Meet Serge

The Sales & Marketing Chapter is led by Movac Operating Partner, Serge van Dam. Serge spent 10 years in mobile banking and payments, principally as Chief Marketing Officer of M-Com, the world’s leading provider of mobile banking platforms to financial institutions (acquired by Nasdaq-listed Fiserv in 2011).  In that period, he gained deep experience in international market entry (US, Europe, Asia, etc), B2B marketing and thought leadership, and managing sales and channel teams at scale.

In the last five years, Serge has been an active investor and Director in early-stage, high-growth, going-global Kiwi B2B software companies, with particular attention to growth strategies.  He would describe his super-power as ‘disruptive marketing’ and has a long-standing interest in ethics and leadership development.

Upcoming events line-up:

Marketing Offsite #2

Digital marketing for non-digital companies.

In this highly practical workshop dedicated to hardware and specialised manufacturing companies, we cover (1) Defining digital marketing: channels and tools (2) Identifying your growth goals (an exercise) (3) Introducing your funnel (4) Building your presence online (5) Outbound tools and techniques (6) Inbound tools and techniques (7) Metrics and measurement.

Lead: Judit Maireder is an entrepreneur, digital strategist, business advisor, and board member. She is the founder of Y brand, a consulting agency creating purpose-driven business strategies, brand concepts and storytelling for non-software companies. Judit is Beachhead Advisor at New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, supporting and guiding businesses with their digital transformation.

Details: Wednesday 1 November, in person, NZTE offices, Auckland. 8.30am – 12.30pm.  This highly practical offsite is first reserved for Movac portfolio companies. We are pleased to be running this workshop in partnership with our friends at NZTE!

Movac Disruptive Marketing Jam

Six marketing leaders sharing six cases on disruptive digital marketing.

The shiniest tools in the box: Hear about unorthodox case studies of marketing interventions that have delivered compelling growth, from some of New Zealand’s top tech marketing leaders.

Hosted by Serge van Dam, Movac Operating Partner.

Speaker lineup:
Dave Shoemack – CEO, Goodnature
Mikayla Hopkins – Head of Marketing, Tracksuit
Jo Blundell – CEO, CarbonCrop
Marcus Hoefliger – VP Marketing, Auror
Georgina Bondfield – Head of Marketing, Re-Leased
Jessie Logan – Director of Marketing, Tradify

 

Date: Wednesday 1 November
Location: The Maritime Room, Princes Wharf, Auckland.
Workshop: 1.00 pm – 4.00 pm
Networking drinks: 4.00 pm – 5.00 pm
✨ Register here ✨

We are pleased to be running this workshop in partnership with our friends at Salesforce!

Sales Offsite #2

Morning – Selling from NZ to the world: best practices in remote selling. In this masterclass hear a practical ‘how to’ with real examples of interventions that help Kiwi companies sell remotely.

Lead: Serge van Dam

Afternoon – Scaling a global sales team. Practical lessons – scars, tactics and opportunities – in building global sales organisations.

Lead: David Leach is the current Chief Executive Officer at Cin7, a fast-growing and global inventory software business. Before Cin7, he has been in senior leadership and executive positions at ezyVet, Qrious and Orion Health. David has been managing international sales teams for well over a decade and has had success in this context in various industries, deal sizes and geographies.

​Lead: Ricky Sevta has a wealth of global experience in B2B SaaS and played a key role in driving Simpro’s transformation from a startup dream to a $1B+ global business. As the Chief Revenue Officer, Ricky oversaw the customer life cycle and managed multiple global revenue streams. As part of his role, Ricky built and managed a team across several operational and sales roles, including Sales/Business Development, Account Executives, Field Sales, Inside Sales, X-sell/Up-sell, CS/Account Management and Partner/Channel Alliances.

Details: Thursday 2 November, in person, NZTE offices, Auckland. This highly practical offsite is first reserved for Movac portfolio companies.

 

Past 2023 events:

Customer advocacy: strategies that deliver

Agenda: This online primer session looks at what customer advocacy is and why it is valuable (including examples of optimal case studies and reviews), where to distribute, and how to convert and scale. Denym will explain his process, including examples on how to go from happy customers > reviews > case studies, and how they impact top, middle and bottom of funnel metrics.

This session is open to all Kiwi sales and marketing operators.

