Icehouse, ICE Angels launch $10 mln fund for start-ups

Friday 8th April 2016

Incubator Icehouse and angel investment network ICE Angels have launched a $10 million fund, which they plan to invest in 25 start-ups over the next three years, attracting backing from Warehouse founder Stephen Tindall.

The Tuhua fund will invest up to $1 million per start-up, and has already invested in Avertana, which extracts high-value chemicals from industrial waste, and Nyriad, whose software rapidly compresses and streams data, it said in a statement. A third investment will be announced next week.

The fund was set up in November last year, with cornerstone investors former local Microsft boss Ross Peat, IT entrepreneur Tim Williams, former PwC partner Richard Burns, software developer Dennis Row, Icehouse head Andy Hamilton and ICE Angels chief Robie Paul. Tindall has since joined their number and is the biggest investor with $250,000.

"In addition to active board members and advisers, investees will have access to board observers (led by Ice Angels first cut ventures team) who are charged with unloading administrative tasks off of the founders, mining our networks for talent, and enabling data-based decision making by leveraging insights from our 97 investments," Ice Angel's Paul said. "The start-ups will also have access to the Icehouse space in Parnell and its team."

About $4 million of the fund is expected to be invested into seed stage start-ups, and those companies will be able to draw on the Icehouse's and Ice Angels' links, including with the government's Callaghan Innovation agency, which offers grants to support the operations of Icehouse's start-up offerings.

Ice Angels and Icehouse secured $10.8 million of private investment funding in 2016, four times total government funding, they said.

(Disclosure: BusinessDesk receives assistance from Callaghan Innovation to cover the commercialisation of innovation.)

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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