Values are important.
What makes them real is living them every day for 20 years. We are a team of operators, bringing both capital and horsepower to help build your vision.
TRACPLUS | STAGE 4 FUND
We are patient, long-term partners who stand beside you in good times and bad, through multiple rounds of capital raising. We build relationships that work for the long haul.
Every investment is important to us. We like to lead rounds. We like to be on boards. We pick up the phone when you call and will roll up our sleeves when you need us.
We operate with integrity and honesty – the Kiwi way. What we say is what we do. No nonsense, straightforward, and transparent as we help you to achieve your goal.
We care about alignment with founders and structure our investment so we win together. We will be with you from the first round we invest together to the end.
We love passionate, ambitious founders who push through barriers to succeed. We are eager to win but not at all costs – we value sustainable business.
Team
Prior to joining Movac, Peter was a Financial Analyst at private equity firm Rangatira Investments, which focused on investments into middle market private New Zealand businesses. Peter is also a three-time Olympian and was an Bronze Medallist at the London 2012 Olympics in rowing.
Peter holds a Bachelor of Commerce in Finance and Accounting from the University of Auckland, and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Sport Management from Massey University.
Current board appointments: Special Olympics New Zealand
Originally from China, Alex joined Movac in 2018 as an investment analyst.
Prior to joining Movac, Alex was part of the Bank of New Zealand Markets Finance team, involved in the performance and risk analysis of the Markets division. Before to moving to New Zealand, she worked in Beijing on an public offering on the ASX of Sunz, a real estate and education group. Alex also worked as an assistant to the board of directors in Telestone, a telecom company listed on Nasdaq.
Alex has a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Science and Technology Beijing, and a Master of Management in Banking and Finance from Massey University. She has also passed all three levels of the CFA Program.

