the coveted Apple Design Award in 2011 and was inducted into the App Store Hall of Fame.Pulse was recently acquired by Linkedin for $90 million.

Stephen Tindall is the founder of K1W1.

Nicole Fougere - Co-Founder & CCO @ ThisData

Richard Collier-Keywood was named as Network Vice Chairman on 1 November 2011. In this role, Richard will be responsible for the coordination of PwC's global strategy across the network leading PwC's Network Executive Team (NET).Prior to this appointment Richard was the Global Leader, Tax, an appointment he took up on 1 July 2008.He previously led the UK firm's tax practice for five years.

Dylan Field is the CEO and Co-founder of Figma, a design and prototyping platform for teams who build products together. With the support of the Thiel Fellowship, Dylan dropped out of Brown University to start Figma with his TA Evan Wallace (who became Figma’s CTO). They built Figma on the web in the hopes of tearing down the walls around thesiloed design process. Dylan champions open, accessible design and believes such tooling must evolve for a cloud-based, collaborative world. He tweets @zoink

Craig Winkler Co-founded Australian small business accounting software provider MYOB in 1991. Craig built MYOB to be a popular business tool and brand which, in 2004, merged with Solution 6 to become Australia’s largest IT company. Craig joined Xero's board and became a substantial shareholder in 2009. He now spends the bulk of his timeworking in the philanthropic sector.

Harald McPike is a successful quantitative trader and global private investor.

Rowan Simpson - Chairman & Trustee @ Hoku Group

Ross is CEO & Co-Founder at Wego, an online travel marketplace (aka travel metasearch) operating across APAC and MENA backed by top-tier investors including Tiger Global, Crescent Group, Square Peg Capital, MNC Group and MEVP. Ross is a veteran of the Asian internet industry having established Yahoo!s Southeast Asian operations in Singaporeback in 1998 and leading product development efforts across the region for 6+ years. He is also Singapore Co-Chair of H2, the premier global leadership network for the digital industry. Ross has been an active angel investor in the technology sector for a decade and enjoys working with other passionate entrepreneurs. He has worked in Sydney, Melbourne, London, Kuala Lumpur and is now splits his time between Singapore and Dubai. He travels frequently for business but not nearly enough for leisure.

Alistair Grigg

20 years of working with businesses and other organisations with strategy, finance, management, governance, reporting, accounting, tax, projects...Now I spend most of my time running an innovative software company - Spotlight Reporting - that offers 4 performance-focussed SaaS products for business advisors and business owners in the Xeronetwork. Selling advanced reporting, cashflow forecasting, dashboard and multi-entity goodness to NZ, US, UK and Australia.I am also GM of Spotlight Workpapers, an online compliance solution for accounting firms, acquired by Xero in 2012. Xero provide the world-leading cloud accounting product.I am also founder and Director of Francis Consulting, a boutique advisory, VCFO and Chartered Accounting practice based in Wellington. We love working with innovative businesses run by good people - helping with strategy, decision-making, CFO stuff.I also love working with the Silverstripe CMS guys, where I provide Director/Shareholder, strategic and VCFO input. Another favourite business is Peoples Coffee, where I Chair the Board of Directors.Goals for Spotlight Reporting - to be the most successful, innovative software provider in the business intelligence space.Goals for FC - to stay small and smart as a business, respected by those 'in the know'. Partner with cool people, keep things interesting.And...to have a sustainable, holistic approach to business, which means that we contribute more than just 'bottom line'...

Scobie Ward is the Chairman & CEO of Ward Ferry Management.

Sam Altman is the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI. Sam was previously the Chairman of Y Combinator, a leading silicon valley startup accelerator.

Vivek Garipalli was the Co-Founder, CEO, and Board Member of Clover Health. He attended Emory University.

Mark Ritson is Adjunct Professor of Marketing at Melbourne Business School and Visiting Professor of Marketing at Singapore Management University. He has a PhD in Marketing from Lancaster University and has been a faculty member at some of the world's leading business schools teaching on the MBA programs at London Business School, MIT Sloan,and the University of Minnesota. He is widely acknowledged as one of the world's best marketing instructors and has been the recipient of awards for his teaching at LBS, MIT, SMU and MBS.Mark has worked globally on projects ranging from brand strategy, market research, segmentation, CRM, marketing communications, brand acquisition, brand valuation and brand extension. For thirteen years - from 2002 to 2015 - he served as in-house professor for LVMH - the world's largest luxury group - working with senior executives from brands like Louis Vuitton, Dom Perignon, Fendi, Tag Heuer, Dior and Hennessy.Mark has written a weekly column on branding for Marketing Week for over a decade. On three occasions he has been judged the Business Columnist of the Year at the PPA Press Awards, the highest award for magazine journalism in the UK. He is also a columnist for The Australian newspaper. His more scholarly publications include articles published in Sloan Management Review, Harvard Business Review, the Journal of Advertising, and the Journal of Consumer Research. He was the recipient of the Ferber Award in 2000, one of the most prestigious prizes in Marketing, for his doctoral thesis.

