We F*@kin Love Startups Podcast

In this episode, Troy Hammond chats with Rachael Fitzjohn. You will hear them talk about leadership, trust, fuckups, vulnerability, and becoming one of NZ's best tech leaders of people. Her name is Rachael Fitzjohn. Although over the last few years, further to a joke from a workmate and then multiple Rachel's/Rachael's in the team, Rachael became Fitzy! Fitzy works at a company called Cogo. Cogo is a tech start-up that provides carbon footprint management products to allow people and companies to measure, understand and reduce their carbon footprint. Fitzy is the Head of People Experience at Cogo so is responsible for the health, development, and well-being of Cogoers across a variety of markets (they are in the UK, Germany, other parts of Europe, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and...New Zealand). Her passions and values mostly revolve around people (a bit of a relief, especially considering her role title and background!) In all seriousness, though Fitzy feels that what makes her get up in the morning is ensuring that people have a good experience at work and that she is being the real Fitzy She also has a strong desire to coach leaders and be a good leader herself - leadership and the concepts around it have changed so much over the last few years and Fitzy says: "I am here for it!" Please like, follow, and subscribe to the podcast so we can continue to keep bringing you content.

In this episode, Troy Hammond chats with his old boss and good friend Vaughan Fergusson. Vaughan goes deep on the startup journey of a man who founded a company and did not know what he was doing and then sold it for $484m NZD. He is open, honest, vulnerable and talks about his passion for not just Vend, but his charity and how to grow an ecosystem. We touch on how Innovation is the fastest was to transform our economy and many other topics. While this one was longer than our usual, it is a great one and so strap in and hear from someone who does impossible things.  Vaughan Fergusson (previously Rowsell) is the founder of Vend, pioneering cloud technology in retail globally, omni-channel commerce and invented the iPad retail point of sale. Vend is a New Zealand high-growth tech success story contributing significantly to the New Zealand tech eco-system over 12 years. Vend  was sold for $500m in 2021 to LightSpeed and remains the flagship retail product globally. In 2014 he was the founder and trustee of The Pam Fergusson Charitable Trust running initiatives like OMGTech!, Mana Tangata, Voluntari.ly and The Institute of Awesome to teach innovation, creativity and technology to tamariki of all ages and backgrounds, in particular our youth who would not otherwise get the opportunity. Collectively the trust also works with educators across New Zealand empowering them to empower our future innovators. He was EY's Tech Entrepreneur of the Year in 2014, a judge for the 2018 Entrepreneur of the Year programme, and head judge for the 2021-22 programme. Vaughan has been a Trustee, Judge, and Vice-Chair for the New Zealand Hi-tech Trust from 2015 - 2021 and remains as a judge for the 2023 awards. Every year Vaughan does an impossible challenge, something to take him out of his comfort zone, like running 1,000km, learning to sing to get a paid gig in front of 100 people, or cycling around the world in 80 days. Vaughan is a self-described weirdo and has spoken many times on the importance of challenging the status quo, thinking differently and trusting your inner weirdo. He is also a staunch ally for diversity in New Zealand and in the technology and creative sectors. Please like, follow, and subscribe to the podcast so we can continue to keep bringing you content.

In this episode, Troy Hammond talks with Andréa van der Meel. We chat about tech, greenwashing, and how we can make considerate decisions on fashion and be better for the environment and the people producing these products. We chat about Andrea's career founding a tech startup on her own in her 20s. We also chat about how the second time around founding a startup, she joined forces with John Holt of Homes.co.nz and Kiwi Landing pad fame and how they did founder vetting with each other. Andréa van der Meel is dedicated to increasing transparency and accountability in the fashion industry. With over 15 years of experience in the retail sector, her first business, SeekStock, delivered real-time product feedback to retail brands via store staff. Now, Andréa is the Co-Founder and Head of Platform of All Things Considered, a community-driven platform driving impactful change around how we produce and consume our clothing. Andréa put something into the world this year that she wanted to get onto three podcasts as she had never done one before and so she jumped at the chance when we asked her on after hearing about her work. You would never know this was her first podcast. Please help us spread the word about our podcast by liking, subscribing and following us on all our platforms found here. Share with your friends who may be interested. Thank you for coming on Andréa. This chat was really fun and super interesting.

