Kevin Whitmore: All right. So good morning, everybody. Welcome to today's session on ah, capital raising for web three businesses. So as some of you might be familiar, we had Aaron McDonald with us recently, and he was talking about raising capital and the journey for Futureverse and Centrality over raising their 300 million dollar plus rounds of funding.

So we've had that lens from from, I guess, a successful company. Now we're keen to get the lens from the investors. And so we've got a panel today of multiple different types of funds and investors and we'll, we'll introduce them all shortly. But we have Nawaz from GD1. We've got Michelle Cole from the Angel Association. We've got Philip from Crane Earth, and we've got Mark joining us shortly. He's just coming in from another session, so he'll be with us soon.

So just some housekeeping, if you want to ask a question, please put it in the chat. And we'll get to that once, once we're there this session is being recorded and it will be put up on web3nz. xyz for future people to have a look at. And we'll just ask you to complete a quick survey at the end, just so that that can help orient us in terms of today's session, but also for future sessions as well, in terms of what people are missing or the gaps or things that you'd like to do more learning sessions on.

And then agenda wise, we're going to go through a panel discussion. So we'll start with that. Then we're going to have a company pitch and receive feedback and if there's more companies out there that want to, I guess, pitch in the context of, I guess it's a learning process, right? We're not expecting necessarily today for, for businesses to all be ready to, to, to be investor ready, but that's the opportunity today is to, I guess let people know where you're at and receive some form of feedback so that you can. Take those next, take those next steps and get yourself to investor ready.

Then we're going to have a case study possibly talk about Immersive, but possibly Futureverse, possibly some other, other companies in terms of what made them attractive investment prospects. And then we'll jump into more Q& A.

So I guess this session today is we've structured around two hours. We've made it a little bit longer than normal and that's just because the feedback from lots of people was that this is a really hot topic and they want to delve into it more. So we've kind of made this an investor masterclass.

Having said that, if we get through everything relatively quickly then we can, we can cut it off early and we'll have a break at the one hour mark as well just so people can get a coffee and move around. All right. So maybe starting off we can just go around the panel and get people to introduce themselves.

So I'm starting at my top left. Michelle, do you want to go first?

Michelle Cole: Yeah, Kia ora, Kia ora koutou everybody Michelle Cole I work now with the Angel Association of New Zealand, which is New Zealand's national organization for those that are actively involved in early stage venture capital.

Our main remit is connecting entrepreneurs and investors who love startups and providing events and resourcing for funding and raising. And also we're gonna, we do a little bit of lobbying as well. Prior to that, I was with Edmund Hillary Fellowship, which is where I know Philip and Mark actually, and Kev and I connected and I've been part of the Web3NZ sort of whare, so just helping Kevin and Sarah and just sort of connecting fortnightly, just like seeing where it's at and just making sure that that ball was rolling and it's been a great space to connect in. So yeah, great to be here Kev.

Kevin Whitmore: Awesome. Thank you. Philip.

Philip Stehlik: Kia ora and hello. Thanks for having us and spending time together. I am calling in from Portugal, actually from Europe. So other side of the, of the globe. And I'm here as a partner at a fund called Crane Earth, which is a fund where we invest specifically at the intersection of climate impact and web three.

So decentralization using decentralized tech to solve this climate crisis that we maneuvered ourselves into, hopefully maneuvering us out of that again. And my background is I've been an angel investor for a few years before starting this fund, and an entrepreneur for about 20 years, starting out in fintech, originally lived in Silicon Valley for 11 years.

And went into the blockchain space at around 2016 17 into the Ethereum ecosystem and built a company called Centrifuge back there, which is today one of the leading platforms bringing real world assets on chain. So, for me, it's always, how can we use this tech to actually solve real, Issues, the real challenges that we're facing. Super happy to be here.

Kevin Whitmore: Awesome. Thanks, Philip. And I appreciate you dialing in from 8pm in Portugal. Awesome. And Nawaz. You're next.

Nawaz Ahmed: Thanks, Kev. Hey, everyone. I'm Nawaz Ahmed. I'm the general partner of GD1 Web3 Fund. So we're a New Zealand based crypto and Web3 focused venture fund. I've been in the crypto space since 2017 and mostly been working with a range of investment and advisory firms across New Zealand, Australia, and the U. S.

Prior to starting the fund, I was also an angel investor for 3 4 years and really enjoyed that, which kind of pushed me into thinking of getting into investing full time and seeing that New Zealand had a lack of investors that focus on the crypto space that kind of pushed me to to stay here and start the fund based out of here to hopefully support and grow the local ecosystem.

And before crypto, I was mostly doing deep tech commercialization working with entities like uni services, outset outset ventures and, and firms like that. So excited to be here.

Kevin Whitmore: Awesome. Thank you. And you've just come back from an overseas trip as of last week, yeah?

Nawaz Ahmed: Yes, that's right. So coming back energized.

Kevin Whitmore: Very good. Very good. Cool. We might touch on some of those topics as well, just in terms of, I guess, the geographic differences in terms of investment overseas versus New Zealand, but we'll talk about that a little bit later on. So maybe to kick things off would be great to just get a little bit of an understanding about your funds or the types of investment that you do.

So I guess talking a little bit more about your, your mandates and what's your, I guess the types of companies that you invest in. So maybe starting again with you, Michelle.

Michelle Cole: Yeah, as with the overarching sort of association ourselves, we are maybe individual angel investors, or we might actually, which is the latest thing, is a lot of angels becoming LPs in the VC funds, just at that smaller level. Which is quite interesting. So you're getting a lot of nominees that are having to sort of round themselves up into these smaller VC funds.

But we tend to generally, as the association, just provide that learning and education, uh, and the connectivity between investors and, and founders and more so the early stage VC funds. So our member base has grown from just angels into now the early stage VCs, which is really good. It's good to see New Zealand's market getting fuller of more venture capital out there.

It's exciting to see. And I've got a couple of slides. You let me know when you want me to share them, Kev, it's just on what the stats are for crypto and Web3 in New Zealand, what the investment's been. So this is data that's come through PwC and NZGCP. They do twice yearly research. They search what people have been investing in, and we put out the report.

And the latest report has come out, and it's interesting that this time around they didn't break it down actually into blockchain, whereas last year, end of last year's half, they did, and it was sitting there at about 4%. Which was, and that's in line with a lot of other smaller industries as well.

It was just, yeah, 4 percent seems to be sitting there compared to roughly when you've got your, your big SaaS, which is sitting there about 26 and 36 and deep tech was the largest growing sector that angels were investing in, which was quite interesting. But I'm wondering if the downturn potentially in investing in blockchain is why they didn't measure it in this first half of the year. Yeah.

Kevin Whitmore: Very much so. Yeah, I've got a spot for that. We can, we can bring up those stats a little bit later on, would be awesome. But maybe we want to explain to people what an LP is and what the difference between an LP and a GP are.

Michelle Cole: I wonder if that should probably come through from Nawaz with a fund, actually.

Okay, fair enough. That way he can give you a really good example of his.

Kevin Whitmore: Well, we'll jump to Nawaz next. Do you wanna talk through GD1's Web three fund?

Nawaz Ahmed: Yeah, sure. So I guess to give a quick overview, GD1's a larger venture capital firm that's been around for about 10 years. And currently on fund three, which is a large $150 million fund that does generalist investments across, you know, SaaS, deep tech, health tech and I had joined last year to start a standalone, separate Web3 and CryptoFocus venture fund. So the Crypto/Web3 fund is completely separated, standalone, managed by me. But we, you know, we share a brand and we share a back office and things like that.

Our focus from the Web3 fund is very early stage, so we invest on pre seed and seed projects, and we're happy to be, you know, a first check and help you find more investors through our networks and the types of investments or areas that we like to look at is, we're quite generalist across the world of Web3 and crypto but I would say 80 percent of the things that we would probably invest in is more infrastructure type projects.

And that's across the, the various genres of, of crypto. So infrastructure across defi, across, you know, scaling of blockchains, across NFT infrastructure, all of that type of stuff. And then also I think 20 percent more on the consumer side, which is a little bit more broad. It could be anything from, you know, wallets to decentralized applications to, you know, more real world asset type type items as well. So we have quite quite a broad mandate across crypto and being based here, we're not only focused on New Zealand. So we do have a global mandate. So we invest across the world. But we are hoping to make majority of our investments in New Zealand as the industry keeps growing over here.

And I guess to quickly address the the GP/LP point. A venture capital fund like ours has a general partner, which is myself, which is generally the person who does the day to day work around the fund, raising money for the fund. Sourcing deals, doing due diligence, making investments while LPs or limited partners are essentially investors into the fund, so they are limited in the sense of, you know, they, they're quiet partners within the fund, they, they put the money in they have a limited say in, in what investments are made as long as they're within the mandate of the fund.

And, and they have like a close connection to the, to the general partner rather than to the investments directly. Hopefully that's a, a simple enough explanation.

Kevin Whitmore: Yeah, no, that resembles what I just looked up on Investopedia. So that sounds good. We'll give you a pass. Thanks for that. Over to you, Philip.

Philip Stehlik: Thanks. So similar to what you were saying Nawaz so, I'm here as GP of Crane Earth but actually I'm also founded a project called Earth. So Earth is where we support founders as advisors, as angels, and then we have a VC arm, which is Crane Earth, um, which I'm here as with the VC hat. And all of this is related to climate and impact.

Our mandate is really identifying very, very early stage projects, like you said, pre seed seed, similar stage for us, founders who have an idea of using decentralized tech, or also just technology software in general, to revert the climate crisis that we're in, and that goes into supply chain, in decarbonization, into water quality, like anything that is around the climate spectrum is what we invest in.

We're based in Europe as a fund and investing mostly in Europe and the U S just based on our experience being in the Valley for a long time and being entrepreneurs here in Europe. That's where we have a network, but we also had some investments in Africa, maybe a little in Asia. In theory, we could go hopefully in New Zealand as well at some point. That would be great. I think that's a further mandate from our side and. Yeah, just go from there and see where the questions come.