Tania joined Movac full-time in 2016. She has a strong administrative and financial background, most recently working as a consultant in the Taxation Team at Crowe Horwath. There she assisted with annual accounting compliance, ad-hoc advisory, and administrative services. While at Crowe Horwath, Tania worked closely with the Movac team, assisting with financial functions.
Tania has a New Zealand Diploma in Business.
Cassie joined Movac in 2020 on the launch of Fund 5. Her previous role was Investment Manager at New Zealand Trade & Enterprise where she worked with start-ups to prepare for capital raising.
Prior to returning home to New Zealand, she worked in consulting roles at PricewaterhouseCoopers at Deutsche Bank in London. Cassie is the Founder of OnBoard, a programme working to build a pipeline of tomorrow’s start-up directors.
She has an MBA from IE Business School (Madrid), and a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Science from the University of Otago.
Current board appointments: New Zealand Ecolabelling Trust
Jason has 8 years of private equity and venture capital experience with Movac, and is a partner in Movac Fund 5. Jason was the Investment Director for Fund 4 and led the analysis and investment process on the majority of its investments. He also manages the wider Movac analyst team.
Before joining Movac in 2012, Jason was part of the Bank of New Zealand Treasury team, responsible for funding the bank through domestic and offshore markets.
He holds a Masters of Applied Finance from the Victoria University of Wellington / Bachelor of Commerce. He attended Auckland University to complete the Entrepreneurship Development Programme, and went to the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Current board appointments: Author-it, Aroa Biosurgery (Observer), Timely
(Observer).
Lovina joined Movac as a venture partner in 2019 and is currently working on identifying investment opportunities for Fund 4. She is also serving on the investment committee for University of Auckland’s Return on Science fund, is an NZTE Beachhead Advisor and is a judge for the NZ Hi-tech awards.
Lovina spent the last 20 years working in global technology companies with experience ranging across product development, go-to-market execution and P&L management. Most recently she worked on the Alexa team to build out voice-based shopping services and was a speaker at international conferences evangelizing voice as the next technology platform. Prior to that, she pioneered Amazon’s move into the subscription economy by building a technology platform to allow both Amazon teams and external teams to rapidly launch and sell subscription products on Amazon. She managed the end to end business and scaled the P&L into a $300m+ USD.
At Microsoft, Lovina held several senior leadership roles focused on product innovation and building new monetization channels for both Skype and for Windows. She did an international tour of duty with the company working as Chief Marketing Officer for Microsoft Latin America where she was responsible for the $1.3B in consumer revenue. At Starbucks she launched several technology innovation services including the in-store wifi network and Starbucks first “order by phone” offering.
Before leaving New Zealand, Lovina held roles as Director of Data Science for Colmar-Brunton research and was Head of Pricing for Vodafone.
Lovina has a passion for helping New Zealand tech companies compete internationally and has a special interest in AI-led technology companies.
EDUCATION
MBA, Harvard Business School, Masters, Mathematics & Statistics University of Auckland.
CURRENT BOARD APPOINTMENTS
Pushpay, Ara Ake
Mark joined Movac in 2011 and has primary responsibility for portfolio valuations, overseeing portfolio liquidity, and contributing to investee company boards.
Mark has worked in the innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem for 25 years, both as an entrepreneur and as a contributor to its supporting organisations. He has more than ten years’ experience managing investment portfolios and commercialising innovation.
Mark was a pioneer of university research commercialisation in New Zealand through his roles as the CEO of WaikatoLink and promoter and founding Chair of the KiwiNet Innovation Network.
Mark has served as a council member of the Angel Association of New Zealand, on the NZBio Advisory Council, was a founding member of the University Commercialisation Offices of New Zealand, and currently serves on the council of the New Zealand Venture Capital Association.
Current board appointments: Vend, Unleashed Software, Park Help.
Mark joined Movac in 2008 and has primary responsibility for deal origination and screening, investor relations, Movac’s global talent network, and contributing to investee company boards.
Prior to joining Movac, Mark was part of early stage teams that grew successful businesses in the New Zealand, United Kingdom, and United States markets, and experienced highly successful IPOs on the NASDAQ and London Stock Exchange.
Mark was also a founding CEO of Kea, an award-winning venture that connects New Zealand’s expat community and has worked with over 150 New Zealand businesses to access global markets.
Mark has a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Canterbury.
Current board appointments: Mobi2Go, TracPlus, NZ Green Investment Fund, The Rugby Site.
David joined Movac as a partner in 2006 and has primary responsibility for deal evaluation and contributing to investee company boards.
David began his professional life as an IT developer, followed by working as program director for large internet e-commerce, finance, and banking internet applications. He then became a management consultant for Deloitte, performing IT and strategic business planning.
From 2000 to 2006, David co-founded three companies: Level 3 Ltd, a UK based e-procurement / e-invoicing consultancy firm; Purhcase3.com, an expense management SaaS solution for e-invoicing and credit card expenses; and DataWorks, an early cloud-based backup solution for SMEs.
Over the last 10 years, he has reviewed more than 800 businesses and taken 10 through to investment.
Current board appointments: Timely, Coretex, Mint Innovation, Revolution Fibres.
Phil is the Founding Partner of Movac. He has been actively investing since 1998 and personally invested in all the Movac funds and led investment into over 20 companies.
The Movac story began in 1998 when Phil co-founded Abbott, McCaw, Richter & Associates (“AMR”), a systems integration and management consulting firm based in Wellington. AMR provided the financial and people platform for Phil and his co-founders to start investing in great Kiwi Tech. Leveraging this platform, Phil subsequently co-founded: eCentric Ventures – developers of on-line market-place solutions; eCargo – an on-line freight logistics business; PartsTrader – an on-line market place for car parts; and led the initial investment into Trade Me – New Zealand’s leading online trading community.
With the successful exit of Trade Me to Fairfax in 2006, Phil and his original partners rebranded their business as Movac to exclusively focus on investing into and mentoring early stage, high growth potential technology businesses.
Outside of Movac, Phil remains an active angel investor and maintains a personal angel investment portfolio. He is a strong advocate for the development of the entrepreneurial and early stage investment eco-system in New Zealand and is the past Chair of the Angel Association of New Zealand; a founding investor in the Lightning Lab technology accelerator; and a founding investor in the Kiwi Landing Pad in San Francisco.
Advisory Board
Our Advisors are global leaders in technology, business and investment. We draw upon their knowledge and networks to steer Movac to best in class.