In this episode, Troy Hammond speaks with Danny Smith on the fall of Silicon Valley bank due to the bank run. They go deep into what has happened, why it happened, and what could happen in the future. Danny breaks down the information in an eloquent non-financial talk conversation so that everyone can understand the reasoning behind the 18th largest bank in the US falling down.   Danny is a startup enthusiast with a passion for blending finance, product, commercial, and operations to drive growth. He has worked with a range of industries at Deloitte, in-house finance with Icebreaker, and most recently 8 years with Xero, in a range of finance and non-finance roles.    Today, Danny serves as CFO at Storypark, which is an easy-to-use private online service that helps teachers, parents and families work together to record, share and extend children's learning. Please like, follow, and subscribe to the podcast so we can continue to keep bringing you content. 

In this episode, Troy Hammond speaks with Joel Lieser.  Joel Lieser is the CTO of Trove Money, a child company of Forsyth Barr.   His career has spanned seven states and three countries, where he has held positions from global banks to Silicon Valley technology juggernauts like Netflix, and companies like Nike along with multiple startups along the way.   His passions lie in technology innovation and building teams. In this episode, Joel chats about culture, engineering, the differences between US and NZ, and how he thinks we can help get more people into startups. Joel hones in on his career and how our lives are a culmination of the choices we make against our adjacent possibles It is a really interesting episode and we hope you enjoy watching and or listening as much as we did.  Please join us and subscribe to help us. We want to help New Zealand to support its own when it comes to innovation.   To quote Joel: "Don't let the Tall Poppy Syndrome sidetrack us from supporting Kiwis to change the world."

In this episode, we chat with Dale Clareburt from Weirdly Dale has been the CEO/Co-Founder of Weirdly since the beginning of 2014. She has 20+ years in the recruitment industry before going into tech.  Starting out in the agency land where the focus is on delivering a 1:1 service, Dale and three other founders banded together to create a product to improve the experience for candidates in the recruitment process. From culture, values, and purpose quizzes to a fully automated end-to-end talent platform for first jobbers in the frontline/retail sector.  Weirdly has over 1m candidates who are hungry to get their first work experience under their belts.  Dale is very committed to guiding youth on their first steps into adulthood. She says "It's about more than just the culture shock of that first job away from your home and school, but also the life skills you need to become an independent and fulfilled young adult." We chat about the Weirdly story from the early days to finding market fit and all things in between. Dale shares all her successes and attempts and we have some laughs along the way. We really enjoyed this weird chat with Dale and hope you do also. Please follow and subscribe to our podcast wherever you consume podcasts.

In this episode, we chat with James Fuller from Hnry.  James began his career as an application developer, before moving into technology strategy and consultancy.  After senior roles at Thomson Reuters and Deloitte, he decided to strike out on his own as a growth consultant for startups, corporate, and government clients.   It was rewarding work, but James found himself struggling with the amount of tax and financial admin involved in being self-employed.  To solve the issue, he and co-founder Claire created a simple, homemade system to automate calculating and paying self-employed taxes.    They shared their system with self-employed friends, realised that there was a market for it, and got to work improving their solution. In 2018, James and Claire officially launched Hnry; a service designed to automatically calculate, pay, and file taxes for sole traders. We chat about James and Claire's story and how they realised they were building a new category when their lawyer had no idea if what they were doing was legal or not. We discuss what it is like working with IRD and contributing over 1% of NZ's total tax bills. Hnry recently raised funding of $35m and we discussed how this happened and where the money will be spent. We really enjoyed this chat with James and hope you do also. Please follow and subscribe to our podcast wherever you consume podcasts.

