Crimson Education Limited

Five years later, she's helping shape one of the region's most consequential venture portfolios and helping decide which Kiwi founders get the capital, connections and confidence to take on the world.

We talk about that $1.25 billion fund and what it can change for New Zealand, why Blackbird is prepared to invest before the product, the customers, and sometimes even the final idea are in place, and the emerging flywheel of founders and operators spinning out of the likes of Rocket Lab, Halter, Partly, Crimson, and other high-growth companies.

We also get into artificial intelligence, sovereign compute, the surprisingly diverse Galabagos Islands of New Zealand startup ideas, the role of science and research and what the country needs to do if it wants to hold on to more of the economic value created by globally ambitious tech companies.

So stick around to hear my chat with Phoebe Harrop-Meadows from Blackbird Ventures coming up on The Business of Tech.

I think that generational effect is so evident, even since I started at Blackbird five years ago, we're starting to see now kind of third generation founders.

So it People like Craig and Levi, as you mentioned, who worked at Rocket Lab, then went on to start their own companies.

There are people who've grown up within Crimson Education, Holter, Partly, and so on, who are now going on to start their own companies around ideas that they experienced as they were building these high-growth, high-challenge products.

So that's one of the most exciting things, I think.

Uh, he's been on the New Zealand Tech podcast before.

And of course, Concord Visa, uh, for those that don't know, uh, is a spin-out from, uh, Crimson Education, uh, and still under 100% ownership of, uh, of Crimson.

Uh, so let's jump in with Kevin.

Kevin Park, Concord Visa, uh, welcome to the podcast.

So what, what does that look like in practice?

Yeah.

So when I was growing Crimson Education into 20 different countries or Hectare, um, into 22 different countries, I always felt, um, that, you know, we had the best plans, had the best ideas, had the best strategies, but at the end of the day, we needed the right people on the ground to execute those strategies.

But it took so long to have the right people on the ground pulling that off, and three months of delay, there's a lot of discount on the valuation.

And, you know, you look at their pitches, and they're full of, of, like, plot holes that you can very easily criticize and, and point to reasons that they're gonna fail and, you know, gaps in the team or gaps in the business model not yet worked out or, or, you know, assumptions that are too optimistic and, and all of these things.

But it's always paired with where they are now, which is that they've overcome all of those reasons to doubt and built themselves into, into like household names in New Zealand, uh, like Dawn Aerospace and Halter and Crimson Education and Sharesies and Henry and OpenStar and all, all of these others that have sort of proved the skeptics wrong.

And I think, I think it's ultimately just that dynamic of, of every time someone sort of sees a pitch and they think, "That'll never make it," or, you know, "That's gonna fail for this reason," and fast-forward five or 10 years, that company is making it, and, you know, eventually people's minds change, and they broaden in, in what they believe is possible.

It almost perfectly fits that, you know, risk-reward curve.

Obviously, like you've got a high failure rate, but at the same time, you know, if you can make it and you give these names like Crimson Education, from personal experience, I can tell how much it's scaled and how, you know, Jamie Beaton's doing as well over in the US.

Um, that is definitely one of New Zealand's biggest success stories.

You know, in your early days, I think when you were newer to VC, what were some of the, you know, biggest learnings and challenges you faced, or even mistakes you made when you were investing in companies, and what did that tell you, and how did that shape your philosophy today?

Another, like, 20% of my time ideally is spent on, on meeting and engaging with new entrepreneurs and companies that we haven't necessarily invested in, that we may or may not invest in.