Kevin Whitmore: Awesome, sounds good. And I think we were talking before, I think there's a few businesses in New Zealand that potentially line up with, with, with the climate tech side of things and, and climate change, so, sounds good.

And maybe similar theme but different question in terms of what would be the ideal business that you're looking to invest in right now? So what, what would, if you were to kind of create a fantasy company? And it ticked all your boxes. What, what would that look like? Maybe we'll go back, back to Philip, because you were, you were just talking about this topic.

Philip Stehlik: Great. Yeah. Let's, let's go backwards. Actually, it plays off in a little bit, another piece of my background, which is in fintech and defi. Right. So I've been in defi very, very early on and building in that space. So for me, if I look at the ideal companies today, specifically for us. where there's also a match for the fund and our expertise and the expertise and the project that people are building.

It is something around yeah, where you're solving a climate issue. It could be any of the ESG goals. It could be, I mean, there's a broad spectrum. I'm not going to go into, into, into them. But combining that with decentralized technology, so not only building new tech, but also building a new delivery mechanism where you can say, well, this is becoming more resilient, or it's a different way to finance this type of project. So if we're talking about DeFi or FinTech, but so anything at this intersection where you're using climate, we're using a specific way to finance stuff. We're using, we're solving a climate issue using decentralized technology.

That's really interesting for us, these intersections. And very specifically, what I would look to is that you have an amazing founder team where you have at least 80 percent of the needs covered. So you have a technology founder, you have a business founder and you have climate often also somebody who understands the science of what you're actually doing.

So that's a, that's a crucial part. Or if you have a science and a technology founder, but you're missing the business. So a roughly complete founding team and an idea that you're really burning for. I think this is something I tell to all very early stage founders. If you're working on something that you are not really burning for, like that, that you're dreaming about, that you want to see in this world, then it's going to be a really tough, tough time to bring this into into the world.

So those are some of the combinations I would be looking for.

Kevin Whitmore: Awesome. No, that sounds good. So alignment with kind of the climate tech theme, definitely pieces around team structure and the people on the, on the team and their makeup, and then that burning passion or I guess purpose driven component.

Awesome. Sounds good. Nawaz, what about you?

Nawaz Ahmed: Yeah, so I think slightly different to Philip since we're a bit more broad in, in what we look at where firstly, like, I think the, the concept or the idea of the business is something that excites us. It meets some of our theses and beliefs of what we think the future of web 3 and crypto looks like and that's, you know, based on conversations with the founders and on where they think this is going and and why they're building this type of thing.

And definitely, I think repeating a bit of Philip is that the founder piece is, you know, incredibly important. A lot of the companies I've invested in the founders have, you know, deep experiences in, in what they are trying to build across, you know, if it's defi, they have some sort of financial tech background, or, you know, they could be a crypto degen and have been playing in defi for since the existence of it and they've identified gaps that they think they could solve. So that type of stuff is, you know, of course, incredibly important.

I think for me as well, I, I really like to invest in things where I could see the, the business actually making money rather than it being quite theoretical for a long time. So it's quite crucial for me to understand, you know, go to market type strategies and how they're going to acquire users, whether it be a defi platform, a decentralized LinkedIn style company, a new blockchain. Really trying to understand how the founders are going to go to market, compete with, you know, other applications in the market and how they're thinking about that.

And I think that's, that's quite important since we do go quite early in terms of pre seed and seed understanding where they're going to go and then of course the, the actual ability of executing on what they're saying they will do. And that, that would be obviously on the technical side as well as on the actual business side as well.

So understanding that the team has those capabilities in house. Or they have the capabilities of actually hiring and, and building a strong team that can execute on that. I think so that, that's quite crucial, but yeah, once we get parts past the team, it's, it's definitely the type of business and market they're going after.

If that's something that, you know, aligns with our thinking of, of the future then it, it, it makes it a lot more easier for us to, to further the conversations.

Kevin Whitmore: Awesome. That sounds good. So if I do TLDR that one, that was, so alignment in terms of the blueprints and what you see for the future. And then there's, I guess the Peter Thiel and A16Z talk about the distribution, right?

You can have a great product. If you don't have a distribution process or strategy beyond go to market, it's dead in the water type thing. And then obviously the, the, the team and the, the fit with everything on your side as well. Cool. Sounds good. And then the angel lens.

Michelle Cole: Yeah, I think it's quite varied now, actually, which I think is good. And I think that's become because the resurgent of new generations of investors and angel investors, because people are tech native when they're coming through and you're getting a lot of the tech founders that have exited and how they then want to play.

And so they are a little bit more braver in what they, their risk appetite is slightly higher in how they would like to invest. So it's sort of slightly shifting from your SaaS. And like I was saying before, the deep tech has risen, everyone's got excited about that again, but I think you'll start to see, as new generations come through, the other, other sectors will, will play out or, or whatever the technology is that people, the platforms that people are playing on.

I think some sectors are always going to be of interest. You're always going to have agritech you're always going to have education. You're always going to have your fintechs and all of that kind of thing. I think it's just the platforms that are used is what's going to shift on what people are investing And it's an area where I'd like to see the Angel Association create a lot of excitement and a bit more education. And so that angel investors are more excited to invest in these other technology platforms. But the only way you can become less risk averse as an angel investors is by knowing it, right? It's getting rid of the fear of the unknown. Cause you saw, you noticed in the startup council report that the gaming is mentioned and obviously even Aaron McDonald is mentioned sitting there.

So that is a good shift for us to have, you know. Non SaaS businesses and people recognize. So I think you will start to see a shift over the next sort of decade. And I know I say a decade, but it does take a generation, you know, to make changes shift. Our baby boomers are still our largest investing pool, which is really nice.

So we do need to take care of them. But it's, yeah, how do we educate and bring new groups through and what they are investing in.

Kevin Whitmore: Yeah, and I guess with through all the noise, right, because obviously there's, there's been a lot of challenges and scams and things like that. And you want, you want them to, to access the, the, the, the good investments.

Yeah. And I guess that education piece as well, David, you winning the EY Entrepreneur of the Year, probably not many people know what, knew what VV was from a, from a broader New Zealand perspective. But it's starting to get out there now, which is, which is really good.

Cool. And then maybe just circling back to you, Philip, I just got a question. Obviously we've got what are they called now? CH4 capital, investing in Bitcoin methane so landfill capture of methane to generate using Bitcoin mining. Is that the sort of. Company or not the company, cause that's a fund, but are those sorts of companies that that fund would invest in aligned with crane earth as well, or is, is that quite off in terms of what you would look at in terms of an investment?

Philip Stehlik: Because there's also every now and then I see decks where they say, Hey, we're providing Bitcoin mining to basically fund renewables, right? So when renewables are generating power and during the night you have still power being generated by hydrodam or if the power cannot be taken off they funnel it into bitcoin mining so you store the energy in bitcoin or if you like take the what do you call it the gas flares on oil rigs where they normally just burn and they take generate heat and energy from that and then use it for bitcoin mining.

That's not necessarily what, what we're investing into, but it is more, if we talk about the coordination layer or decommunization projects, for example. So we invested in open forest protocol, but it's all about the MRV. So the measurement and the reporting and the verification of trees that have been planted as an example, and they have a beautiful way to do all that on chain, make it verifiable, make it visible, and then have a reward system baked in.

Or we're doing a similar, we have an investment in a biodiversity company where they are making biodiversity data. And they call simplex DNA out of Switzerland, they make biodiversity data available based on a decentralized way of collecting the data.

And then again, making it verifiable and having corporates buy this data later on. So that's more the types of place that we're looking on.

Kevin Whitmore: Cool. So a lot more on the protocol defi side of things.

Philip Stehlik: Protocol and like end user, some, some use case corporate enterprise facing as well, not so much on the hardware or mining side.

Kevin Whitmore: Cool. No, that sounds good. All right, I'll throw this question out to all of you, so feel free to answer if you're interested. But how hands on... Are you, in terms of the businesses that you invest in, is there sort of an approach in terms of sort of a silent partner versus how integrated you, you become with a business?

Nawaz Ahmed: Happy to take this first. I get I get as involved as the company requires me to be. So I guess since we're investing relatively early, pre seed, seed we are quite clear with the founders and the team where our capabilities lie where our skill sets are. And for me, that's mostly, you know, the, the six years I've been working in crypto with the investment advisory firms, most of my work was doing, doing strategy, early product, commercialization, capital raising for startups in the crypto space.

So that's really things I help with. So a lot of the work I do with our portfolio companies would be strategy sessions, early product feedback, getting them customer introductions, all of that kind of stuff. But it is relatively hands off in the sense that I get involved if they want me to.

I'm not really on their back. They, they know my skillset. They know my capabilities and they can tap me in when they, when they need me. So that's the type of relationship I generally have with, with our portfolio founders.

Kevin Whitmore: Awesome. Thank you. Anybody else?

Philip Stehlik: Yeah, happy to, happy to go. And that is the, my, my partner, Max and I, we have been working together for about 20 years and we had multiple companies along the way, like as founders, bootstrapped, and we raised hundreds of millions for some of our companies.

We exited them. So we went through the cycle ourselves a few times. And with that also we actually quite involved with the projects that we are investing in. And again, it's, it's mutual, similar to what you just said, but as we're going in with the, with the, with the clarity of, Hey, we want to make you successful because you're building the business and you should know most about it.

Like, if we know more about your business than you do, then, then, then something's off, but we just have the experience of having gone through this cycle a few times. As entrepreneurs, and then also as angels. So we want to be there and support as much, as much as we can, but probably that will taper off a little bit as the company grows and expands.

We might be less operationally involved, but especially early on just with our background and experience, we can, we can support a lot. And we also enjoy that. So that's the mix of the entrepreneur's hat while also wearing the founder's hat.