In this episode, we chat with Jessica Halley. Jessica is a Wellington-born social anthropologist. Her PhD research focuses on the intersection between precarious labour, entrepreneurialism, and identity across Wellington’s digital workforce. As an anthropologist, Jessica collects human stories. She tells us that ethnographic research allows us to mine everyday stories. Bringing these stories into a startup context will enable us to build the next generation of technologies in a way that counts. We discuss many topics including Jessica's current research, which focuses on Wellington startups, social enterprises and software development. Additionally, her experiences conducting ethnographic research amongst Bhutanese refugee women and what this taught her about Facebook, selfies and user experience. Jessica says that gone are the simple days of broad-based solutions to user experiences. Instead, future technologies will demand a specific, localised and culturally-relative approach to problem-solving. Qualitative research, specifically ethnography, can provide methodological tools for startups seeking to solve the problems of the future. You can read about her research on "Young Bhutanese women becoming 'Kiwi'" here Here are the references focusing on Wellington as a digital city. And below is the quote from PM Tony Blair about creative labour, along with a link to a journal article that examines his legacy in the digital workforce. Norman, R. (2015). Wellington’s Digital Sector - Growing under the Radar. Victoria University of Wellington: Wellington. https://www.gw.govt.nz/assets/Documents/2021/12/Vic-Uni-Digital-Sector-Report.pdf Brabazon, T. (2009). Brand Wellington: When city imaging is GLAM’ed: A personal view. Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 5(4), 260–275. https://doi.org/10.1057/pb.2009.22 Bonelli, D., Jutel, T., & Leotta, A. (2019). ‘Selling the creative city’: Wellington tourism film in the neoliberal era. Studies in Australasian Cinema, 13(2-3), 32-50. https://doi-org.ezproxy.massey.ac.nz/10.1080/17503175.2019.1693149 'Our aim must be to create a nation where the creative talents of all the people are used to build a true enterprise economy for the twenty-first century – where we compete on brains, not brawn' (Blair, 1999: 3). https://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/42872_Flew.pdf We really enjoyed this chat with Jess and hope you do also. Please follow and subscribe to our podcast wherever you consume podcasts.

In this episode, we chat with Miki Szikszai.  Miki has served as CEO of Snapper Services since 2009. You'll know Snapper as the ticketing provider for Wellington - it also serves off-shore customers by white-labeling its apps and is launching a transport network performance analytics service in the next few weeks. He's been an active director on the Board of NZ-based SaaS companies including the original board of Vend, Chair of StarNow before its sale to Backstage, and is currently an active director at Spotlight Reporting and the chair of vWork. We chat about Miki's story from being a New Zealander made with imported ingredients. (His mother was photographed as one of a few Polish refugee children arriving in Wellington on board the ship General Randall.) From his career having to empathetically educate New Zealanders about major technology changes, to how to have an amazing grad program, to being an effective CEO and independent director. We really enjoyed this chat with Miki and hope you do also. Please follow and subscribe to our podcast wherever you consume podcasts. 

In this episode, we chat with Adrienne Muir.  Adrienne is the Chief Operating Officer of Voxsmart which is headquartered in London and based in Queenstown. Born and Bred in Wellington,  Adrienne Muir has spent decades working overseas in the global capital markets and financial technology sectors.  When she started at VoxSmart in London in 2017, the business communications surveillance and analytics firm had seven employees.  Now Muir oversees a worldwide team from Queenstown, serving over 100 international clients. We chat about everything from being a successful woman in tech to making deliberate career choices, global vs NZ, and the very sad death of Adrienne's twin son John. Adrienne was absolutely delightful and we are sure you will enjoy watching or listening to this podcast as much as we did making it. Please subscribe, hit the bell, and share this podcast so we can continue making you great content.

In this episode, we chat with Jonty Hodge  Jonty is a Wellington-based entrepreneur, co-founder, and CEO of Kepla, an emerging SaaS that makes it incredibly easy for any business to run incredibly effective digital advertising campaigns.  Dubbed 'a digital advertising agency in your pocket'.    Previously co-founded Aro Digital, a digital marketing agency based in Oriental Bay. We chat about Jonty's journey from a cricket coach in high school to a founder of two companies. Jonty is very mature and wise for his years. He is honest and tells us where he is in his journey and the road ahead. We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we did. Please subscribe where you watch and listen to help us continue to bring you, great guests. 

In this episode, we chat with Owen Evans. Owen is the Senior Vice President Of Technology (CTO) of Timely. He talks about his many attempts in startups and his growth as a leader of engineering teams. Owen has been a software developer and technologist since being introduced to the early stages of the internet in the early 90s.  Since then he's gone on to help found a number of startups, including Xero, Hoist, 8i, Zapier, and JRNY, not all of them successful. He's passionate about good people leadership in the technical space and has worked with a number of technical executives as a coach to try and improve management and strategic thinking across the board. He's passionate about startups and the people that make them, as well as enabling great remote decision-making. Owen was brought into Timely to take over from the founding CTO during their acquisition by EverCommerce and currently holds the SVP of Technology role for their Wellness group.   In his lack of spare time, he likes to brew beer, play golf, shoot arrows, and generally spend time with his family, his wife and two daughters, in Upper Hutt, New Zealand. Enjoy this episode and please subscribe to the pod.

