New Zealand's Startup Genome Agora Dinner
New Zealand
New Zealand
MEMBERS:
Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment
New Zealand startups are increasingly targeting overseas markets and nailing unique, but significant, global niches. Critical focus points for our ecosystem are building more active and diverse partnerships and boosting deep tech commercialisation.
Ecosystem by the Numbers
EARLY-STAGE FUNDING
$192 m
GLOBAL AVG.
$687 m
ECOSYSTEM VALUE
$1.5 bn
GLOBAL AVG.
$28.6 bn
Agtech & New Food
New Zealand is home to over 90 agtech startups. BioLumic, which uses applied agricultural science to increase crop yields with UV devices, raised US$14.6 million over 6 rounds. Auckland’s Revolution Fibres raised ~$3 million in 2020 (Series A). New Zealand has been selected as the first partner state for Farm 2050, an international consortium of large agricultural and tech companies.
Life Sciences
The health tech sector in New Zealand has been growing rapidly with revenues of $1.9 billion and sustained revenue growth with a 5-year CAGR of 9.1 percent. The sector is increasingly delivering effective solutions to big health problems, including through deep-tech startups such as HeartLab, a deep learning based solution for echocardiography. Biomatters, a leading provider of DNA data analysis solutions worldwide, was acquired in 2019 by US company GraphPad. As a life science Technology Incubator, Brandon Capital will curate and seed promising life sciences research discoveries.
Reasons to Move Your Startup to New Zealand
A collaborative startup ecosystem
New Zealand has the highest per capita ratio of angel investors in the world, 1,000 angels in a nation of 5 million. The Scale Up NZ platform allows businesses to form connections with investors, incubators, regional advisors, multinationals and other collaborators.
COVID-19 Policy
New Zealand announced a comprehensive crisis response support package, which included a wage subsidy scheme to support businesses, including pre-revenue companies, an approximately ~$4.1 billion Business Finance Guarantee Scheme and insolvency support. The package also contained a ~$99 million loan scheme to support R&D firms.
Funding Support
A refundable 15 percent R&D tax credit offers support to pre-profit startups. The government of New Zealand has launched a $300 million matching fund for investment in early-stage startups. This fund will be managed by NZ Growth Capital Partners. New Zealand’s Tech Incubator program offers support for deep tech startups.
Selected Startup Organizations
Startup Genome Members
Angel Association New Zealand
Angel HQ
BizDojo
Blackbird Ventures
Brandon Capital Partners
Bridgewest Ventures
COIN South
Callaghan Innovation
Creative HQ
Enterprise Angels
Equitise
Flux Accelerator
Flying Kiwi Angels
GD1
Global Entrepreneurship Network
Icehouse Ventures
KiwiNet
Kōkiri
Lightning Lab
Ministry of Awesome
Movac
New Zealand Growth Capital Fund
New Zealand Trade and Enterprise
Northland Inc
SODA Inc
Sprout
Startup Dunedin
Startup Queenstown Lakes
StartupWeekend
TIN Network
The Factory
ThincLab
WNT Ventures
ZeroPoint Ventures
News from the Ecosystem
New Zealand’s Business Prowess Extends to Startups
If technology is making us unhappy, then it could also be the answer to happiness
Dil Khosa
In the last decade, I have worked in tech & science startup development, across the New Zealand ecosystem. My next goal is to be able to connect & make cohesive, disparate parts of this ecosystem as well as bring more diversity to it. As a small nation, we have to work together to build a sustainable knowledge and digital economy (currently the 3rd contributor to our GDP). I am here to support this goal as part of a connected ecosystem.
Jackie Young
Connecting entrepreneurs, academics and industry through the ecentre business incubator at Massey University. Originally from Seattle, Jackie brings international experience and perspectives to New Zealand's dynamic innovation ecosystem.
Would you like to be an ambassador in New Zealand?
Contact Us
Contact Us
Explore more ecosystems
Get connected
Are you interested in diving deeper into this ecosystem? Drop us a message. Our Ambassadors and Partners can plug you in.