Kevin Whitmore: All good, thanks. MIchelle.

Michelle Cole: Yeah, you'll you'll find your lead investor, your lead angel, will probably be an advisory board member.

So hopefully at that stage you're not having traditional governance boards because you're still at really early stages, but they tend to come on as your advisory board person. And they are there for, I think like Nawaz was saying, anything that you require, why did you pick them to be your investor? You know, is it because of the markets that they have connections in?

You know, is it a particular deep tech skillset, you know, expertise that they've got? And people often sort of will then make the counter argument that, you know, they're too involved and they're too much, but I think it's about the relationship that you have with that person, and then are you able to shift that person on off your advisory board if your relationship is good enough that you're able to do that so that you can bring the next set of expertise on that you require.

And people often say it's because they're looking after their money. Well, it might be if you're going to be wanting another round off them. But I think what's happening though with the angels is we've kind of got what we call our super angels, our active angels, which is that top group that have invested in probably over 40 companies.

They are getting very tapped out. They're quite, quite busy. And some of them are wanting to sort of slow down a little bit, but because there is just that layer that are constantly getting asked to be on all the advisory boards. It's very time consuming. It's a full time job being an angel investor.

And people forget that. So and also people forget that it's, they're the ones taking the risk, the high risk on you. Because you know, their expected return on that investment is obviously it's not as high as if you're in a VC. They'd love it to be, but yeah, they're definitely sitting there taking that risk on you.

And particularly in sectors well, no, I won't say sectors, but more platforms in that, that they're, they're less aware of technologies that they're, they're not as comfortable in their knowledge gap. So yeah, makes it harder.

Kevin Whitmore: Makes sense. Awesome. Thank you. So, assuming I'm a Web3 company and I've got a pitch and an MVP, what would your advice be to me?

So, and maybe to prefix this as well, I think you often hear, and I've been part of this in the, in the past, is that you engage with a lot of VCs or potential investors, and the difference between a warm introduction versus a cold introduction is many, many hours having sort of coffees and blank stare chats versus real engagement and real alignment with potentially the funds mandate.

So what, what would your, what would your recommendation be if you know, you're, you're a business, you're looking to maybe explore investment because you think you might be ready. What, what would your advice be?

Philip Stehlik: I'm happy to go first this one, the assumption is they know they want to raise, they have a deck or they're just really in the exploration phase of how do we go about this? Like what's the first step?

Kevin Whitmore: They've got an MVP, they've got a pitch deck prepared. They're exploring the investment space. Yeah. And it's how deep do they go and commit to that so, cause obviously it's very time consuming and yeah, all encompassing.

Philip Stehlik: Got it. Yeah. I mean, there's a bunch of questions I would ask myself as a founder, when I get to this point of, of, am I ready to raise capital is I probably ask some people I'm surrounded with who raised capital before, and just get like a first round of feedback before I even start pitching.

Because there you would already get quite, quite a good set of feedback. I would also really be clear on where am I today? What is the actual problem I'm solving? For me, it was important. What is the real world problem I'm solving? Not some hypothetical, we could, dah, dah, dah. And why do I know this is a real world problem?

It could be some sources of data that you have. It could be from the MVP, you talk to 10 customers or 10 corporates or 500 users or whatever it is, like you have some backing. for what you're up to. Potentially you'll have one, two, three advisors from the space that really are giving you some more credibility because they say, Hey, if we are investing our time with you and the project that you're building, that adds another layer of credibility once you're actually starting to talk to investors.

And then you already mentioned the warm introductions are always, always key. To get, you get to that, that first layer. And then once you talk with people, actually on your side, do the research about who are you talking with? Who is the fund? Who is the person? What is the background of the person you're talking with?

Like if you're pitching a gaming project then you probably shouldn't talk to the FinTech expert who only speak, right? So finding the right person in the fund and actually talk to, like that would also speak already a lot and put you above I think the noise level, if I'm meeting somebody who says, wow, I looked at your company, blah, blah, blah, and your portfolio, this and that from before, congrats on the exit or whatever it is, like there is this, like you also put some work into that first conversation.

And I'm going to pause there and pass it on to you. And maybe we'll play ping pong with some other things that come up. I'm just going to leave it there.

Kevin Whitmore: Yeah. That sounds good.

Nawaz Ahmed: For sure. Yeah, I think the, the, some of the things I would, I'd probably add is I would, I would generally tell founders that, you know, they, they should probably start thinking and starting this process well before they actually need that capital.

And it's really important to start building these relationships. And from my opinion, you know, I, I really like talking to founders well before they raise, because it allows me to see what we're really looking for in early stage founders, which is the capability of execution. So if they talk to me, you know, like three, four, five months before they're actually raising and I can see what they've done over that five months, before they actually start to raise, you know, you, you start to really start understanding the way that they're able to kind of build these things. And that makes it a lot easier to, to have that conversation.

And the other one is definitely, I think, adding to, to what you said, Philip, it's, it's quite important to, to know who you're talking to and make sure that you can see that they would be a good partner for you, because obviously, I think everyone's heard this many times, like the investor relationship is a, is a long term relationship with, with founders.

So, you want to find someone that aligns with what you're trying to build over that long term period and someone that you're, you know, you're able to work with and not someone who you think might not align with, with whatever you're trying to build. And also understanding who you're talking to, in terms of the types of things that they understand, the markets, they understand it makes that, I think that it just makes the conversation a lot more easier.

For example, you know, I, I have had some crypto founders talk to me and you know, basically asked me if I know anything about crypto before they're pitching me. So just the fact that they haven't really looked into my background of, of knowing crypto, it's just kind of weird, but I think that's, that's generally easy thing for founders to avoid if they do some basic research.

And yeah, and then the, the cold and, and warm intro stuff. Definitely warm intros just, I think, speed up the process a little bit but generally we're, we're, we're also happy and, and easily take cold emails and, and DMs and stuff like that as well. But yeah, the warm intro is is definitely like a leap ahead.

One of the, I have a podcast called The Inquisitive VC, where I talk to crypto investors, which I started before the fund, and one of the guests I had on that podcast, he was very particular that he only talks to founders if they get to him by a warm intro, and I asked him why that is, and he, his opinion was really interesting from the point of view that, If the founder is not even able to get a warm intro to me how are they going to be able to build a billion dollar business?

So I think that's quite an interesting point of view of, you know, founders trying to find ways to get things done. But yeah, I think, I think I'll leave it at that.

Kevin Whitmore: Yeah I think that's Jason's method as well, isn't it? I think he said something similar.

Michelle Cole: That is so true, Nawaz it's funny. So just, only practical tips here because otherwise it's echoing everyone else.

Is that, you know how we used to have the term coffee dating? That's completely sort of gone out the window now. Unless you've actually got something to offer that investor. When you're having those pre meetings and stuff like that, when you're getting to know them don't bother wasting their time, like if a physical meeting, they just don't have that, that, that bandwidth for it.

So what they are happy to have instead is actually, if you do newsletters, It's like a stakeholder's newsletter. So it won't, might not necessarily be called an investor newsletter yet. If it comes out quarterly or however often it comes out, but really good ones that are happy to receive those and open them and they will read them, et cetera.

And that sort of goes to the point that Philip was making is what's the progress that you have made. And it's a good way to show that. And then that way you're sort of not bugging them. And if they're interested, they will look at it kind of thing. So that is a practical tip. Coffee dating has sort of gone by the wayside because time is just too short now and there's just so many people raising.

Kevin Whitmore: Yeah, I've heard somebody else mention that same thing in terms of the, the newsletter or the, the investor update or the supporter update. Yeah, so yeah, really good advice. I think having, having comms around people that are potentially prospects or leads in terms of generating that sort of momentum and then having maybe a more passive update around what's your, your company has been doing and generating is probably another one to, to think about as well. Awesome.

Philip Stehlik: I have one more, I have one more, and that just builds on this is I would really treat fundraising as a process. And like, you just mentioned the newsletter, make sure you know who you sent it to, make sure when, like, have a, have basically a CRM for your fundraising process and really track that and really prepare in that way also, because ultimately, like, you can spend forever fundraising, or you can really make sure you shepherd it through a process.

And that is something, especially first time, founders or entrepreneurs who don't have this experience of like building a funnel, basically, that you, that you have investors walk through in stages and they will pass at certain stages. If you don't have this, it can be kind of super loose and then you don't really get to the goal that you want.

So I think it's a good process around it. Highly recommend.

Kevin Whitmore: Awesome. Thank you and yeah, just for those that came in late, if you've got any questions to start throwing them into the chat, we will have a Q and A option later on to, to come off mute and kind of ask those sorts of questions. But just for now we're doing the panel session.

So if you can drop them into the chat, that would be awesome. Okay. And then maybe we'll run this next question and then see if there's time for the pitching, but we've got Mark Pavlyukovskyy joining us now as well. Live from the airport, I believe.

Hey Mark, how are you?

Mark Pavlyukovskyy: Hey guys, how are you? Sorry for the delay. All good. I'm just, yeah, I'm actually traveling back to New Zealand today. So yeah.

Kevin Whitmore: Welcome. Yeah. We've still got a lot of questions to ask you. No, no. Maybe you want to just give a run through on, on yourself and NZVC? That would be great.

Mark Pavlyukovskyy: Yeah, sure. Yeah. So my name is Mark. I'm one of the founders of NZVC and it's it's basically a small VC firm based in New Zealand. We're investing mostly into Kiwi companies doing sort of pre seed, seed and a little bit of series A focusing on the combination of the B2B SaaS marketplaces and deep tech.

And I've done a bunch of crypto kind of the last year as well. Mostly infrastructure and kind of tools in the crypto space. And before that I had a small company here in the Valley that I exited back in 20, 2019. And that was like in the consumer ed tech hardware space. So yeah, we, we, the fund is 17 million and we invest sort of 50k to 250k checks.