Paul Reeve

Biography: Currently... * Business Angel * PayPal Executive * Board Member Europ-Assistance * Founder Peranakan S.L. Formerly... * McKinsey Director (Senior Partner) * Chief innovation Officer (SingTel) * Chairman Innoventures (JV SoftBank / SingTel)

Andrew Thorburn became Managing Director & Group Chief Executive Officer of National Australia Bank Limited (NAB) in August 2014, one of Australia's largest financial services groups. The majority of NAB's businesses operate in Australia and New Zealand, with other businesses located in Asia, the UK and the US.A career banker,Andrew joined NAB in 2005 as head of retail banking. In October 2008, he became Managing Director & CEO of Bank of New Zealand and was responsible for its strategic positioning and performance, before moving into his current role.Beginning his career as an economist at Marac Holdings in Auckland, Andrew has held senior management positions at ASB Bank, Commonwealth Bank of Australia and St George Bank.Andrew holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Economics) from University of Auckland, a Diploma in Marketing from Chartered Institute of Marketing UK, and an MBA from the University of Durham UK. He has also completed The Executive Programme (TEP) at Darden Business School, University of Virginia.Andrew served as Chairman of the Australian Bankers’ Association from December 2015 to December 2017.Born in Melbourne, Australia, Andrew is married with three children.

Partner at Founders Fund.

Phil Quist is currently working at Creative Artists Agency and is the Founder of PQ Selects. He is also an Investor at Connect Ventures and a Board Member at Forbes. Prior to that, he was an Investment Banking Analyst at Morgan Stanley. Phil attended Southern Methodist University.

Chase Coleman is the Founder of Tiger Global

chair

Rod Drury is the founder and director at Xero.He attended Victoria University of Wellington.

Hamish Edwards is a co-founder and the CEO of Edwards holds a bachelor’s degreein accounting and marketing from Otago University.

Boon Hwee is the founding partner of Credence and Chairman of the investment committee. Concurrently, Boon Hwee is a member of Agilent Technologies Inc, Chairman of AAC Technologies, Yeo Hiap Seng Limited, and Sunningdale Tech Limited.Boon Hwee began his career in 1977 at Hewlett Packard ("HP") and rose to become its Managing Directorin Singapore, a position he held from 1985 to 1990. Boon Hwee's other previous positions include:Chairman of Singapore Telecom Group ("SingTel") and its predecessor organisations for 17 yearsChairman of Singapore Airlines Limited ("SIA") for 4 yearsChairman of Development Bank of Singapore ("DBS") for 4 yearsDirector on the Board of Temasek Holdings Private Limited for 15 years (Boon Hwee also served as a member of the Executive Committee from January 1997 to September 2010)Chairman of the Wuthelam Group for 10 yearsBoon Hwee was named the Outstanding Manager of the Year in 1991 by Business Times and DHL Worldwide. He was conferred The International Herald Tribune Visionary and Leader Honour in January 2003.Boon Hwee contributes actively to non-profit organisations, and is the current Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Nanyang Technological University and a Director of the Hewlett Foundation in the United States.Boon Hwee obtained his Bachelor's Degree (First Class Honours) in Mechanical Engineering from the Imperial College of Science and Technology, University of London in 1972 and his MBA (Distinction) from the Harvard Business School in 1976.

Benny Kleist is a Founder & COO of Eucalyptus.He attended The University of Queensland.

Hykeem Jamaal Carter

Nas, byname of Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones, also called Nasty Nas, (born September 14, 1973, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.), American rapper and songwriter who became a dominant voice in 1990s East Coast hip-hop. Nas built a reputation as an expressive chronicler of inner-city street life.Nasir Jones, the son of a jazz musician, grew up in public housingin Queens, New York. He dropped out of school in the eighth grade and searched for a creative outlet, finally settling on hip-hop. His breakthrough came in 1992, when his song “Half Time” (credited to Nasty Nas) appeared on the sound track to the film Zebrahead. Columbia Records soon signed him to a contract. His debut recording as Nas, Illmatic (1994), drew widespread acclaim for its poetic narration of hard-edged inner-city life.The more pop-oriented approach of It Was Written (1996) helped that album reach an even wider audience than its predecessor but ignited a recurring tension in Nas’s career between the appetite of the pop audience and the demands of hip-hop purists. He maintained his commercial appeal with I Am... (1999), although by that time he had also become embroiled in a public feud with fellow rapper Jay-Z over which of the two was the preeminent voice in East Coast hip-hop. The schism inspired Stillmatic (2001), which many fans considered a return to form. The two rappers publicly settled their differences in 2005, and shortly thereafter Nas signed with Def Jam, of which Jay-Z was president at the time.Nas’s penchant for provocation marked Hip Hop Is Dead (2006) and an untitled follow-up (2008), while Life Is Good (2012) struck an introspective tone. He also notably collaborated with reggae musician Damian Marley (the youngest son of Bob Marley) on the album Distant Relatives (2010).Nas also made occasional film appearances, notably in Belly (1998), a crime drama in which he starred opposite rapper DMX, and Black Nativity (2013), an adaptation of Langston Hughes’s gospel play.

Jason Stockwood is a Transformational Leaders Fellowship at Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford.