Lisa is an accomplished finance and business development executive with nearly 25 years of global operating experience across the technology, software and financial services industries. Lisa’s experience spans companies of all sizes – from early-stage, high-growth startups to mature, multi-national corporations.
Lisa joined Movac’s advisory board in 2020 and currently serves as a strategic advisor to a variety of organizations around the world including venture capital and private equity funds and early-stage startups. Prior to this, Lisa spent almost 15 years at Microsoft where she co-founded the company’s first venture fund, M12. Under Lisa’s leadership, M12 became one of the most active corporate funds in North America, deploying several hundreds of millions of dollars across 80+ deals in less than three years.
While at Microsoft, Lisa also held executive roles across investor relations, corporate accounting, finance operations and business development. Some of her other achievements and experience include developing and leading the execution of priorities for the 1k+ person finance organization, building a new 300 person business development team to redefine Microsoft’s partnership model, leading the development of a new digital investor relations platform which was named “The Most Important Shareholder Initiative in a Decade” by Motley Fool, and working on a variety of M&A and partnership transactions.
Prior to Microsoft, Lisa worked in financial services in the UK and in public accounting in the US and Australia.
Throughout her career, Lisa has been an active champion of diversity and inclusion. While at Microsoft, Lisa founded the Annual Female Founders Competition which has provided over $10 million in venture funding and tech resources. Lisa is a frequent speaker on this topic to academic institutions and industry organizations around the world.
Lisa’s professional experience and personal passions have taken her to over 90 countries. She has lived and worked in Australia, Europe, the Middle East, North America and SE Asia. These experiences, combined with her Asian Pacific heritage, have given her a truly global perspective. She currently resides in Seattle, Washington.
Lisa’s keen to support the New Zealand ecosystem which she is very passionate about. In addition to serving as an advisor to Movac, Lisa is also an advisor to New Zealand Rugby and is a member of the Edmund Hillary Fellowship.
Lisa earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Washington in Business Administration. Lisa is an accomplished triathlete and is an avid runner. She has completed over 100 races, including Ironman.

Randy is an entrepreneur, investor, lecturer and author. He was a founding director of Tivo and acted as “virtual CEO” for companies such as WebTV and GlobalGiving. He joined the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins in 2005 to focus on investing in early stage startups such as Nest, Farmers Business Network, Gusto and RPX. Randy serves on the Roadtrip Nation Advisory Board and Orrick’s Women’s Leadership Board.
He is the author of the best-selling book The Monk and the Riddle. He is also the co-author of Straight Talk for Startups, the insider best practices for entrepreneurial success; Getting to Plan B, on managing innovation;, and I F**king Love that Company, on building consumer brands.
Fady Mishriki is a globally-recognised entrepreneur and innovator, most widely known as the founder of a wireless charging technology company, PowerbyProxi which was acquired by Apple, Inc in 2017. In 2019, Movac became the company’s founding investor and Fady has worked closely with the Movac team ever since as a founder/CEO, and now an advisor for Fund 5.
The transaction was one of the largest hardware technology acquisitions in New Zealand. The purchase price was confidential and the transaction required government regulatory approval for consideration exceeding the government threshold for significant assets.
Under his leadership, the company firmly established itself as the largest wireless power firm globally by revenue. It also had over 500 patents to its name and an impressive customer list. During his journey, Fady secured investments, and partnerships, with some of the largest companies in the world including Samsung and TE Connectivity.
Today, nearly every smartphone features wireless charging, many top-range automobiles feature wireless charging consoles, and public charging hotspots are proliferating overseas in cafés, airports and hotels. IHS estimates that annual unit shipments for wireless power reached 450 million units per year and will grow to more than 2.2 billion units per year by 2023.
Today, Fady is Managing Director for Apple in New Zealand. In addition, Fady has served on the international board of the Wireless Power Consortium, Inc (incorporated in Washington DC) since 2013 as Director, and now its Chairman. Its membership includes the world’s top technology companies. He is also an active investor in many technology start-ups, and an investor in Movac Fund 5.
Fady’s commitment to foster the next generation of New Zealand innovators and entrepreneurs has seen him maintain an ongoing involvement with a number of initiatives with the University of Auckland – including both the Engineering Dean’s Leadership Program and the Velocity Challenge (Business School). He was recently inducted into the Chancellor’s Circle for philanthropic endeavours to the University. He was awarded the University of Auckland’s Distinguished Alumni Award and also The Entrepreneur of the Decade Award in recognition of his achievements. Since University, Fady always wanted to build a globally successful business from New Zealand and contribute to the ecosystem here.
Career Highlights
– Managing Director, Apple (Auckland Technology Center), 2017 to present
– Founder & CEO, PowerbyProxi, 2007 – 2013 & 2015 – 2017
– Founder & CTO, PowerbyProxi, 2013 – 2014
– Chairman, Wireless Power Consortium, Inc, 2020 to present
– Director, Wireless Power Consortium, 2013 to present
Education
– MIT (Cambridge, MA) Entrepreneurship Development Program (2011)
– Bachelor of Engineering and Bachelor of Commerce (University of Auckland, 2005)
– University of Auckland Distinguished Alumnus (2015)
– University of Auckland Entrepreneur of the Decade (2013)

