As this post mentions Punakaiki Fund Limited it could be construed as an advertisement for our public offer for New Zealand residents. So here is the link to the Product Disclosure Statement and you can invest online at Snowball Effect or directly with us. The main reason for the post about Trump yesterday was to make the point that the US economy …
Author Archives: Lance Wiggs
10 Reasons for Hope in a Trump-led USA
It’s hard to see much hope for the world now, but let’s look for some brightness in the despair of the prospect of a Trump presidency. 10: The entertainment will not stop – especially when Trump gets his Twitter account back. 9: Trump clearly doesn’t like hard work, so don’t expect him to drive through major changes …
Punakaiki Fund PDS – Highlights 1 – The structure
The Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) for Punakaiki Fund Limited is published, and the offer for new shares opens tomorrow, 9th November. Read the PDS to learn more. Here’s the structure of Punakaiki Fund. As you can see we have shareholdings of varying sizes in 18 companies.
Let’s make downtown Auckland safe
Today someone in a van full of workers threw egg at me, while I was cycling to work. He was a lousy tosser, and the egg ended up on the street. It was as I was waiting to turn right into Commerce St from Quay St. I chased the van down, much to their surprise, …
What can we learn from Wynyard’s Voluntary Administration?
It is sad to see that the administrators called into Wynyard Group today. This should never happen, especially to what was a very well funded company. The cause is made pretty clear from the revenue and expense chart below: (Source – Wynyard annual and interim reports. Please don’t quote this – the 2016 half year numbers …
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Punakaiki Fund 2016 AGM and September Roadshow
We held our Annual General Meeting for Punakaiki Fund on Thursday last week, with over 70 people attending and chaired by Mike Bennetts. The group saw presentations from founders or senior staff from Weirdly, Vibe Communications, Vend, Onceit, Timely, Mobi2Go, EverEdgeIP, Mindfull, Redseed, Populate, and Linewize. We also presented briefly on the other companies where we have …
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Learning from Theranos
The last round of VC investors into Theranos makes for somber reading. In March 2015 Theranos raised an estimated US$573 million for their 6th round, making a total of $750 million raised. Their 7th round, for $200m, has apparently blown up before completion. Theranos was selling a blood testing service that apparently needed tiny amounts of …
20 Obvious things for Auckland and time for a new Council
We can easily forget that most people don’t read Transport Blog, find The High Cost of Free Parking obvious or understand that great cities are great to walk in – and lousy to drive in. Many of us have lived overseas though, and we just tend to forget just how things worked over there and what is missing here. …
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Do we live in a tax paradise?
For a society that provides a full range of services aren’t we remarkably low-taxed in New Zealand? I was comparing notes with my Australian-based brother this week, and the differences are stark. Our top income tax rate is 33%, and we have no capital gains tax, while property rates (for me in Auckland) are just 0.29% of …
Punakaiki Fund invests in NZ Artesian Water
Crosspost from Punakaiki Fund. New Investment: NZ Artesian Water We’ve seen plenty of headlines recently about offshore companies bottling our water and making fortunes. So when I met Nelson-based Kiwis Andrew Strang and Wayne Herring through a Better by Capital engagement, I was eager to see how their New Zealand Artesian Water business (NZAW) was progressing. The answer was “very well”, …
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Punakaiki Fund invests in Linewize
Crosspost from Punakaiki Fund. New Investment: Linewize Managing Internet access is hard – do you allow staff or your family to view the unfiltered internet, or block everything except for approved sites? It’s even harder at schools. On the one hand, you don’t want students accessing inappropriate content, or spending their time and the school’s bandwidth …
Punakaiki Fund invests in Populate
Crosspost from Punakaiki Fund. New Investment: Populate One of our core motivations at Punakaiki Fund is being able to help and watch companies create a large number of sustainable new jobs. And one of the best people around at hiring new people is Kirsti Grant, who was in charge of the rapid ramp-up of Vend’s …
The latest SCIF term sheets – the Punakaiki Fund mark-up
At Punakaiki Fund we like to keep things simple, and we encourage other investors and all founders to do the same. However in past years the contracts used for many NZ-VIF/SCIF deals have been arguably quite toxic against founders, and these can make it very hard for investors, founders and the next round investors. But things …
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Is there a future in food for New Zealand?
New Zealand’s traditional leadership in agriculture is due to our land, climate, hard work and invention from generations of farmers, and our universities and business that have supported them with increasingly valuable technology. But our position is under threat, not today, but in the medium term certainly. The threat is that high quality food will be grown essentially anywhere for lower cost …
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Is NZVIF Directionally Correct?
The New Zealand Venture Investment Fund was set up 14 years ago with the best intentions – to foster an early stage investment sector in New Zealand by being a fund of funds. It’s has $250 million for VC and PE funds, but only $129.7 million of that had been invested to June 2015 and $100 million of …
Lance Wiggs 