New Zealand car parts data startup Partly raises NZ$3.7 million pre-series A to go global

The CEO of Rocket Lab, Peter Beck, has doubled down on his investment in a New Zealand data startup tackling the vehicle parts industry in a NZ$3.7 million pre-series A raise.

The round into Partly values the business at NZ$46 million. It was led by existing investor Blackbird Ventures, with Beck, also an existing backer, joined by Dylan Field, co-founder & CEO of design platform Figma; Akshay Kothari, co-founder & COO of Notion; Connor Theilmann, VP business operations at Service Titan, as well as I2BF and K5 Ventures in the US.

Partly plans to use the funds to grow its team across New Zealand, Australia and Europe, support product R&D and prepare for rapid growth and global scale.

Levi Fawcett, Partly’s co-founder and CEO, and a former Rocket Lab engineer, is building the tools and datasets to connect buyers and sellers in the global automotive parts industry. It already operates in 20 countries.

“Partly was born out of a huge unsolved data problem. The automotive industry today has millions of vehicle configurations, and hundreds of millions of parts, but only manual and paper-based systems to link them. Our mission is to connect the world’s parts by building cloud based infrastructure to connect buyers and sellers at the right point in time,” he said.

“It’s an incredibly exciting time for Partly and we’re only getting started. We’re thrilled to be rapidly growing and scaling our business in an industry primed for disruption. This is an extremely difficult technical problem, and the people we have are key to our success so far.”

He co-founded the data play with Nathan Taylor, Mark Song and Evan Jia, who saw the massive data problem emerge from their former startup, an e-commerce platform, then pivoted to build out Partly.

Blackbird Ventures partner Samantha Wong said the Partly team is working on solving “an unsexy but very complex problem, elegantly,” on a global scale.

“The product and customer momentum is incredible, and we’re proud to be strengthening our pre-Seed investment into Partly by leading this round,” she said.

Peter Beck said: “The progress the team has made in just over a year is impressive, they are certainly one of the most exciting startups in New Zealand. The global ambition of Kiwi startups like Partly are really contributing to New Zealand’s tech reputation on the world stage.”