David is a renowned economist and an authority on matters of industrial organisation, technological change, intellectual property, and innovation, antitrust and competition policy. He is the Co-founder and Chairman of the Berkeley Research Group, the Thomas W. Tusher Professor in Global Business, and Director of the Tusher Center on Intellectual Capital at UC Berkeley.
Originally from Nelson, David was appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, and is Co-Founding Director of KEA (Kiwi Expat Association).

Rachel (Ngati Raukawa ki te Tonga, Ngati Rarua) is an award-winning entrepreneur and business woman who has demonstrated a strong commitment to sustainability, and support for the establishment and growth of other people and companies. Her values include kaitiakitanga, whanaungatanga and pono – guardianship, relationships and integrity.
Rachel is CEO of Kono, a Maori-owned, top 100 New Zealand food and beverage company, farming more than 1000ha of land and sea, and exporting to over 25 countries.
Founder of sustainable seafood company Yellow Brick Road, Rachel was formerly NZ Trade Commissioner in Los Angeles. She is a fierce advocate of New Zealand’s primary industry and has spent 20 years promoting Aotearoa as a world-class producer of food and beverages.
In 2019, Rachel was appointed to represent New Zealand on the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Business Advisory Council (ABAC) and in 2021 Rachel will chair ABAC in its entirety.
Rachel has received the Sir Peter Blake Leadership Award and is a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to food and hospitality. In 2018 was named Maori Woman Business Leader at the prestigious University of Auckland Aotearoa Maori Business Leaders Awards, 2019 was the recipient a KEA World-class New Zealand award, and was a member of the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council
OPERATING PARTNERS
Operating Partners are functional and subject matter experts. We use their experience, practical advice and networks to support our portfolio companies.
Jeremy Ginsberg is a product and software leader with 17 years of experience building world-changing products and teams in Silicon Valley. Most recently, Jeremy served as Head of Engineering and Data Science at Color, the leader in delivering advanced healthcare through clinical genetics.
Previously, Jeremy was a Vice President at Twitter where he led the global revenue engineering teams. Prior to Twitter, Jeremy spent 9 years as a software engineer and technical lead at Google, where he led teams focused on machine learning, search quality, analytics, and a novel disease surveillance project called Flu Trends.
Jeremy holds a M.S. in Computer Science and a B.S. in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University. Jeremy’s connection to New Zealand dates back to 2002, when he served as a lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington, developing a novel computer science course and textbook.

Rob is a retired CTO and CEO currently advising a number of startups and large enterprises on technology strategy and development. He has a track record of leading innovation and introducing new technologies in consumer electronics, digital manufacturing, robotics, sensors and optics. Rob has sponsored multiple acquisitions and advised on the sale of companies. As an adviser to SRI Ventures, he helps establish technology spinouts from SRI International and works with medical, IoT and Sensor startups. He was the CTO of TE Connectivity and Motorola Mobile Devices.

Ed specialises in turning product into the fuel that drives business – “without product you have nothing to sell”. This starts with product market fit, developing a scalable business and pricing model, then cementing high-performance development practices as the company grows.
Before joining Movac, Ed was co-founder and CEO of Wellington-based Aptimize, which he grew from idea to acquisition by Riverbed in the U.S. within two years in 2011.