Chris Heaslip

Connor Theilmann is the Chief Business Officer at ServiceTitan. Previously he was an investor at Accel in Palo Alto. He attended The Wharton School for Accounting and Finance & the Penn Engineering School for Computer Science.

Konstantin Koos is a VC/DLT Investor ✦ Strategy Consultant ✦ Best Selling Author ✦ Researcher ✦ Health and Happiness enthusiast ✦ Family Man.

Ben leads a regional team at Xero that has established new digital customer experiences by working with the financial services industry on customer controlled two-way data share. In the process Xero has established new commercial standards for the industry globally.Driven by a desire to make new ideas a commercial reality, Ben has held leadershiproles in digital innovation, product management, and customer strategy across wholesale banking, business banking, and retail financial services.

James Watt is an Aberdeenshire entrepreneur who co-founded one of the world’s most popular craft breweries, BrewDog.Before embarking on a hop-fuelled journey that would change the face of the beer industry forever, James completed an honours degree in Law and Economics. It didn’t take long for him to discover that the corporate suit-and-tie worldof litigation and libel was not for him, so he packed in his career in a law after a few weeks, opting to return to the bitter cold shores of Northeast Scotland to join his father as a fully-qualified Deepsea Captain.At 24-years-old, James took a new path. Inspired by the bold and experimental beers being crafted by a new movement of brewers on the West Coast of the U.S, James joined forces with friend Martin Dickie, and together the pair started brewing their own beers in Martin’s mum’s garage. In a world dominated by cask bitters and mass-produced lagers, their penchant for heavily-hopped and relentlessly bitter beers made them a unique duo, especially in the town of Fraserburgh. Undeterred by opinion, they pursued their passion through meticulous study, experimentation and boundary-pushing ideas, hellbent on showcasing that beer could be more than just fizzy yellow liquid made by global dominating brewers.2007 was a seminal year for James. BrewDog became a reality, setting up shop on a derelict industrial estate in Fraserburgh between a needle exchange and ‘The Godfather of Carpets’. While Martin took the reins on brewing and production, James focused on growing the business, handling accounts and spearheading the brand’s new breed of irreverent marketing that grabbed headlines for years to come. Not only did the pair produce some of the most exciting beers the UK has ever seen, but James also led the charge on Equity for Punks, a ground-breaking new crowdfunding initiative that would be mirrored for years to come by other brands across the globe. In 2014, James was awarded Great British Entrepreneur of the Year. He is also one of only a handful of people in Europe holding the title of Master Cicerone5, a title reserved for only the most diligent beer experts. In 2016, he was awarded the MBE in the 2016 Queen’s Birthday Honours list. By this time, BrewDog was now 9 years old and boasted a 360-person strong workforce, 26 bars across the UK and Europe, as well as over 14,000 shareholders. Latter achievements include a number of publishing deals. James released Business for Punks: Break All The Rules – The BrewDog Way and co-wrote BrewDog: Craft Beer for the People. These books both showed the impact that BrewDog had on the beer, from both a business and marketing perspective, as well highlighting the importance of exceptional quality products in a world heavily populated by mainstream beer. But times were changing, and James was at the front of the pack, leading the way and carving a new path for the beer world.By 2019, James’ passion for sustainability had become integral to the brand. BrewDog was employing over 2,000 people at this time, with 100 bars located around the globe and over 130,000 Equity Punk shareholders. Amazing beer was still at the heart of everything James was doing, but building sustainability into this world was now not a question of if, but when.So, in 2020, BrewDog announced that they were the world’s first carbon negative brewery – a huge step that would see the industry take note and follow suit with commitments to change the way they do business. James worked closely with Small World Consulting’s Mike Berners-Lee to calculate the businesses carbon emissions and identify ways to reduce these through authentic reforestation programmes, which included a 9,308 acre plot of land in the Scottish Highlands and set forth to embark on one of the largest reforestation projects the UK has ever seen. In just 15 years, the beer world has transformed. Beyond the liquid in your glass, the breweries at the forefront of the movement are more than just suppliers of a product. They are social commentators, integral to local communities and beacons of quality and change. James has been paramount to these developments, showing that beer can be a force for good.

In January, I started another company, Vital Software, with Dr. Justin Schrager of Emory University. Vital makes software for hospital emergency rooms. This includes a mobile patient check-in for patients, and the fastest, most usable electronic medical records you've seen for doctors and nurses. We use extensive machine learning and naturallanguage processing to determine patient severity and anticipated actions. Our longer term goal is to cut ER wait times in half, as they are often 4-5 hours long. You might not know it, but there are 140M ER visits in the US alone each year.Medical / sales are in the US, while development is all in Auckland New Zealand. My long-time partner Rebecca, an architect, is a Kiwi and I am now a resident of New Zealand as well.

Chris Adelsbach - Founding Partner @ Outrun Ventures

Tim Ringel is a Global CEO at Meet The People. He attended the University of Duisburg-Essen from 1996 to 2001.

John Greenslade

Kirsti Grant - CEO & Co-founder @ Populate

Yoshihiro Kawamura - Director @ TJK NZ LIMITED