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
Belinda joined Movac mid-2021 as Office Administrator on a part-time basis supporting our Finance Manager and the wider team. Prior to joining Movac, Belinda worked as Education Programme Administrator for Governance New Zealand. Originally from Sydney, she brings with her 20 years of experience in event management and administration roles within the Legal, IT and Hospitality industries.
Belinda has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Sydney.
Selena joined Movac in 2023. As a Fund Accountant Selena provides support to the Finance Manager.
Before joining Movac, Selena’s previous roles were with Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency as a Financial Accountant on the National Ticketing project, advising on financial processes and accounting matters; and as an auditor at Audit NZ where she was involved with completing financial audits for government clients.
Selena is a Chartered Accountant and has a Bachelor of Commerce from Victoria University.
Nathan joined Movac in 2023. Before Movac, Nathan worked at Deloitte as a strategy consultant, where he worked across a variety of strategy engagements in the public and private sectors, including work in CleanTech and biodiversity markets. Before consulting, Nathan spent time working in research and supply chain roles.
Nathan has a Bachelor of Commerce majoring in Finance and Management from Victoria University of Wellington.
Millie joined Movac in 2021. Her previous role was as a strategy consultant at L.E.K. Consulting in both Sydney and London. During her time at L.E.K, Millie worked on a range of vendor and purchaser market due diligence projects for private equity clients as well as strategy engagements for large corporates and government clients. Prior to consulting, Millie worked as a Chemical and Process Engineer at BOC South Pacific in Sydney.
Millie has a Bachelor of Engineering with Honours (Chemical and Process) from the University of Canterbury.
Current appointments: Nanolayr (observer)
Fi joined Movac in 2021 as an Investment Manager, leading the investment team.
Prior to Movac, Fi worked at Kiwi Group Holdings (KGH) where she was part of a small team advising the KGH Board and delivering on the financial and strategic objectives of the Group’s shareholders – NZ Super, ACC and NZ Post. Before this, Fi worked in corporate finance and consulting roles at PwC in NZ and the USA, supporting clients with M&A mandates, valuation analysis and business strategy.
Fi is a CFA charterholder and has a Bachelor of Commerce majoring in Finance and Economics from the University of Otago.
Current board appointments: Auror
Other current appointments: New Zealand Private Capital Council, Angel Association NZ Committee Member.
Tania joined Movac full-time in 2016. She leads the fund administration processes at Movac. She has a strong financial and administrative 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.
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.
Current Board Appointments: Toha, Author-IT, Aroa Biosurgery, Shift 72, Kaynemaile
Jason has 10 years of venture capital experience with Movac and is a Partner in Movac Fund 5, where he is the Investor Director for Tradify, Open Insurance and Author-it.
Jason has extensive experience in both SaaS and Deeptech, having been an Investment Director in Fund 4. Jason led the investment process for the majority of the Fund’s portfolio companies and held observer roles with Timely and Aroa Biosurgery and worked closely with Vend and Unleashed, which he supported through to successful exits throughout 2020/21.
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 Master’s of Applied Finance from the Victoria University of Wellington, Bachelor of Commerce from Auckland University and completed the Entrepreneurship Development Programme at MIT Sloan School of Management.
Current board appointments: Tradify, Open, Author-it
Mark joined Movac in 2011, having worked in the innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem for 25 years, both as an entrepreneur and as a contributor to its supporting organisations. He has over twenty years experience managing investment portfolios and commercialising innovation. Mark was a pioneer of university research commercialisation in New Zealand and co-founder and founding Chair of the KiwiNet Innovation Network.
More recently, Mark led Movac Fund 4 investments into Vend, a point of sale software that was subsequently sold to Lightspeed for US$350m in 2021; Unleashed, a software management product that was acquired by Access Group in 2020; Coretex, a fleet management platform that sold to ERoad in 2022 and ParkHelp, guidance solutions for parking. Mark continues to lead Fund 5 deals, with the latest investments being Miruku (deep-tech, alternative dairy equivalent food ingredients), Dawn Aerospace (aerospace hardware) and Tectrax (amphibious boat systems).
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 recently served on the council of the New Zealand Venture Capital Association.
Current board appointments: ParkHelp, Tectrax, Miruku, Dawn Aerospace
David joined Movac as a partner in 2006 and has primary responsibility for deal evaluation and contributing to investee company boards. Over the last 16 years, he has reviewed over a thousand businesses and taken more than a dozen through to investment.
David is currently on the board of Mint Innovation and NanoLayr (both NZ Hi-Tech winners in the Most Innovative Deep Tech Solution category). Previously, David was the Investor Director on PowerbyProxi (acquired by Apple in 2017), Timely (acquired by Evercommerce in 2021) and Coretex (acquired by ERoad in 2021).