We've done about 40 investments to date of which I'd say probably six are web3 and crypto. And that includes things like easy crypto, which is New Zealand's biggest exchange. I also, I invested into Swan Bitcoin, which is like the biggest kind of Bitcoin marketplace. And that's recently grown quite a lot.

We've done some trading tools and some infrastructure like ZK ZK proofs and and and one NFT platform as well. So yeah, kind of have dabbled a little bit in crypto and web3 and also personally have have made investments, um, in that space.

Kevin Whitmore: Awesome. That sounds good. So thank you for having thank you for being with us. Where, whereabouts are you dialing in from today?

Mark Pavlyukovskyy: Yeah, I'm actually, I'm actually in California. I'm actually flying back to New Zealand today, which is, which is why I was, I was late getting close to the yeah, to the airport. But yeah, I was in New Zealand since the pandemic started back in 2020.

And I was there for about three years and then then traveling last, last six months, and we'll be coming back. Yeah, today.

Kevin Whitmore: Awesome. And you're also part of the EHF fellowship. Yeah?

Mark Pavlyukovskyy: That's right. Yeah. That's how I met Michelle Michelle Cole and and Phillip as well.

Kevin Whitmore: Those of you interested in how all the connections work, there's a, there's a bit of a connection background and EHF has been very much part of that as well, which is, which is great.

Kevin Whitmore: Okay. So maybe just another question for whoever would like to answer, but what sort of companies should look at VC or angel money? There's obviously those that look to bootstrap. There's those that look to raise through various mechanisms et cetera, but VC and angel can be sort of type specific.

Not only from a company perspective, but also from a founder perspective as well. So what would your advice be in terms of the types of companies and founders that should look for your type of investment?

Mark Pavlyukovskyy: I think maybe I can go first. I think I was, you know, talking to some folks here in California, in the Valley about kind of the companies we're seeing in New Zealand. And, you know, there's definitely a lot of companies in New Zealand that are looking to basically kind of build a really good kind of solid lifestyle, but we call it lifestyle business, which is something that is profitable from day one, grows kind of steadily, and doesn't necessarily need to take investment, right?

And I think that a lot of business in New Zealand fit in that, you know, that, that stereotype. And I think those kinds of businesses may not necessarily benefit from VC investments. VC investments, I think are geared towards companies that want to build some kind of technology that can scale really quickly and which, which is the reason you take, you take on kind of money up front, you take on money up front, and you take, you spend like maybe, you know, a couple of years building the product, getting it to distribution.

All the while sort of burning through cash, right? And it's actually, you know, if you think about it, it's quite expensive. You give up quite a lot of equity for that initial sort of like ideally, you know, a quick run up that you get when the company scales, obviously not all companies can scale fast and so, you know, as kind of in, in the VC business, it's sort of understood that your returns, most of your returns will be generated by 20% of your portfolio. And probably of that 20, it'll be 20% of, of that 20, somewhere like 2% or or whatever, like 4% of the total. So it's, it's, it's, it's a power law distribution of, of kind of, you know, success and so.

You know, even the majority of companies that try to scale really quickly and build technology that can scale very quickly, then they don't end up succeeding for whatever reason, right? Maybe the market is not receptive. It's not the right timing. They can't build the product, can't distribute it. So I think I think those are just some considerations to think about.

I think the most important thing is probably like, is the founder ready to basically you know, do a marathon or do a sprint for the finish line versus kind of run this as a, um, just, just a regular kind of business, right? That, that's, I think the main consideration for thinking about whether you take VC VC money.

Kevin Whitmore: Awesome. Anybody else?

Nawaz Ahmed: Yeah, I reckon Mark covered most of it. Like, yeah, I'll just add, like, thinking, the founder just needs to think like how big they want to build this. So, yeah, exactly. If you're thinking of a lifestyle style business you know, you personally would get you know, quite wealthy, live a good life. And that's great.

But that just doesn't meet the criteria of a, of a VC or an angel who are looking for you know, hundred X type returns on their investment. So if you're not able to, or you, you're not wanting to build a business that could be, you know, potentially a billion dollar company servicing, you know, millions, hundred millions of users around the world, then probably not best to, to go after venture or angel money.

Kevin Whitmore: Cool. That makes sense. Philip or Michelle?

Michelle Cole: No, I think we also need to maybe shift a little bit in our thinking because there are heaps of New Zealand businesses, so it's kind of like that unicorn versus a really successful company. Do you have to go global to be a successful company as such? You know, like you know, there could be a company that could be a 5 billion company in New Zealand cause it's disrupting the, the, the ecosystem here in a particular subsector.

And, you know, so there's things like that. And that's kind of one of the discussions that we'll be having at our angel summit in February is you know, successful business, large still versus a unicorn, you know, so it, can you still do that? And should, you know, so that, and, and then the, how do you invest in that?

Is that, are we leaving that to the family offices or just to be self cash flowed or, you know, can angels and VCs invest in those as well? So like, can we shift that goalpost in thinking for people?

Mark Pavlyukovskyy: Yeah, and I would maybe add that, you know, there are actually businesses in New Zealand that are you know, large billion dollar businesses, right?

I mean, like, I think Trade Me is one example. Think, you know you know, the, the banks, although they're not startups, you know, I think the fintech space in general, that's, that's for example, an industry that could be pretty, pretty big in New Zealand. If you're just sticking to New Zealand and not going abroad.

So just something I would also add

Philip Stehlik: I have one differentiation specifically around angel versus VC, because we also have an angel fund. And like Mark already said about like the distribution for the VC fund and the returns and so on. And as a VC, I have a certain mandate to deliver certain returns, but as an angel or as maybe a group of angels, I have much more much more choice what I want to invest to in.

And maybe I'm actually fine supporting a founder, a local founder who is building like a really good lifestyle business, and I'm just going to be perpetually a 3 percent shareholder or whatever it is, and I don't necessarily need to see an exit. So also differentiating there, if you're talking to angels, maybe there are some that are really a business angel for a smaller type of business, but then once you go the VC route, everything else that was said totally, totally applies.

Kevin Whitmore: Awesome. That makes sense. Okay. Just conscious of time. So we might take a quick five minute break just so people can move around and grab a coffee, et cetera. Just before we jump into the next session we're going to get at least one business just to effectively pitch, but yeah, run through where they're at and get a little bit of feedback.

So I think Alex, you were keen. Are you still keen to do that? Just come off mute if you're, if you're there.

Anyway we'll have a, we'll have a chance shortly to... mic issues. Yep. Cool. Yeah. So we'll, we'll do that after the, after the break. If there are any other companies that would like to also just tell us what you're up to. This is an opportunity to get some feedback. It doesn't mean that you are necessarily investor ready.

In fact, probably the main gain here is to, to understand what you would need to do in terms of getting investor ready. So feel free to have a think about that. And if you'd like to talk about your project or your, your company there'll be a bit of a, an opportunity to do that afterwards.

Otherwise we will pause there and come back at 9. 59.

Hey, welcome back. See, we've got lots of fireflies and and Notetaker's joining us, so that's new, but that's all good. So, I'll just give it one more minute for people to come back, and then we'll kick it off again.

There you are.

Alex Bissell: Sorry, I think my internet just cut out.

Kevin Whitmore: All right, all good. We can hear you now. Do you want to take it away? So I guess the context at the moment is, yeah, well, we've got obviously an investor panel here. So today's an opportunity to kind of talk through projects that you have. Alex's business is also on, uh, community insights page.

I'll share that link as well so you can see a context for what they've, they've presented there. And I guess the, the community spotlight page just for everybody else's benefit is an opportunity for people to share your business in a templated form so that when we do get investors that are interested, they don't necessarily have to trawl through all the other information.

They get quite a targeted understanding of whether or not this, this business fits with their, their funds mandate. And you can get some insights from there. So I'll just post the link and I will hand over to Alex.

Alex Bissell: So just to flag everyone, after going through the, the journey of I guess what most founders may go through thinking that they need to raise money I think I've got the point where I'm not actively looking for money, realizing that we are not at the stage that would suit, but I'm more than happy to share, share, share the project and share the idea and we do have a call to action at the end.

Fantastic. Alright, so this is a short deck that explains, explains the the project.

To avoid mass suffering, we need greenhouse gases to become painfully expensive. We make this happen, unfucking the planet while offering high potential returns. We do this by making compliance carbon markets more accessible. What are compliance carbon markets? Compliance carbon markets force emitters to buy and surrender emission units.

They make it more expensive for businesses to pollute. The more expensive it is, the greater the motive to decarbonize.

Emission units are like voluntary carbon credits, but are better in every single way.

They are scarce, fungible, of forced demand, the government backed, and they're ingrained by the bullying power of the European Union. And, in my opinion, they're highly undervalued. We can see here some information from the IHS market where the current price is at 52. 71. But then looking at the, the UN's projection for what the price needs to be in today's dollars to hit a net zero 2050 goals it's 147.

So there's a 3x difference. We generated an MVP where we tokenized the New Zealand emission unit. This is the emission unit of the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme, but the crypto community didn't want it. So we're exploring other ways to bring emission units to the world. We're looking for people to test our brokerage service.

You can trade free of charge. You can provide a service for free just for feedback. If you are interested, there's a link there as well as you can reach out to me at alex@carbonlinked.com Thanks. Cool. Thank you. All right. And I know you've already spoken to Philip in the past. So obviously potential alignment there in terms of fund mandates, but maybe we start with you, Philip, in terms of just some, some feedback.

Obviously CarbonLinked has, has obviously pivoted somewhat and, and taken on feedback. And it would be good just to, I guess, hear what are the things that you would be looking for or next steps in terms of their journey.

Philip Stehlik: Totally. Nice to see you again, Alex. I think it was just a couple of weeks ago that we, that we spoke.

Yeah. Surprise. Like when, so first off, I agree with the, with the point that you're making here, like really, really, really need to make carbon or pollution really expensive. So that basically not being, being not climate friendly will mean you're not doing good business, but fundamentally fully agree.

