Maker Partners: Rod Snodgrass, Jonathan Reid, Marko Bogoievski and Hemant Walter-Rao. Photo / Supplied
New investment capital firm Maker Partners has raised $15 million in its latest fund as it moves to build a diversified portfolio of high-growth companies.
Maker, which calls itself a purpose-driven venture capital firm, has
its eyes set on young founders in early start-ups forging global social and sustainable change.
The VC was founded in February by former Spark Ventures CEO Rod Snodgrass, former Infratil CEO Marko Bogoievski, serial entrepreneur Jonathon Reid and tech whizz Hemant Walter-Reo, who is said to have helped build India’s first e-commerce site.
Since setting up Maker, the group has made three investments.
It has invested $1.5m in on-demand home services business NexDo, which books lawn mowing, cleaning and junk removal services through its app.
It has also invested $1m in conscious women’s fashion brand Paris Georgia and $1.6m in non-synthetics fragrance company Abel Odor, founded by former wine maker Frances Shoemack.
The founders of all three businesses – Frances Shoemack, Sakshin Niranjan and Paris Mitchell Temple and Georgia Cherrie, in their late 20s and early 30s.
Maker Partners lead Rod Snodgrass said Maker had surpassed its $15m fund target and would close it ahead of Christmas with more than $18m for its first fund.
Maker had put in 20 per cent of it target, to the tune of $3m.
The funds raised would be used over the next two to three years for four to six investments per year.
“Other funds write lots of small cheques – investing in a lot companies on the basis that one of them will go big. We’re a bit different than that,” Snodgrass told the Herald.
“We’re investing in a small number writing large cheques based on higher conviction.”
As active investors, Maker’s partners often sat on investment company boards and helped with key hires, networking and ongoing support and mentorship.
At this stage Maker was only interested in investing in New Zealand-based companies.
Snodgrass is on the board of NexDo and had invested in the firm prior to Maker’s involvement. He is also on the board of Paris Georgia following his personal interests and experience with global apparel through Kiwi outdoor clothing company Ilabb.
“We’re looking for New Zealand companies that are purpose-driven that have disruptive products or platforms that address an existing problem in the global market.”
Maker has little interest in “deep tech” companies or government enterprise modelled start-ups, but it is interested in businesses that are enabled by technology.
Snodgrass said he, like the other founders, were motivated to help build “great Kiwi businesses”.
He said Maker was not solely focused on chasing the next unicorn.
“We’re in very disruptive times when a lot of the large traditional businesses are in decline.
“They’re being attacked by small disruptive businesses, and I do worry that New Zealand’s not going to have enough new businesses and new growth and where are the jobs going to come from,” he added.
“So to me, a lot of it is about building a large number of great Kiwi businesses over the next decade.”
The investment into the first three companies was at the higher end of cheques and typically started with small investments in firms at pre-seed and seed stages starting from $250,000 to $2m.
“We want to see all of these businesses become multi tens of million-dollar businesses at a minimum in terms of value, if not hundreds of millions,” said Snodgrass.
“We personally are not that interested in unicorns – the billion-dollar businesses like Xero – we’re quite happy to have ten $100m businesses than chase one billion-dollar one. We focus on building lots of great businesses.”
He said unicorns were rare, especially in New Zealand.
“We’re looking to make the founders rich and create great, valuable businesses that do awesome things for the world and create jobs.”
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