Four years after it launched, New Zealand VC fund Phase One has fully deployed its NZ$2.1 million (A$1.94m) early stage fund into 14 tech startups, including five (36%) with female founders.
The fund, launched in April 2021, following the establishment of its early stage incubator community in 2020, the attracted GD1 as its anchor investor alongside OG members from Canva and Kami.
Phase One founder and CEO Mahesh Muralidhar said 12 out of 14 startups had already landed institutional VC backing from the likes of Blackbird, GD1, Icehouse, and GTM VC, with one company recently landing funds from US VCs Fika Ventures and Uncorked Ventures.
“We’re extremely proud of what our portfolio companies have accomplished in such a challenging global environment,” he said.
“These companies have collectively attracted between $80-100 million in follow-on investment and created 100-150+ new jobs, many of which are in New Zealand’s tech sector.”
Muralidhar was an early leader at Canva, the COO at Simply Wall St. and a senior exec at Airtasker who returned to NZ five years ago with the goal of helping create 10 New Zealand technology unicorns – ‘Kiwicorns’ – by 2026 kicked off through the Phase One incubator program.
Now the early stage fund has taken them on the next step.
Notable investments include Ivo, which has reached Series A stage with funding from NZ and US VCs; legal tech startup VXT, backed by GD1, NextWork and Polymath in a A$1.65m pre-Series A; two edtech startups backed by GD1, Blackbird, and US individuals and VCs; Cotiss, backed by Blackbird and GTM VC; and several other promising ventures including wireless power startup Aquila Earth, which raised A$5m in 12 months across 2 rounds last year, Kiki, Evouch, Cropsy, Extraordinary (HealthNow), KiwiFibre Innovations, and RingRadar.
Two companies, Venu and Ross, are still pre-institutional funding.
Phase One Ventures operates on a 10-year fund structure, but managing partner Simon Young anticipates an actual timeline of 7-8 years and says fund will now focus exclusively on supporting its existing portfolio companies through their growth journeys, with no plans to accept new limited partner investments.
“With the quality of founders and companies in our portfolio, we expect multiple unicorns and significant exits to emerge from this cohort,” she said.
“These companies are positioned to become major tech firms with substantial impact on the New Zealand economy and beyond.”
Muralidhar said they’re thankful for GD1’s early belief in their vision as our anchor investor and GD1 co-managing partner Vignesh Kumar is clearly a fan.
“Phase One has been a tremendous addition to the New Zealand early stage ecosystem, and its cohort of companies and founders have been truly ‘Global from Day 1’ in mindset and action,” Kumar said.
“We are very proud to have played a role in enabling Phase One’s venture fund and look forward to seeing this cohort of companies flourish on the global stage”, said Vignesh Kumar, Co-Managing Partner of GD1.
Muralidhar said there are no immediate plans for a second fund.
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