When I see something like this, and it just kind of goes a little bit into the feedback I already gave you a couple of weeks ago, I'm always asking myself who is the buyer and how easy can they buy this type of stuff? Specifically, when you introduce crypto rails, when you tokenize something it, it can create a lot of friction.

Of the person who will buy it, what do they need to own? Do they have to have a wallet? Do they, what type of stable? Do they buy it in ETH? How do they get ETH? Like all of these questions is just another layer of friction. And if you're going towards consumers, like if you want individuals to hold these types of credits, they need to all of a sudden understand what is this market?

What, like, what am I buying? And why is it important? And why is it worth something? And if you're going towards corporates who should understand these emission units because they are part of the business. Then they start asking all these questions, especially in the crypto space. Like what about security? What about wallets and all of that?

So there's, there's these different kinds of friction points that you will encounter. And so my question is always, how do you avoid these friction points or how, how, when, how do you actually make this business even better by using a blockchain or by tokenizing something?

And in this case, I guess you said you're, you're looking for, you're looking to continue to find that's like why using crypto is actually supercharging this, this idea versus creating additional friction, or why is it offering a whole new market versus making it more complicated for people to, to get them?

And those are some questions I would, I would ask and I would investigate. Totally.

Kevin Whitmore: Awesome. Thanks, Philip. Mark. Any, any thoughts or feedback?

Mark Pavlyukovskyy: Yeah, I mean, I think I don't know too much about this space either, but the, yeah, the, probably the carbon piece, but so yeah, Philip, I definitely would look to Philip to to, to take the lead on this.

But I do remember there was, you know, definitely a couple of initiatives like this. So I guess maybe on the pitch itself, I think the pitch is actually good. Right. So like, I think in terms of just getting an investor's interest. It's, it's probably, it's probably fine. I think for somebody who's like familiar with this kind of stuff, their first question might be something like, how's this different from Clima?

I don't know if you're familiar. It was like this crypto, like an old fork back in 2021 or something. And I think that that would be like the first question, right? And then I think at the time, everyone who was like trying to invest in that or investing in that, they all learned a little bit.

Yeah, it's voluntary, it's like mandatory, et cetera, et cetera.

Kevin Whitmore: We're just losing you a bit, Mark. Yeah, we'll just pause and wait for your connection to come back. Yeah, I think that was one of my questions to you previously as well, Alex. Yeah, that was, I think they purchased a lot of carbon credits and then shot through the roof in a speculative wave and then crashed spectacularly.

I think they're still doing stuff, but you know, obviously that got impacted by the, the, the crypto winter as well.

Alex Bissell: So that was something that I didn't quite call out in this. And, but the difference with Clima is that Clima was based on voluntary carbon credits. We're, and we're offering just access to the compliance carbon credits, things that are fungible, scarce have forced demand and backed by governments.

Kevin Whitmore: Right. Because that's always been the challenge with carbon credit markets, right? The voluntary aspect of it. I think people in a non tokenized way have attempted this in New Zealand in the past. And yeah, it's the, it's the mandatory aspect that was was relevant.

Alex Bissell: So yeah, taking the idea that I had, the, and just my two cents and, and filling in the gaps, the, the areas that we missed, the problem that we're trying to solve is that it's really difficult for people to buy compliance carbon credits. It's really challenging for anyone to be able to do this. And that causes a problem where we have this inequitable price of carbon, you know, if it only costs an emitter to $50 to emit, but it's costing the public in $100 and all this social cost from those emissions, we've got this big social. So what we're doing is we're just trying to make it more accessible.

That's that's as simple as that. Is we're just trying to make these compliance markets more accessible and bring a new asset class to, to, to potential investors.

Kevin Whitmore: Cool. And then I guess to, to Phillip's point, there's probably just addressing how, how the UX and how that works, if you're bringing it to, to more markets and how people can access it.

Yeah. Just the process for doing that would be, would be interesting as well. Michelle, did you have any, any thoughts, feedback?

Michelle Cole: I'm going to cut it into the two things, the pitch itself. And then the other part was the it's getting your pricing and all that, right. Like, cause you need your crossover of Is it too high?

Versus somebody, a company actually being able to then make themselves be, you know, better carbon sort of tokenized as well, like, like, can, how long is it going to take them to actually get their carbon emissions down, and do you then all of a sudden make these companies bankrupt because they're paying too much?

So it's the, it's the timing and getting that, that crossover right. The pitch itself, and I don't like seeing negative things and swearing in pitches. A lot of people don't actually as well. So like, I know you can look at a different kind of vision thing. Yep, that's cool. But more and more it's actually not been acceptable to see swearing.

So just, yeah, just watch that kind of thing. And when you mentioned that, you know you know, the blockchain or whatever, I wasn't interested in this anymore. I was kind of like, that was also in a negative in there in a negative format. So I try and reword that and get that into a positive way that you are now looking at this, you know, to take this to market in another format.

And the pivot came out and that way it sounds more positive as opposed to... oh shit I missed that boat. So now I'm pivoting to do it this particular way. It didn't come across in a positive format for me to go, Oh, I really liked this. Whereas I, I know I could like it. Yeah. So those are just a, just a, just a little couple of picks up there.

And. Yeah. And just understanding that customer, which is what Philip was saying. So you know exactly their pain point. Yes, it is. It's a buying it. And is there a platform, but then what is too high? Cause it made it sound like, you know, just by putting this thing way up there, then you're going to have to do it. Yes.

But if it's compulsory, that's good. But then also you want to be able to befriend them, to be able to make them make the changes. Cause people won't make the changes if something's forced on them in a negative format.

Alex Bissell: Thanks for your feedback.

Kevin Whitmore: Cool and then, Nawaz, if you've got any thoughts?

Nawaz Ahmed: Yeah, thanks for the pitch, Alex. I guess just to add a little bit, I would say that the pitch in general was pretty good. The only thing I would have probably liked to see more about would be why what you're building is different to what currently exists in the market.

And I guess, if I understand correctly, you're no longer doing like the tokenized or blockchain piece. But if you were, I would probably would want to understand like why that creates a better efficiency or a better business from not doing it using, using the blockchain. Yeah, I think that's, that's probably the only thing I would add apart from, I think if you're going after retail potential investors, I, I feel like there would be a big educational kind of pathway for you to take and would like to understand how you would probably do that because I still think many people don't know even what carbon credits are or it's something you can invest or trade or things like that.

Alex Bissell: Yup. That is definitely something that we have come up across. Big, big barrier.

Kevin Whitmore: Well, well done, Alex. I think it's hard to take on sometimes feedback, especially when it's you know, the thing that you're working on. It's, it's good, good to practice this stuff. I'm, I'm doing a keynote this, this tonight for the Founder Institute.

I went through a pitching process with them two years ago, and that is absolutely brutal. You're not allowed to give threes. So it has to be either ones, twos, fours, or fives. So flip flopping between ones and fives consistently in terms of feedback is quite rough. So I know it's hard. So thanks for putting yourself out there. And hopefully there's some, some feedback there that, that you can take away.

Alex Bissell: Thanks. Thanks for the opportunity.

Kevin Whitmore: Awesome. Anybody else? Is there anybody else that's, that's keen to talk through their project? Now that you've seen the, the, the level of feedback, et cetera. Cool. Aaron, go for it.

Aaron Sanchis: How are you doing Kevin? It's good to see you again. It's been a while. How you doing guys, Nawaz. How are you going? Yeah, we had a chat recently and I think Brian Ventura also is aware of PIN. Well so I'm Aaron Sanchis I'm the Ops Manager for Pay It Now New Zealand. I'm just working on getting one of our co founders, Jitendra also to jump on the call.

And we have another one who's on call with us today. Who's Trent Stanley. He's based in the U. S. So look, our pitch deck is something I mentioned to Kevin offered us the opportunity to come and speak to us. Speak about PIN. And I said, Oh, look, we're actually in the process of, you know, working on a pitch deck and redoing it and stuff.

But he said it would be a good opportunity to maybe get some feedback from, you know, an expert panel like yourself. So they might, I said, Oh yeah, all right, let's do that. So I'm just going to share my screen shortly and just take you through a bit of our pitch deck. And maybe show you a little bit about the products that Pay It Now offers.

So just give me a minute.

Kevin Whitmore: We'll just keep it at four or five minutes to make sure we're on time. So all good. Go for

it.

Aaron Sanchis: Alrighty. Can you guys see that?

Yep. So look, Pay It Now what we are is basically a, a, a sort of the ultimate digital wallet, like we like to call ourselves. So one of the problems that the founders Jitendra and Craig Duffield, who are the two co founders discovered a couple of years back was you know, being able to use cryptocurrency as a means of payment.

And, and they found there was a bit of a niche market in there. So the whole idea was to create a system as in the solution and the problem as discussed here, it was complex expensive and, you know, very volatile. So a lot of merchants were not really keen on even, you know, being, being part of accepting cryptocurrency payments.

So that's how it all started off. And the solution they came up was, you know, offering a sort of a a solution that was inexpensive, fast and simple and taking away the volatility of the crypto market. So that, that's where Jit came up with this layer two solution of, of, of that enables these transactions to occur fast, simple, and, and extremely cheap.

I just want to mention that the 0. 5 percent transaction fee is what we used to charge the merchants until a few months back, but we have taken that away. So any of the PIN merchants that come on board now and they have a 0 percent fee, it doesn't cost them anything to accept payments via the PIN network.

And their instant conversion so people can use their various cryptocurrencies from the PIN app. Whilst also being able to hold New Zealand, Australian and US dollar. But the, the merchant is paid instantly and converted into the local currency. So in New Zealand, that's, that's a New Zealand dollar put into their wallet and into their bank account.

So just a little bit of, like I said, Bear with me, the pitch tech needs a bit of updating. So this, this is a bit of a snippety of the value proposition that PIN has to offer. I myself have been out and spoken to and brought quite a few businesses on board in Christchurch. That's where we are based.