In this episode, we chat with Julie Reddish. Julie is the Head of People and Culture at Optimal Workshop and was formerly the happiness engineer at Xero.  She has traveled throughout the world leading programmes that transform people’s lives and now she empowers teams of tech humans as they navigate moving from start-up to scale-up.  Julie is highly invested in growing people.  She is their champion.  Julie has seen the positive impact this has on an individual basis, on a team, on an organisation - and globally. She believes in people's ability to influence positive change and wants to make a difference in the NZ tech startup ecosystem.  You can watch more of Julie here with her "Do we really need Managers?" talk.  In her spare time, Julie is into sports, jewelry making, brain science, parenting, and dog-breed identification. We hope you enjoy this episode. 

In this episode, we talk with Andrew Tokeley who helps successful NZ businesses build high-performance product leadership teams. Tokes talks about what product is, how product leaders can work closely with the business, and understanding how to develop your product strategy alongside the business strategy.  His name is Andrew Tokeley but most people call him Tokes.   Tokes founded his coaching business in 2017 and is NZ’s only full-time independent product leadership coach.  Since then, he has worked with over 60 companies ranging from start-ups to large corporations and even helped a few government agencies to adopt a more product-centric approach to their work.    His work typically involves working directly with senior product leaders, executive teams, and founders to help raise the understanding and practice of product leadership.  While he calls himself a coach, he is just as likely to provide advice to his clients, drawing from over 20 years of experience as both a technical and product leader himself.    Tokes also works as a Product Operating Partner at Movac, providing support and guidance to a number of their portfolio companies.   In 2015 he created Wellington’s largest product MeetUp, ProductTank, now boasting 2500 members, and he is a founding committee member of Product Aotearoa, a non-profit organisation supporting product leadership across the country.   In his previous life, he has been a statistician, software developer, and banana picker.

In this episode, we chat with our major sponsor in Talent Army's new CEO James Wood. James took the reins from our host Troy Hammond who founded Talent Army and stepped aside to let James take Talent Army forward. James has had a really interesting career starting out as a door-to-door salesperson and then working his way up to be the Chief Revenue Officer at a Wellington SaaS company.  Having worked in both tech recruitment and SaaS, James has a very deep understanding and empathy for recruiting in technical companies. James has done a phenomenal amount of hiring across New Zealand from an external and internal capability and so he is seen as a trusted advisor to candidates as he will help them deeply understand what to expect in interviews and how to calm them to portray themselves as their true and confident selves. He has vast experience across all facets of commercial growth, strategy, and what it takes to scale companies looking to mature. He has first-hand experience doing this himself working with CE’s and boards. ‍James started his recruiting career with Candle where he was responsible for finding engineers and QA’s across New Zealand before being promoted to run the same recruitment companies in their respective regions. He believes that starting in recruitment, then transitioning into SaaS sales and leadership and now re-joining recruitment has allowed him to have a very good lens of what clients need and the people they need to help them on their growth journey. James has an exceptional personal brand across New Zealand in SaaS and can often be found helping not just to recruit for founders, but also mentor them with his experience and scar tissue in the SaaS industry. With his experience James has been hired into the Executive General Manager role with Talent Army to help our company scale by coaching, mentoring and executing and delivering upon his strategy in the same way you would expect a SaaS leader to do so. Yes, we have all the acronyms and tools in recruitment too. Our churn is the lowest in the industry 🙌🏻

In this episode, we talk with Kristen Lunman.  For as long as she can remember, Kristen wanted to challenge the status quo, leading her to circles of like-minded entrepreneurs. Those that seek to deliver a vision of a different world. Her superpowers tend to lean in the area of growth and leadership. Until last year, it was at Hatch and more recently a new venture called Powrsuit.  Powrsuit exists to amplify the impact of women leaders to shape the future of work.  Previous to Hatch and Powrstuit and Hatch, Kristen was the Chief Operating Office for Wipster. When she does have spare time, it’s spent with her teens or on a surfboard in freezing cold Lyall Bay. Kristen was amazing on the podcast and talks about her superpower of "just saying yes!" Please jump in and listen or watch this podcast. 

