| 25 REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT Quayside Holdings: 30th Anniversary Quayside is the lead developer of the Rangiuru Business Park, bringing new land to market and expansion of development along the east/west corridor . It isn’t far into the conversation with Managing Director and Founding CEO Carl Jones, of investment company and incubator WNT Ventures, that you soon realise there is a specialised vocab that goes with the cutting-edge tech start-up world he and the team inhabit. Words like, ‘deep tech, pre-seed funding’ become more understandable as the conversation proceeds. The meaning of the company’s mantra ‘From Garage to Greatness’ also becomes clearer as Carl describes some of the fascinating businesses, or even pre-businesses, that WNT Ventures supports and invests into. “We are very much about investing in an idea backed by research to take it from the academic to a functioning company,” says Carl Support for this vision came from Government back in 2013, when Callaghan Innovation, it’s R & D grant agency, created a model to encourage private investors and more capital to be directed in technology coming out of the universities and private sector. “The way it works is that we raise a fund from investors who want to support a technology-based ‘idea’ in its infancy and alongside our fund Callaghan provides us with additional funds to invest. This investment provides su icient seed funding to form a company and bring their research into a marketable context. We are there to support them with all it takes to establish well in the market.” It’s heartening too that when Callaghan called for expressions of interest from investor entities WNT were one of only three organisations to get the nod to partner with Callaghan in its innovation funding programme. On reviewWNT remained the only incubator to be accepted by Callaghan under its new investment model, something Carl is extremely proud of. Quayside has partnered with WNT from the very beginning, investing in the company when it was a start-up itself, and remains the second largest shareholder and largest fund investor across all three of WNT Funds. “Quayside CEO, Scott Hamilton, has been on the Board and Investment Committee for WNT Ventures from the outset. His input and advice has been invaluable” WNT has created three investment funds, ranging in value from $3.5million in Fund 1 to Fund 3 raising over $11million this year. The companies within these three funds have, in turn raised $160 million in investment capital. So far, WNT has returned 90% of the irst fund to its investors. WNT is a general sector investor and into pre-revenue companies only, but does not invest into pharmaceuticals or human biotechnology An example of the type of projects WNT invests in is Nelson-based arti icial intelligence technology developer ‘Carbon Crop”. The company uses state-of-the-art technology to help kiwi landowners map their land, using aerial imagery and remote sensing data to provide world-class data to support applications for carbon credits from native forests. Carbon Crop is a spin-o from the Nelson Arti icial Intelligence Institute and funding provided by WNT has brought the technology into the commercial sphere. WNT is focused on investing its Fund 3 throughout 2022, looking for more new companies in sectors as diverse as aerospace, advanced manufacturing, machine learning and agritech. From Garage to Greatness www.wntventures.co.nz • Capital Provided for Early Stage Tech Startups • Founder Support • Investment BACKING DEEP TECH FOUNDERS FROM GARAGE TO GREATNESS
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