So it's quite interesting because, you know, there's, there's a lot of middlemen in between. Payment you know, when it comes to the payment and services industry and the ticket has clipped a lot, you know, so a lot of merchants are, especially now having it quite hard with the, with the exaggerated fees and, and having to push on, you know, small dairies and shops and restaurants having to push on the cost onto the customers, the two, two and a half percent.

So that was a big drawing draw card, even at half a percent when I was, when I used to bring them on board that, you know, that they had the ability to save that money and not, and they didn't mind taking a half a percent as a, as a fee rather than two or two and a half percent.

This gives you a bit of a ecosystem the Pay It Now ecosystem, which includes our proprietary PIN token and obviously the PIN network app which you know, I, I suggest you guys can hopefully, find it on your iOS and play stores and download and have a look through it.

Marketplace is another solution we came up with where it's similar to like the Amazon or, or, or trade me of of, of New Zealand, but for crypto currency sort of aspects of our merchants merchants are allowed to list their, their stores on their manage their stores and, and accept payments from people via the PIN network and paying with the PIN app.

PIN Scan allows people to be able to view all the transactions that take place. So it's open and for everyone to have a look. PIN Swap is where people can swap their currencies. You can actually do that within the app. And you can also do that via the PIN Swap website. Our most... This, this has been the hard part really, is trying to be able to get people used to the idea of paying with a QR code.

So our most successful payment form at the moment, even though we are integrated into point of sales, around four point of sales systems people can purchase using a website, so it can be integrated into a website. We have a Shopify integration and stuff, but the most successful one has been the PIN QR.

It's just basically a standalone QR code that's basically the wallet of, of the merchant. And, and any customer can rock on up with a pen, app, scan it, put in the amount that they owe, the, the the merchant and, and you know, the merchant doesn't have to have any device or even a point of sale or nothing, just just to be able to accept the payments.

And any staff member can also, we, we put a different QR code on the back of it for any staff member or, or a browser page that shows a notify. A notification page that shows them the last rolling transactions, and that's been the most used you know, it's, it's growing in popularity as we speak.

The PIN network app is basically what you know, everything to do with what PIN is about is within that app. We've got some exciting things coming up at the moment where we're soon going to be having the ability for people to be able to purchase gift vouchers and and Visa Prezzy cards.

So we're hoping to launch that in conjunction with a radio sorry, with a, with a promotion that we are hoping to kick off in December, starting off in Christchurch. So yeah, and this was just some comparison for the competitive advantage that we have. Again, this needs to be updated a little bit, but most of the information is still relevant and accurate.

So it gives you an idea of where we are compared to some of the other companies within, within even New Zealand, like Immersve and Centropay. And just also like to mention that the, you know, Immersve and, and Easy Crypto who are, you know, quite well known in the crypto space in New Zealand.

We also got really good working relationships with them. So, you know, for the likes of Jerome Faury and Janine Grainger we had Jitendra who was just recently in Hong Kong for the FinTech week and he was in China, I think Guangzhou China for a hosted thing. So it was, it was really good. We, we we're starting to now establish ourselves in the New Zealand market.

Kevin Whitmore: Okay, we'll stop it there because that's over five minutes, but...

Aaron Sanchis: No worries. Thanks.

Kevin Whitmore: And just in terms of time, I think we'll have to stop it there. Sorry, Trent, we'll, we need to get the feedback and then we've got Andrew who's keen to present. So we'll just jump into any thoughts and feedback from the panel.

Nawaz Ahmed: Yeah, happy to go first. Hey Aaron. Yeah, we spoke I think a few, few weeks or so ago. Yeah, I think one of the things I had mentioned right in the beginning of like how we like to invest and look at things is that we're, we get quite excited when things match like our mandate and our vision of the future.

Which leverages crypto and web3 technology. And I think that's, that's one of the things that I would say here, where I feel like right now in the world of crypto, there's probably a big conversation around applications that are doing custody compared to self custody. And I think that's, that's a conversation that you would have with each individual investor and what their opinions of that is.

And I think that's probably where I would like to understand more about the custody aspect of the application, why you're going down that path, knowing, you know, what's been happening around like the world of custody and crypto and the lack of, you know, consumer trust these days on, you know, custody applications around crypto.

So I would say I l I'd like to understand that a little bit more. And also a great to see, you know, the, the development of, of like the of your platform and the businesses that are starting to use it? I'd probably like to understand like the, the partnerships that you have a little bit more and your, your exact go to market strategy in terms of how you're onboarding a lot of the merchants.

It seems like it's quite a tedious job. So I'd love, love to understand how you'd be scaling that.

Aaron Sanchis: Yeah, that's perfect. That's the onboarding process is It's gotten, we've streamlined it a little bit more, like gotten it better from what we were, but that's really good feedback. Just so you understand, when you're talking about the self custody thing, what, what is, what is, from what we have told you, what is your thoughts on what, what does it look like to you?

What does PIN look like to you at the moment when it comes to that aspect? Or are you just not aware of, of, of

Nawaz Ahmed: From what I saw, like, it seems like a custodied application, right? Like you, you're holding the crypto on behalf of the users that are using the application?

Aaron Sanchis: Yeah, yeah, yes, we sort of are, yeah, so it's like more, more, more centralized than anything, you know, but people have the most of our users, which is where we make, I guess, most of our income would come from the fact that people are continually transacting in and out of the network.

You know, so they have the ability especially in New Zealand, we've been seeing that those numbers growing and, and I'm the one who's the AML compliance officer also of, of, of PIN. So I keep track of all the transactions, the signups and things like that. So I'm able to see a growth in New Zealand of users.

And I don't know, there's been a lot of waking up of a few people over the last couple of months. Maybe the crypto markets are going up and there's a lot of interest. So, you know, people are quite keen on being able to also even purchase cryptocurrency. And it's fairly easy for us through us to do it using their bank accounts.

And, and, you know, without even having to use a credit card. And then they usually bridge on and bridge off and send it to their wallets where they have more. So it's, it's fairly straightforward and our fees are extremely low. So we're gaining popularity in that as we're getting more exposure and being more visible.

You know, we have a quite active in the, in the community also, you know, a lot more now, especially over the last couple of months. And, and like you said, the partnerships that you're talking about, we, we are working on a few partnerships at the moment with some of the big guns. So you know, we, we, we all want to work together because we all want to make this, you know, Web3, blockchain, and crypto be something that is not.

You know, we, we all, we all for having that trust aspect. We're all for having that, you know, aspect behind it. And I think that's one of the biggest things which we, which we, we always keep that in mind. We, you know, we want to be quite open about what we do and, and stuff like that. But at, at some, at the same time, you know, the, the banking industry, it's also a little bit of an enemy at the same time, you know, cause they're quite very cautious and stuff like that when it comes to it.

I'll just, just stop you there and move on. Nawaz did you have any more thoughts, comments?

Nawaz Ahmed: Ah, no. Thanks Aaron.

Kevin Whitmore: Michelle, do you have any feedback?

Michelle Cole: I, let Mark go he's just unmuted. First.

Mark Pavlyukovskyy: I was going to say, I mean just really quickly, high level. Like, I think when you have, this is more just about just, yeah, like kind of thinking about how you present the business.

I think when you have. There's different types of business obviously like when you have a business that's fairly kind of like the idea is fairly kind of on the surface and kind of obvious and easy to grasp. You know, sophisticated investors are going to understand that there's probably a lot of competition, right?

It was just like a very kind of on the surface idea. And so like, I think yeah, one of the things you'll need to think about is just like, how do I explain what my differentiator is? Like, what's my sort of like, you know, hidden talent or secret. Secret sauce or unique advantage or whatever that is to basically succeed.

With this kind of, yeah, like fairly kind of straightforward idea of like you know, cause yeah, I mean, like, cause yeah, I think, I think you know, there's, there's a lot of products and companies doing similar, similar stuff globally. Right. So whether that's like the fact that you're focusing on New Zealand or you have like some interesting, like partnerships and connections where you have like distribution channels that are really excited about bringing you on board, whatever that is.

Like, I think. Yeah, because, because yeah, again, like when somebody looks at an idea like this, the first thing that probably comes to mind is like, there's probably like, you know, 10 other businesses and like, yeah, why would you succeed over, over those others when those others may have other a kind of geography advantages or partnership advantages, et cetera.

Aaron Sanchis: No, that's, that's a great point. And this is something that we have definitely, that's why I said, we're in the process of actually streamlining what our business is about. And I think one of the main aspects, the differentiating factor is that we have, we are giving utility to cryptocurrency in a sense.

So like it's, we are allowing people to be able to use that. And although you might say there are companies out there that are doing it, but they're not doing it in the most efficient and cost effective way. Compared to us. So when it comes to the fees, when it comes to the process, the, the smooth, cause there also established in Australia, right?

So we have also established in Australia and people over there have the ability to be able to use our system too. We've got even a couple of PIN partners in Australia who are actually transacting on the, on the, on the network. So people are going and signing up and going and purchasing stuff at the stores over there.

So. You know, it's, it's the whole process c of it is quite simple and smooth and fast. So we're trying to compete with people are so used to just tapping a card. People are so used to doing that stuff with the traditional banking and financial systems. And we are trying to bring it in line with that, maybe even do better than them.

So I think our main focus is we have given you, we're trying to give utility to cryptocurrencies and also fiat currencies, which you can hold in the app and, and, and cut out a lot of the costs and the, and the, you know, the middlemen cutting a lot of the, clipping the ticket and making money. But that's great feedback. Thanks, Mark.

Trent Stanley: Could I say something? Is that okay, guys? I came a little late to the party, but I'm one of the founders of PIN is that okay?

Kevin Whitmore: Just very quickly. We'll just need to move on to other ones as well.

Trent Stanley: I'll take exactly 30 seconds. Okay. PIN was designed to bring cryptocurrency to the masses. So we have the ability with the app, you can spend any crypto you want, buy anything that you want.