In this episode, we talk with Ben Pujji who is the CEO of Atomic.io a SaaS platform that helps companies engage their customers more effectively inside their apps.  Ben's early career was in banking, creative agencies, and government, before joining Atomic in 2015. In 2018 Ben stepped into the CEO's shoes, pivoting Atomic to focus on its new Action Card platform. Atomic helps businesses include their customer experience with web-based and in-app engagement. Its existing customers include ANZ, Foodstuffs, Kiwibank, and BNZ and its latest fundraising round is aimed at helping Atomic expand in Australia. Investors joining the Series A round include well-established venture capital firms Movac and Sir Stephen Tindall’s K1W1, Xero co-founders Rod Drury (who also serves as a director of Atomic) and Hamiah Walker, and former Trade Me executives and shareholders Sam Morgan and Rowan Simpson via their investment vehicles Jasmine Investments and Hoku, respectively. Ben talks about his journey into the role of a CEO that started as a school dropout. He shows how if you say yes to opportunities and work hard, you can be a CEO of a successful startup like Atomic.  If he sees two out of three pillars of an idea. He jumps in. Jump into this podcast and listen to Ben's story. 

In this episode, we chat with Diana Minnée who is a Chief Operating Officer for startups. She helps us to understand what a COO does in a startup and how she is able to pattern match across a lot of verticals to help support an Exec team. Diana founded The BizOps Agency to help startups scale. She and her BizOps Agents help organisations fill the gaps for the short term or long term. Previously as Head of Delivery at Trade Me, Diana focused on optimising Lean and Agile practices for over 50 teams across three offices, which her team of Delivery Coaches. As an Agile practitioner since 2008, she focuses on Modern Agile values, pragmatic operational design, and enabling everyone to do their best work. Diana is a pragmatic Senior Exec focused on high-tech startups - Operational leader covering all aspects of #bizops such as: Product and delivery Processes and Policies Organisational change and strategy CISO and engineering Workplace and staff People and Culture Compliance and regulatory Marketing, Sales and CS Financial strategy Diana is also a strong advocate for Women in Tech, mentoring women and Women in Leadership. Known for 'Getting s#$%T done', her transparent frankness, where to find a great gin and tonic, and always coming up with a way forward no matter what the problem. We hope you enjoy listening to this as much as we did. 

Mike Dawes founded and runs the IT Heavy Hitters charity boxing match, which has raised over $600k for charity. All proceeds from his events next year go to Voices of Hope. Mike is not usually one to put himself into the spotlight and would rather profile his charities. Mike is not usually one to put himself into the spotlight and would rather profile his charities. But as a good mate of Mike's, our host Troy felt it his honor and duty to tell his story too. No stranger to IT himself, his focus over the last 24+ years has been primarily delivering core infrastructure and technology service-orientated solutions, sales, and infrastructure design to delivery of network and server infrastructure, and leadership of infrastructure and operational teams, delivering quality solutions in large enterprise environments. Mike is also a volunteer firefighter and an around great guy. As someone who has gone through the IT Heavy Hitters fight camp, our host Troy Hammond is a massive advocate of others doing the same. So far IT Heavy Hitters has raised over $600,000 for local suicide prevention causes and they are currently working with the team to pull this together again for 2023, with shows in Wellington on May 6th, Auckland City on May 13th, and Auckland North Shore on May 20th. They'll take a group of IT professionals, provide qualified training and instruction and glove them up. The result is an evening of explosive boxing action. You don't need any experience to fight at IT Heavy Hitters, you'll be trained by professional coaches and helped with all aspects of theory and practical boxing.  On the night you'll choose your walkout song, step into the arena and put all of your training into 3x2 minute rounds, scored and refereed by qualified officials. Sign up here to become an IT Heavy Hitter and help Mike, Voices for Hope and everyone involve K.O. suicide for good.

In this episode on the We F*@KIN love podcast, we speak with Auriga Martin, a positive force in nature the world needs more of. Auriga is an American who moved to New Zealand and has filled her cup with her two passions, the arts, and SaaS product. Auriga is ever-focused on moving the needle and bringing beneficial and lasting change.  Having been one of the founding first ten employees at tech education unicorn lynda.com for more than a decade has given Auriga a unique set of skills about fast word-of-mouth growth and product-led organizational design.  Lynda.com provided Auriga with early product management proving ground that resulted in the $1.7B USD sale to LinkedIn in 2016.   Auriga has led tech teams for more than twenty years to develop and deliver innovative products that bring real and positive outcomes.  Always keeping purpose at the center of what Auriga does she brings full authenticity as a people leader, prioritizing providing the right environment for teams to thrive and move at pace. www.ventana.co.nz

