Today we announced the launch of IVX (as in Icehouse Ventures Expansion), a late-stage venture fund that will invest in 20-30 of NZ’s leading tech companies.
We have already raised over $50m to date from Simplicity, an Iwi, Hobson Wealth, Sir Stephen Tindall, and over 100 individual investors and are moving towards a $75m final close. The fund is now open for investment from new investors.
IVX is a late-stage fund. What does that mean? Most of the capital will be deployed into companies with established and growing teams, well-developed products & services, evidence of competitive wins, five or more years in market, revenue & proven business models, and strong governance. And the most critical feature: potential for significant global growth. Example companies already in the IVX portfolio include Shuttlerock who are generating $10m+ revenue, Dawn Aerospace who have their technology commercially operating on multiple satellites in space, and Sir John Kirwan's Mentemia whose tech is used by The Warehouse, Sky, Eroad, and others.
IVX leverages our unique relationships, information, and follow-on rights we have as a result of being among New Zealand’s most active early-stage investors. Our pipeline includes our 250+ startup investments, a subset of which thrive and become sought after. This simply cannot be reverse engineered. (Note IVX can also invest in startups outside of our family.)
This is not a novel model. YCombinator, a Silicon Valley-based accelerator that got its start making $20k pre-seed investments, subsequently raised a $1b “continuity” fund to invest further in its top performers like Airbnb and Dropbox. Having long-duration relationships with founders and longitudinal data on their performance is a real advantage.
Icehouse Ventures' mission is to invest in and support founders & early stage startups that can transform the future of New Zealand. To achieve this, we need to align a large and diverse group of investors. How does IVX help? By opening the door to investors who would prefer to invest in startups but only once they have traction.
IVX contributes further by providing you and us investment firepower for companies as they scale. Having continuity of capital also enables us to attract and invest in more of the highest-pedigree seed stage startups. (And some of these will become worthy candidates for IVX.)
As with all of our funds, our objective is for investors to not simply feel informed. We want investors to be engaged. We achieve this with our immersive investor portal, annual events, engaging fund reports, and opportunities for investors to co-invest in specific companies they like.
This is an exciting coming of age for Icehouse Ventures and we're excited to give more investors the chance to be part of investing in great New Zealand companies. Visit the fund information page to review the IVX Fund Information Pack or reach out to the Icehouse Ventures team to learn more about how to invest in the fund.