We also have the Venmo Cash App Zone, which over here in the U. S. are all billion dollar companies, which we also brought over there to New Zealand and Australia. So right now you're able to transact fiat back and forth, but be able to just log into the app and be able to handle anything that you want.

So the whole idea was to help our businesses save money. Bring more people to where they actually make money by using the PIN app, but to bring everybody together so together we all have a lot more money, businesses are able to keep employees and also connect us all so we can all get a better product and join together in a lot better society to where this app makes it so easy for people that are scared to basically get involved with crypto.

So everybody that I've got that would never touch it loves our app. So, sorry, it might have been a little bit like 45 seconds, that's all I wanted to say.

Michelle Cole: Okay, so I'm going to give feedback on the pitch itself then, and then, and then also then Trent coming in as well. So, just on that, like, we didn't probably need the extra piece, or that piece could have been what Aaron said, okay?

What yeah, I think the education piece, because you are wanting to do a mass product, is needed, and I think what Nawaz said is crucial. That part needs to be ironed out. I love the competitor slide, because there are a lot of competitors, but what is really key in pitch decks these days is actually having the slide on your secret sauce

So even though you might not want to be putting them there because you're like, Oh my God, that's my secret sauce. That actually is what needs to be there. There needs to be a slide on that. Because if there is one on it, usually that's when an investor is going, Oh my God, they're actually telling me what they're actually going to be doing and what, you know, what is behind it all.

Which is sort of leads from Mark's piece of, you know, what is it that you're doing? So competitor slide, yes, because you're showing how you're different, but then what is that secret sauce? So you need a secret source slide. And that's it on my feedback.

Aaron Sanchis: Okay, cool. Thanks, Michelle.

Kevin Whitmore: All good. So, and then Philip, I think you had your hand up just in terms of some feedback and then we'll just pause it there and jump into the next one.

Thanks for all the thorough feedback already from the others. I would add two things is purely if I look at the crypto angle at one slide, you have like, uh, the marketplace, the Shopify integration and dah, dah, dah. And you had a token mentioned. And so there's two questions that came up for me. Wow, that's a lot.

Like, what are you focusing on? Yeah. And the other thing, if there's a token, why? What, like, what is that? What, what are you doing? What is it? Why is it better to have it, et cetera, et cetera? That's one. And then the last piece is just on your answer, I think, to Mark, that you're going to do it faster and cheaper than the incumbents.

I'm always questioning if the differentiator is price. And it's probably going to be erased to the bottom, so there needs to be another differentiator somehow. And so this is similar to what's your secret sauce, but just as another angle of thought.

Aaron Sanchis: Okay, cool. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's, that's great.

That's great feedback because we are, this is good feedback because it's giving us an idea on being able to tailor our pitch deck also the way, like I said, we're working on it. So we know there's a bit of extra information in there, but I was not really a hundred percent confident of showing this pitch deck yet, but I said, Hey, let me show it out there and let's see what these guys have to say.

So it reiterates what I need to kind of, what we need to change. Great. Thanks for that.

Kevin Whitmore: Cool. Thanks Aaron and Trent. And thanks to everybody for the feedback. Hopefully that was useful. And yeah, thanks again for, I guess, putting it out there, even though we know it might not be necessarily the, the right timing and early and things like that.

So yeah, no, really appreciate it. And then we've got Andrew, I think wants to do a presentation and then I think we'll, we'll, we'll stop there and jump into some Q and A after that. So Andrew, are you ready to jump in?

Andrew Patrick Lamont: Yep. Okay. Can everybody hear me? Okay, great. Right. Well, I want to be China's first pop culture brand.

And the, the gap in the market is, well, the problem is that Chinese culture and the West there's no bridge. There's no, uh, connection helping , well, facilitating any kind of cultural interchange. So, change makes its way through society with youth. So, I'm going to create a pop culture brand, and I've got some products which will be physical and can be converted into digital.

So, you can buy the book here, and each of the pages is a NFT. So, you can buy a physical copy, or you can buy a digital copy. And then perfumes. So the, the, the brand is the brand ambassador is the girl. So instead of a mouse or duck, I'm using a girl. She exists as a hologram and you can talk and speak to her and she's got a movie.

Then you can both,

Mark Pavlyukovskyy: Sorry, Andrew, are you, are you sharing a screen or something? Sorry, I'm not seeing it if you are.

Andrew Patrick Lamont: Okay. I'll start again then. Oh, there we go. Start again, so, I'm going to create China's first cultural first pop culture brand. And the gap in the, the problem to solve is the, there is no transference of understanding between China and the West, mainly because of the language.

So I'm going to create digital physical products which exist on the metaverse. And there's a book, and each page is becomes, converts into an NFT, so, and they're collectible, so you can you can buy a book online, or you can buy an NFT of, of each of those pages. And then we've got perfume, so the girl is the, is an avatar, and she is the brand ambassador for brand. And this is the perfumes that she wears. So also so, so you can buy the perfume as an NFT, or you can buy, buy it and own it and use it. That's it.

Kevin Whitmore: Any thoughts, feedback? So my guess, Andrew, is that you're quite early on this journey, or whereabouts, how long have you, what, what's sort of your progress to date?

Andrew Patrick Lamont: I've been for the past six years developing these two products, Perfume and the book and so ready to, to meet the market now.

Kevin Whitmore: Cool. Philip any questions or feedback?

Philip Stehlik: The main question that comes up for me, kind of, when we talked earlier about what type of business is actually suited to raise VC capital, and this is just a question, as I'm hearing you talk about this product, and I'm wondering, is this something that is suitable for this type, for the VC crowd, or is this, is it maybe another direction that you would want to bring this to market?

And I don't understand enough about the intricacies of what you're doing and how you develop it. But that would be my first question. Like, what are you going to do? How are you going to use the money? And and, and start from that point.

Kevin Whitmore: Cool, Michelle?

Michelle Cole: Yeah, thanks for sharing, Andrew. For me, it was kind of, do you know where in the market that you're sitting? Like, is NFT's the way to do it? Like, what, what's the digital way you're going to do it? You talk about an avatar and is everything still current? Like, where on the curve is it sitting?

Like you say, you've been developing this for six years now, a book and the the perfume. So are you still in the right space in the market? Has the market gone past that or were you before it, you know? I'm just sort of like, yeah, you need to sort of know who those customers are and how they're going to buy now and purchase your goods.

Because I'm assuming it's like it's an end consumer play that you're going to be putting there. Yeah, yeah, so I think it's just finding that right marketplace for that is probably the pick and I would put that not as a yeah, a traditional angel or VC play. Yeah, probably more friends and family if you needed that.

Kevin Whitmore: Cool Nawaz?

Nawaz Ahmed: Thanks for the presentation, Andrew. I guess one of the things I would generally like to understand in this type of stuff is the more broader vision of what exactly you're trying to build. What's the vision of this pop culture brand and where do you actually see this going and what is, again, the pathway to getting there?

And the use of NFTs or that metaverse piece again, why you think that is probably the best way for you to go down that pathway. And, I guess if you're, if you're thinking of raising venture or, or potential angel money, why you think that is a good fit for you, it's probably a good understanding as well, kind of reiterating a bit of what Philip and Michelle mentioned..

Kevin Whitmore: Okay. All good. Well, thanks Andrew. Yep. We'll wrap that up there. Appreciate everybody for putting yourselves out there, getting some feedback. Hopefully that was useful. So yeah, we'll we'll pause the, the pitches and I think we might jump into some Q and A. So I know we had a couple of questions there and Brian, you had a question around what's the best way for New Zealand Web3 startups to tap New Zealand's entire angel community.

So I think I'll give that one to Michelle.

Michelle Cole: Yeah, Brian and I actually had a conversation about this the other day, so I've just put into the chat the Angel Association website and on it has got the members, you'll see that GD1 is a member there, but don't forget the Angel members is probably only about 50 percent of the ecosystem when it comes to the Angel investment area.

We've got Laura I see on the Zoom call as well, so she works at NZTE and she's an investment manager there. She can't speak for herself, who she is, she can pop up and do that. I just, cause, yeah, and they can help as well. So Laura can explain what they do.

Laura Reitel: Hi everyone. Yeah, as Michelle said, I'm with NZTE so we help mostly companies get ready for capital raising. So that means understanding sort of your business on a more thorough, deeper level, and then making sure that the investment collateral that you do bring together kind of tells that story very clearly and and then where where relevant we're also able to kind of help you connect with investors that might be most suitable for your type of business both in New Zealand, as well as offshore. I must say we are quite new to Web3 as well. So our networks in on a global kind of stage are probably not super advanced, but we certainly know the likes of GD1 and market ends that we see and so forth. So happy to help.

Michelle Cole: That's good. Thanks, Laura. And on that website, each of the individual members, they kind of explain how they like to be approached. So do go and approach each of the individual members, but research them first, as you've heard today, because you need to know that they are the right person and organization and VC thesis that fits what you are going to look for.

But then also don't feel shy about contacting us directly because we, or I myself, because through Kev and everyone we know at EHF we know a lot of people that are in the web3 business. So it's about connections. I think this part, it's like who you know, so that's those warm introductions that you're getting.

Nawaz Ahmed: If I could also add, like, before being starting the fund, I, I was an active angel and I think there's still a, a big educational gap for angels in New Zealand and, and the Web3 and crypto piece. So I think addressing a bit of Brian's question I do think there's, there's definitely a big need for a bit more education around these more niche technologies like crypto and Web3.

And you know, maybe even things like AI for angels who have obviously a more broader sense of the stuff that they look at. They look at a lot of things. So I think it's quite helpful for them to get a deeper understanding of some of these things before starting to invest. And I think that would be really helpful especially for local startups.

Michelle Cole: 100 percent agree. And, and Brian and I've already spoken about that. We're going to get him in a case studies on different subsectors. So he'll come through with something and we'll find an AI Case study, and we'll actually run those sessions and founders and angel investors can come along. So it's they're joint expert sessions so people can, and they're online, so anyone can come.