Lead: Denym Bird, CEO of Latechaser, is a product-growth leader, with 8 years of experience in running, and scaling digital demand generation (organic search, PPC, email, reviews, events), and teams for product-led businesses Xero, Tradify, and A2X, including starting his own product-led business, Paintvine.  Denym has experimented with customer advocacy from his early days at Tradify, and honed replicable strategies over his career as a freelancer, for dozens of other SaaS businesses in the past 8 years, and his own event business, Paintvine. He has generated 1000s of online reviews, and built 100s of case studies with scalable strategies that will build an advocacy moat around your business in the places it matters, while also having a positive impact on your marketing funnel metrics.

Details: Wednesday 22 March 9-10.30am online – Registrations closed.

 

How to build a community

Agenda: In this online primer session, get practical ‘how to’ steps on how to build an effective customer and user community that helps you grow efficiently, and establishes sustained market leadership.

This session is open to all Kiwi sales and marketing operators.

Lead: Sian Simpson is an award-winning global businesswoman, community builder and Founder of Public Rally. Public Rally has globally focused clients in the technology, music, AI, legal and education sectors, who Sian guides to build world-class communities and content strategies to support ambitious revenue, brand and engagement goals. Prior to launching Public Rally, Sian was the Director of Community at Kiwi Landing Pad, which has become the bridge between New Zealand and the United States for the innovative Kiwi technologists who dream of exporting their businesses overseas.

Details: Wednesday 26 April, 9am-10.30am, online. Registrations closed.

 

List Building: who are the next 100 companies you want to sell to?

Agenda: In this online primer, we will walk through practical approaches to exploit technology and automation to build robust lead lists straight out of LinkedIn.

This session is open to all Kiwi sales and marketing operators.

Lead: Ryan McMillan is the Managing Director at Atlas Digital, where he helps SaaS companies scale their acquisition. Ryan works with leading Kiwi tech companies, including Partly, Marcello, Timely and Jasper.

This session is open to all Kiwi sales and marketing operators.

Details: Friday 30 June, 9-10.30am online. Registrations closed.

 

Sales Offsite #1

Morning. Enterprise Fitness: How to get ready to win and deliver on international enterprise deals.

Lead: Adrienne Muir is the Group Chief Operating Officer of VoxSmart, the world’s most agile capture, monitoring and analytics software for business communications data. In her career, she has worked for Exchanges, Fintechs and Startups in roles including business operations, M&A, and people management in the USA, Europe, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand markets.

Afternoon. Channel and Strategic Partnerships: workshopping practical carrots and sticks for building and scaling effective partnerships.

Lead: Serge van Dam

Details: Wednesday 31 May, in person, NZTE offices, Auckland. This highly practical offsite is first reserved for Movac portfolio companies. Registrations closed.

 

Marketing Offsite #1

Morning. Building a structured inbound marketing playbook. Designing and executing a multi-pronged strategy that brings ongoing leads to you.

This workshop will have both a ‘start-up’ (led by fractional Chief Marketing Officers and co-founders of Proxi, Christelle Blanchet and Tim Nichols) and ‘scale-up’ (led by Greg Stephenson, Chief Marketing Officer, LawVu) focus.

Afternoon. Practical Brand and UVP Positioning Workshop.

In this workshop, you will refine your ideal customer, and improve your positioning and messaging to create differentiating, interesting and compelling communications. You will learn the importance of a core brand idea to drive business success and workshop to define your customer, problem, solution, and unique value proposition.

Lead: Simon Pound leads up Venture Studio and Brand Fund 1 for Previously Unavailable, working with startup brands to define, grow, build, and fund brands in innovative ways. Prior to joining PU in early 2018, Simon led global brand, creative, and communications for Vend, from under $2m ARR to over $20m ARR. Simon is co-founder of fashion label Ingrid Starnes and hosts the entrepreneur-focussed Business is Boring podcast for The Spinoff, winner of the best business podcast at the 2021 NZ Podcast Awards.

Details: Thursday 1 June, in person, NZTE offices, Auckland. This highly practical offsite is first reserved for Movac portfolio companies. Registrations closed.

 

How to recruit, manage and retain sales teams serving offshore markets

Agenda: In this online primer, hear ezyVet’s approach for identifying key sales talent to serve offshore markets along with a practical ‘how to’ on managing and retaining offshore leads.

This session is open to all Kiwi sales and marketing operators.

Lead: Wayne Oxenham has spent nearly 20 years working across two successful careers within New Zealand-based software companies taking on the world. He joined Orion Health when there were less than 100 staff and helped them grow to in excess of 1400. At ezyVet, as Chief Growth Officer, revenue grew year on year while he led the growth units within the business. Wayne has a background of predominantly sales and marketing roles in growth businesses.

Details: Tuesday 29 August, 9-10.30am online. Registrations closed.