PowerbyProxi is a capital-hungry hard-tech start up. So what convinced Movac this one was a good bet?
Apart from his electric toothbrush, David Beard says he knew nothing about charging wireless devices. But when he and his partners at angel and growth capital investment firm Movac encountered PowerbyProxi in 2008, they quickly recognised the commercial applications for wireless charging and realised they’d remained unexploited for too long.
When you’re working in the field you can’t drape cables everywhere to power machinery or connect wirelessly, as you can to the internet, to power your devices. So PowerbyProxi’s founders set about finding ways for devices to be unplugged from their source of power in hostile industrial environments, without resorting to unreliable cables, using a process called electromagnetic induction.
The brains behind PowerbyProxi is Fady Mishriki, who studied wireless power at the University of Auckland. Initially his focus was on miniaturising the technology for consumer electronics. But after meeting serial entrepreneur Greg Cross through the University’s business incubator, The Icehouse, this changed when the two discovered the amount of capital required and the number of potential competitors trying to do something similar.
“He was dead-set on building a technology company based on the University’s heritage in wireless power research,” says Cross of his co-founder. “Over the past 30 years the university has done more research on wireless power than any other organisation in the world. The IP portfolio and availability of world-class engineers provides us with what I refer to as unfair competitive advantage on the global stage.”
After a lot of market research Cross and Mishriki decided to join forces in 2007 and focus on the less competitive industrial market. But to get the company off the ground and up and running quickly, Cross and Mishriki needed investment, so Cross approached Movac.
“We took a reasonable amount of convincing that this technology was able to solve a large number of industrial and consumer problems,” Beard admits of Movac’s first meetings with Cross and Mishriki. “It was really more about execution than that the technology might be useful.”
Cross’s involvement certainly helped; Movac’s partners had met him at the entrepreneurs’ conference Morgo and had dealt with him on a previous venture he’d sought to fund. But Beard and Phil McCaw, Movac’s managing partner, recognised PowerbyProxi wasn’t just a technology startup; it was a ‘hard-tech’ – hardware products, not just software – startup. “Hard-tech companies require at least $5 million to $10 million to make them successful on the world stage,” says McCaw. That meant PowerbyProxi wasn’t suited to a typical angel investment scenario and was going to require significant support upfront and for the long haul. There just aren’t that many individual investors in New Zealand who’d invest such a large sum in a single, high-risk venture, says Beard.
What intrigued McCaw and Beard in their early conversations with Mishriki and Cross, however, was the discovery that Auckland University’s School of Electrical Engineering was a world-leader in wireless power technologies. “They realised the University of Auckland research, led by Professor John Boys over the last 20 years, gave us a hard competitive edge on the global stage,” says Cross.
Movac backs PowerbyProxi
Movac began backing start-up opportunities in 1998, funding its way with the help of cash generated from its founding partners’ day jobs in management consulting. Its first big success story was Trade Me, which allowed McCaw and his partners to turn their part-time passion into a full-time venture.
In 2005 Movac began putting together their second seed investment fund and used this to invest in PowerbyProxi. “We made about 16 investments out of that fund,” says McCaw.
Since then Movac’s participated in a further three investment rounds in PowerbyProxi from its third, later stage, growth capital fund, Fund 3, giving it both a seed fund interest and a venture fund interest in PowerbyProxi. For companies to succeed, ideally they need to raise more capital than they need at each capital raising, says Beard. “It stops you having to put your business in ‘minimum burn’ mode while you rattle the cup around again. That’s terribly distracting to a company and its growth aspirations.”
Movac began backing start-up opportunities in 1998, funding its way with the help of cash generated from its founding partners’ day jobs in management consulting. Its first big success story was Trade Me, which allowed McCaw and his partners to turn their part-time passion into a full-time venture.
In 2005 Movac began putting together their second seed investment fund and used this to invest in PowerbyProxi. “We made about 16 investments out of that fund,” says McCaw.
Since then Movac’s participated in a further three investment rounds in PowerbyProxi from its third, later stage, growth capital fund, Fund 3, giving it both a seed fund interest and a venture fund interest in PowerbyProxi. For companies to succeed, ideally they need to raise more capital than they need at each capital raising, says Beard. “It stops you having to put your business in ‘minimum burn’ mode while you rattle the cup around again. That’s terribly distracting to a company and its growth aspirations.”
McCaw says Movac is committed to PowerbyProxi “for the long haul” and it will need that tenacity: Cross’s vision for PowerbyProxi is to build a company that puts wireless power on every surface in every room of every home and office.
“Export or die,” the words of Waikato businessman and founder of Trigon Packaging Bill Foreman resonate with the PowerbyProxi co-founder. “
Cross and Movac’s considered and ambitious risk-taking in PowerbyProxi is already starting to pay off, with listed US electronics firm TE Connectivity announcing it was taking a near 11% stake in the company in April as part of a $5 million capital raising to help the company accelerate sales. TE Connectivity’s industrial division in Germany has already helped PowerbyProxi take its ARISO contactless connectivity platform to Market.
“Entrepreneurs not bureaucrats are the one who will unlock the commercial potential of New Zealand’s top researchers,” says Cross.