Kevin Whitmore: That's a really good idea. I think education's just such a relevant piece. We're doing that within government as well. It's obviously that's a, it's very much an unknown. So teaching and learning, et cetera. Philip.

Philip Stehlik: Yeah, you kind of hinted to it, Michelle, but I don't know, Brian, what your background is. But if you are an entrepreneur who knows that you're going to be in that space for the years to come, just like establishing yourself as one of the go to people for all of these angels, like to help them educate, to help them shepherd them along will make you one of the people where they look to when they later have a question about web three, et cetera, et cetera.

So even if it's not with this particular project, but for the years to come already foster your network there, I think that would be a really good way. And there's clearly a need, as we just heard a few times, the angel community needs to learn more about this.

Kevin Whitmore: 100 percent. Any other questions? I've got lots, so get in before I ask more questions. Feel free to come off mute too if you've got something you just want to have a chat about, but I will jump into our next question. So lots of hype cycles and hype cycles, I mean, they kind of play relatively in, in, in tandem with sort of your, your boom busts, your crypto winters, et cetera.

How, how does that play into your investment process in terms of what you stop or start doing? And I'll just feed into that. I think Michelle, you might want to share your statistics after this as well. But one thing is we're hearing that investment levels overall are relatively consistent year on year.

And I could be wrong on this, but that's what I'm hearing. But that they're often... reinvesting into the same companies at the moment, rather than potentially investing into newer companies as a, as a broad statistic. So just be interested in your, your thoughts on those as well.

Mark Pavlyukovskyy: I think probably Philip and then Thiago probably have more experience with this given they've gone through a couple cycles, but definitely want to, you know, buy high and sell low crypto. That's what you want to do. That was a joke. You don't want to do that. But, but yeah, I think you know, I think crypto is just kind of a very I guess, sped up version of like regular investing.

And as we see now with like global macro you know, there's, there's a lot of, I think over the last couple of years, we all learned about interest rates and how interest rates have influenced you know, I guess yeah, risk, risk, risk, risk assets and the price of risky assets like crypto. I, I think end of the day, you know, in terms of cycles, I think you know, they, I think they looked at like kind of the most iconic companies and companies like Google and Microsoft and Amazon.

And I think all of them were actually founded during sort of like troughs, like, like not peaks but troughs like like during down cycles. And I think, both for I think investors and for founders, it's really hard to to do the opposite of what I said, like to try to buy when things are really down.

It's really exciting to buy when there's hype. But I think that's where you kind of have to like be disciplined and try to do. Because that's really kind of when the best companies I think are built and start getting built. And then that's partially because you know, when you're creating a company and you're able to power through a very tough environment and be scrappy and get through that, then you'll do really well.

And, you know, very frothy and bubbly capital market at the moment

So yeah, that's maybe just high level, what I would say. And I think yeah, I mean, yeah. For a lot of people in crypto it's kind of left their their their sort of like attention. And most people, you know, think like there's heaps of scams and cryptos kind of like dead and stuff like that. And I think, again, you know, Philip and Diego probably know a lot more about this than I do.

But I think, you know, does it scare me at the time to actually start building or yeah, to sort of to double down and really kind of figure out what was the core infrastructure that I want to build and probably be fine overall.

Kevin Whitmore: Cool, thank you. Nawaz do you, sort of does it impact your cycle at all or are you relatively consistent?

Nawaz Ahmed: Yeah, relatively consistent, I think. I've been in crypto since early 2017, so you kind of see, like, the cycles a little bit, but I also tend to find that the cycles are a little bit more of a hindsight thing, where by the time you're in the middle of a cycle and, you know, something is of a hype, it's probably too late to be investing in that thing.

Prices are too high. The real opportunity is probably gone. So at this point in the market, for example people are definitely wondering what is the narrative? What is the hype for the next cycle that's coming? And I'm not sure, you know, you could ask many people, people would have opinions, but nobody knows for sure.

We're only going to know after that cycle is either in the peak of it or, or at the end, what that actual hype was. But yeah, I think that that's generally my, my point of view on, on like the hype cycles, but I, I think that consistently investing throughout throughout the, the entire cycle and, and afterwards, it's probably the, the best way of being being able to spot, you know, things that that would probably make make that return.

And I think the important piece of always like having your own, you know, fundamental beliefs and understanding of what is required and what you would like to invest in and, and let that guide you rather than you know, following what a hype cycle might be. And I think Philip could probably add to this when in, in 2017, I remember STOs were, were a massive topic of conversation.

It was one of my favorite things in crypto. I had done presentations about it and then that quickly died down. And then right now we're, we're back in the heat of RWA is just, just renamed STO. So you kind of see some of the cyclical activity here as well.

Kevin Whitmore: Yeah and maybe just one more question for you as well now is because just maybe challenging that in the context of we're going through an AI hype cycle right and you're seeing people like a16z for example have and and others have kind of added on you know, not just what is your, your prospect in terms of your, your distribution approach or go to market strategy, but what is your AI strategy?

And so some of these, the, the hype cycles also kind of feed into necessary aspects of what you consider as part of your pitch and your, your process. So, yeah, just, just noticing how, how would you kind of merge that kind of AI hype cycle in with kind of what, what we're seeing at the moment, because that's, that's also something that people need to be aware of, right?

Nawaz Ahmed: Yeah, I think the AI piece is quite interesting, especially for the types of companies that we look at, like, it depends what kind of angle you're taking. I think most companies now in like the technology space have to think of either how AI is going to make their business better and more efficient. And that's probably the majority of businesses where they will be just using AI internally to make things more efficient.

Rather than being, you know, a very specific AI building business. I think that's a whole separate category of, of businesses. So when, when we're looking at stuff, we're mostly looking and talking to businesses about how they will be leveraging AI to make things more efficient for themselves rather than, you know are they going to be building like the next open AI or chat GPT type product?

Kevin Whitmore: Yeah. Awesome. Cool. Thanks for that. And then Philip, maybe over to you. So you've got multiple hype cycles. You've got the web three hype cycle, the AI hype cycle, and the ESG kind of narrative all woven into one, and you have to time all three, right?

Philip Stehlik: Sounds like a lot of waves potentially crashing into a cliff. AI is, I mean, everything is influenced by AI. I don't know if you want to go there, but I, I would add. I really love what you said about the fundamentals, Nawaz like as an investor, like what are the fundaments that I believe make a good founder, good founding team, and a good market or go to market or good product strategy.

I'm just want to add one piece is that I'm getting very sensitive, especially when the hype cycle is picking up again, because a lot of people are coming in for the wrong reasons. It's like, Oh yeah, let's launch this token. Let's do this thing fast. And that's just not the kind of crowd that will stick around and inevitably stuff will get tough, like building a business over years, you will not only have up cycles.

So that's just something to extra watch out for I would say in in the up cycle. And leave it at that. Everything else I think has been said already, or a lot of it has been said. Maybe Michelle, you also said you had some stats that would be super cool to see.

Michelle Cole: Yeah. And I have to, I just got to say, that was the first joke I think I've ever heard Mark mention. Yeah.

Kevin Whitmore: Very deadpan when he said it too.

Mark Pavlyukovskyy: I know that's very Mark, right? So I'll share this one first. So you'll see there, is everyone, has it come up everyone? Yep, right, so you'll see there, so this is the last quarter of last year of angel and early stage VC, so it's early stage investment in New Zealand ecosystem so you'll see that blockchain was sitting there at 4. 46 and you've got deep tech had risen quite a lot into that 33 percent and obviously software is still sitting down there at 45. Runways, people are needing to shift a little bit more, syndicated, you've got 74%, that's now shifted up to over 80 percent in this last half of the, the first half of this year, and VC was sitting there at 61%, so I'm just going to grab another slide, um, this one is in the report.

Startup report um, that's just come out from PwC. I noticed PwC were on here earlier, actually, in Alexandra. And so this one, and this is probably going to why it's in, the hype, it's in the down cycle, but we didn't actually talk about blockchain at all for this cycle. It's really strange. So it shows deep tech.

Remember how before it was sitting at 33%? It's gone up to 49. So it's a huge rise. Software has gone from that 36 that it was sitting there down at to 22. AI, it's, it's shifted. It's only at two. But yeah, it's just shows you that cyclical sort of thing that's starting to happen. And then that deep tech was broken out into this.

And this, all this information is available. I will I'll put the link into the chat.

Kevin Whitmore: And these are New Zealand numbers, right, in terms of investment?

Michelle Cole: Yeah, those are New Zealand numbers. That's what's happening in the New Zealand market right now.

Kevin Whitmore: I was just looking for some stats. I saw some on Twitter the other day where fintech was just going parabolic in terms of the investment numbers.

So obviously different trends overseas versus New Zealand as well.

Michelle Cole: So this newsletter, there's all of the past newsletters are on the website, on the PwC and also the Angel Association website. So it's done, you know, first and second half of the year.

Kevin Whitmore: Awesome. All right. Well, we might wrap it up there just conscious of time. I have just put a link there into the feedback form. So it'd be great just to get you populating that so that we can orient ourselves for the next session. For those of you who would prefer a a QR code, you can do it on your phone. Here is the QR code. Is that coming up? Yep. That's the other option.

I'm really interested in your feedback because they will help us, yeah, develop more sessions. We're just building the learning series events for next year and also how today went as well, but I'd really like to thank our panel today for taking the time. It's been fantastic. I really appreciate you dialing in from Portugal, California, and doing late nights as well. So thank you to Phillip and Mark and also to Nawaz and to Michelle. Yeah, and thanks for joining. We will be posting this on web3nz. xyz website as well so that future people can access this topic as we inevitably come out of our crypto winter into a nice big rebound next year and beyond. But yeah, thanks for your attention and have a great day. Speak to you soon. Cheers all.

Thank you.