In this episode on the We F*@KIN love podcast, we speak with Simon Small who we literally pulled off the street to join us on the podcast. Simon was one of the OG SaaS sales leaders who found his way into a startup by meditating. Simon has a background in the Arts & Media and started Livestreaming and created three shows: SaaS on the Street is my chance to connect with the brightest SaaS Founders in the world Ride the Next Tech Wave is a profile on Global Tech Leaders (for NZ's TechWeek) Rooibos with Simon Small is offering help with career guidance (launched during COVID) He has also created some Mastermind Training programmes and throughout 2020 he began having a massive impact on SaaS Founders. He says some added several millions to their company valuation. Simon is launching the inaugural website for SaaS Elevator which encompasses all of the training he has developed and delivered, plus some exciting collaborations with global experts. He has also built a close network of investors and is beginning to raise money for SaaS Founders through a new division of his personal company (Moonshot Studio Limited) called SaaS Elevator Capital. He created SaaS Elevator Capital because he wants SaaS Founders to remember they have a choice and says capital raising avenues are largely unconventional (and inaccessible).

In this episode on the We F*@KIN love podcast, we speak with Alicia McKay who is very well-known globally for her No-bullshit approach to leadership training and strategy execution. Alicia has been in strategy for all of her career - building business cases for infrastructure investment, developing long-term plans for corporates and communities, designing organisational transformation, and supporting teams and leaders to execute business change. Now, Alicia runs strategic development programmes for people and organisations. If you’re a clever, curious professional who wants to do great work with less stress and more intention, chances are she can help. Alicia is a policy analyst by trade, reformed management consultant, published author, keynote speaker, workshop facilitator, course creator, podcaster, blogger, and aspiring novelist. She is also the brains - and face! - behind Not An MBA. As a consultant and thought leader, Alicia has worked across almost every industry sector - FMCG, transport, retail, manufacturing, engineering, technology, utilities, professional services, education, health, peak bodies, NGOs and social services... but she says her heart will always lie in local government, where her career began. Alicia has supported thousands of NZ and Australian leaders to become strategists through in-house training, large-scale corporate leadership programmes, public training events, and online courses like Not An MBA and Meetings that Matter. 📚 Alicia wrote From Strategy to Action: A Guide to Getting Shit Done In The Public Sector, published in 2019. In 2021, she published "You Don't Need An MBA: Leadership Lessons that Cut Through the Crap." 🎓 Alicia founded the Not An MBA executive leadership program in 2021. naMBA has changed the lives of hundreds of leaders: less stress, more fulfilment and more progress on work that matters. Watch them talk about their transformation journeys on this YouTube playlist: ➡️ https://bit.ly/3qPuacg 💁🏼‍♀️ She launched Meetings that Matter in 2020, a proven system for leaders and facilitators to tackle ineffective workshops and drive progress. You can take MTM, or other strategic planning courses, here ➡️ https://academy.aliciamckay.co.nz 👍🏻 Alicia makes helpful free tools for strategy, planning, change, leadership, productivity and personal development. ➡️ http://www.aliciamckay.co.nz/free 🎤 Alisia speaks at and MC conferences, runs workshops and masterclasses, and goes live on LinkedIn on Fridays at 8AM for the Alicia McKay Show. Listen to past episodes where-ever you get your podcasts. 📧 Every week, Wednesday Wisdom reaches over 10,000 readers, with actionable tools and tips to help you live, work and lead more strategically. Check out the link here to join.

In this episode on the We F*@KIN love podcast, we speak with Serge van Dam who is very well-known in the NZ SaaS community. Serge van Dam is an active Investor / Director of going-global Kiwi software / SaaS companies, including Montoux, Re-Leased, Tourwriter, Raygun, and Cogo.   Originally an Organisational Psychologist, Serge is most interested in growth strategies and has expertise in B2B sales, marketing, and distribution. He spent a decade as an acknowledged thought leader in fintech, having been part of the leadership team at M-Com - the world’s leading mobile banking and payments platform - which was acquired by Fortune 500 company Fiserv in 2011.   Serge is an Operating Partner at New Zealand’s most successful venture capital firm - Movac - and is an advisor to various New Zealand Government agencies. He was also named New Zealand’s Angel Investor of the Year for 2020.   Serge grew up in Argentina, is married with two children, and lives in Wellington. When not helping grow companies, you will find him in the great outdoors, arguing over politics or with a novel in hand.