Sparkbox hunts world-beating entrepreneurs

Renews partnership with NZ Venture Investment Fund. Sparkbox is looking to back a new generation of Kiwi entrepreneurs whose innovation will get recognised globally.

The angel group has renewed its partnership with the New Zealand Venture Investment Fund and plans to back 20 entrepreneurs in the next five years. The two organisations plan to invest about $10 million in startups in that time. “The traits of this new form of ‘extreme entrepreneur’ are people who are capable, knowledgeable, quick to adapt, able to listen and can learn from the experience of others,” says Sparkbox chairman Andrew Duff.

. “We have previously backed entrepreneurs like Rod Drury of Xero and Grant Ryan of YikeBike, as well as Brian Ward of Mesynthes and Paul Cameron of Booktrack. With the investment partnership with NZVIF, we want to help find the next generation.”

Andrew Duff welcomed the partnership renewal, saying Sparkbox’s focus is on early stage investment to back entrepreneurs in sectors including information and communications technology, material science, cleantech and medical and diagnostic technology.

“We are seeing a lot of promising startup opportunities needing investment to research, design and develop technologybased products and solutions with the aim of taking them to international markets.

We are committed to a strategy of specialising on pre-seed and seed investment where we see attractive investment opportunities.”