David began his professional life as an IT developer/program manager for large scale enterprise solutions in e-commerce, finance/banking, ERP and internet applications. He then became a management consultant for Deloitte, performing IT and strategic business planning.
From 2000 to 2006, David moved to entrepreneurship and co-founded three companies: Level 3 Ltd, a UK based e-procurement / e-invoicing consultancy firm; Purchase3.com, an expense management SaaS solution for e-invoicing and credit card expenses; and DataWorks, an early cloud-based backup solution for SMEs.
David is a passionate supporter and advocate for New Zealand deeptech/hardtech sector and is in his happy space when he’s working closely with founders to commercialise world-leading, break-through technology. Outside of Movac, David has several advisory roles and participates as a judge/mentor on start-up initiatives.
Current board appointments: Nanolayr, Mint Innovation
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.
Mark has led the fundraising for Movac Funds 3, 4 & 5, and over the past decade has raised more than $400m from institutions, iwi, community trusts, family offices, and individual investors. Mark has an extensive network of investors and top tech operators locally and overseas and is the driving force behind Movac’s investor, operating partner, and talent network.
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 supported 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 currently leads Movac’s investments in Tracplus (first-responder tracking platform), Mobi (digital hospitality solutions), Evnex (EV charging solutions) and Atomic.io (in-app customer engagement software)
Board appointments: Mobi, TracPlus, Atomic.io, NZ Green Investment Finance (NZGIF)
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 and CEO of wireless charging technology company, PowerbyProxi. Founded in 2007, PowerbyProxi grew into one of the largest wireless power firms globally before it was acquired by Apple in 2017. The transaction was one of the largest hardware technology acquisitions in New Zealand, and required government approval.
Movac first invested in 2009, and Fady has worked with the Movac team ever since.
Fady holds a Bachelor of Commerce and a Bachelor of Engineering from The University of Auckland and always aspired to build a globally successful business from New Zealand and contribute to the ecosystem here.
He is also an investor in technology start-ups and venture funds, and maintains ongoing involvement with a number of philanthropic initiatives at the University of Auckland – including the Kupe Scholarship Program, The Dean’s Leadership Program, and the Velocity Challenge. He was inducted to the Chancellor’s Circle in 2018 in recognition of his contributions.
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 Taulelei is a prominent business leader and a strong advocate for the Māori economy and sustainability in the food and beverage sector.
Her commitment to kaitiakitanga has been evident throughout her career, as founder of sustainable seafood company Yellow Brick Road in 2006, to her time as CEO of Māori-owned food and beverage company Kono, and now in her current role as co-founder of business design and brand strategy firm, Oho.
She has held a number of governance roles, with a particular expertise in primary industries. She presently chairs the APEC Business Advisory Council, Moana NZ Ltd and the Wellington Regional Stadium Trust. She serves as a member on the boards of the Warehouse Group, ANZCO Foods, Young Enterprise Trust, and acts an advisor to venture capital firm Movac.
OPERATING PARTNERS
Operating Partners are functional and subject matter experts. We use their experience, practical advice and networks to support our portfolio companies.
Andrew is an independent product leadership coach. His areas of expertise include implementing product leadership principles and practices, coaching senior product leaders, supporting companies to evolve their product organisational structures, supporting the recruitment of product leaders, and growing New Zealand’s product community.
Before his leadership coaching work, Andrew was the Global Head of Product at 8i and the first product leader hired at Xero, where he was instrumental in the development of Xero’s flagship product and the scaling out of Xero’s product organisation.
Ben is a CTO / VP Engineering with experience across multiple sectors including SaaS, finance, and media.
While a technologist at heart, his primary expertise is growing diverse, high-performance product engineering teams and implementing the culture, values, tools and processes required to deliver software at pace.
Ben was Vend’s first engineering manager, where he grew the engineering team from 8 to 80, shipped product on average every 6 minutes, and ultimately contributed to Vend’s ~NZ$500m exit. He’s also co-founder of NZ’s largest independent software engineering conference, Codemania.
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.
A seasoned SaaS campaigner, Paul is currently advising a number of NZ tech CEO’s and executive teams. Paul’s experience spans operations, product strategy and execution, sales and success leadership, and commercial/proposition development.
As COO at Pushpay, Paul oversaw product and operations from scrappy startup, through IPO and on to becoming one of New Zealand’s handful of tech unicorns. Following Pushpay, Paul joined Timely as Chief Customer Officer and later COO, building revenue growth through the launch of their international offices, and bringing on new revenue channels through commercial partnerships and product development.
Paul was instrumental in the sale of Timely to EverCommerce in 2021.
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