Andrew joined Movac as an operating partner in 2020 to support the companies in Fund 5. His area of speciality is product leadership where he uses his unique blend of deep technical and product leadership to support companies across New Zealand.
Andrew has been involved in product leadership before he, or anyone else in New Zealand, even knew what it was! His product career began in earnest in 2009 when he joined Xero as their first Product Manager where he built a world-class product leadership team that was critical in growing and supporting a customer base that grew from 17K to over 560K in only six years. He later joined virtual reality startup, 8i, as Global Head of Product, bringing human holograms to the world, including attracting over 1M downloads of their world-first Holo app.
Since founding his product leadership coaching business in 2017 Andrew has been on a mission to raise the understanding and practice of product leadership across the country. He’s worked directly with over 40 New Zealand product companies ranging from early-stage startups to large corporations looking to modernize their product practice.
In 2015 Andrew founded Wellington’s largest product community, ProductTank, now boasting almost 2000 members and attracting national and international expert speakers to keep the product conversations going.
In a previous life, Andrew has been a statistician, software coder and a professional banana picker.
Ben is an experienced executive and leadership team performance coach. His specific areas of interest are supporting ambitious leaders committed to individual and organizational change resulting in a dramatic performance lift. Ben’s current clients include the leading Venture Capital and Private Equity firm leaders, their portfolio company leadership, and a world-class sports organization.
Ben has achieved business success in building Human Capital businesses in Europe, North America, and the Asia Pacific region. Earlier in his career, he was an Executive Director of Robert Walters PLC. He was a member of the Board that led the company to an IPO on the London Stock exchange.
Ben is a Partner of Handel Group, one of the leading coaching firms and the founder of Propel Performance Group an executive and team performance advisory firm.
Ben is passionate about supporting New Zealand. He has been Chairman, North America Beachheads Advisory Board within New Zealand Trade & Enterprise (NZTE). He is also a Venture Partner with Movac – one of New Zealand’s leading Venture Capital firms.
The University of Auckland, New Zealand
London School of Coaching Certification
London Business School, Senior Executive Program
The Handel Method® Coach

Alia is an industrial psychologist with a PhD in resilience. She previously worked with executive recruitment agency Sheffield, working with leaders of corporate organisations, and with Frucor as their Group Talent Development Manager. Prior to that, Alia worked for the New Zealand Defence Force, including as a member of the elite Special Operations team, and was their head psychologist for a number of years.

Serge joined Movac as a Limited Partner in Fund 3 (2012) and both as a Limited Partner and Operating Partner in Fund 4 (2016). His principal functions within Movac’s Fund 5 relate to: identifying potential investee companies, assisting with marketing and sales capability due diligence and leading specific growth interventions in the Movac’s portfolio companies.
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 also dedicates much of his time to the New Zealand tech eco-system as a Beachheads Advisor for New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, convening various industry forums (like Kiss My SaaS) and contributing to various industry panels.
Serge is based in Wellington, grew up in Argentina and has worked extensively in the US, the UK and elsewhere. He would describe his super-power as ‘disruptive marketing’ and has a long-standing interest in ethics and leadership development.
EDUCATION
Bachelor of Arts (hons), Philosophy and Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington
CURRENT BOARD APPOINTMENTS
CoGo (Chairman), Montoux (Chairman), Common Ledger (Chairman), Landlord Studio (Chairman), Tourwriter, Wipster, Raygun

Kirsty is the VP of Client Advocacy at Yext (NYSE: YEXT), the leading Search Experience Cloud platform, where she is responsible for delivering client service for Yext customers in over 153 countries.
Prior to Yext, Kirsty was VP, Customer at Hootsuite, the world’s most widely used social media relationship platform, where she was responsible for Hootsuite’s Global Customer Support organization, Voice of the Customer, Customer Experience, Customer Marketing and Customer Advocacy.
Kirsty’s team at Hootsuite was responsible for using customer insight to drive strategic initiatives and deliver a superior customer experience. Her Customer Marketing team developed strategic programs designed to maximize customer adoption, usage, engagement, retention and advocacy. Her Support team focused on delighting customers, by delivering industry-leading customer satisfaction, across social media, phone, email and chat.
Before Hootsuite, Kirsty was the Chief Customer Officer at Snapfish, a San Francisco based online photo merchandising company.
Kirsty has over 20 years of international experience gained from Senior Sales & Marketing, Operations, and General Management roles in the US, Canada, Japan, and New Zealand, where she has a track record of effective leadership and business transformation.