Fund 3 Open for investment

It’s taken me a while to get this post up, but Fund 3 is now formerly open for investment.  Fund 3 is an early expansion stage fund.  This means that invest in technology companies that have established a degree of market proof (started earning revenue) for what they do.

Fund 3 completed a first close at NZ$31m in July 2011 and is expected to complete a final close on 30 November 2011.  A close at this level is good news for MOVAC and its investors but even better news for New Zealand technology companies looking to source capital to expand their business activities.  Fund 3 will typically we invest between NZ$1m and NZ$5m or more when syndicating with our investment partners.

In assessing opportunities the key factors we look at are:

• Market proof – you have products in market and customers are paying for it.
• Scalable business model with dominant characteristics – your business can scale to tens of millions in revenue and there something about what you do that makes it difficult for others to compete against.
• Exceptional and experienced team – your team represents a balanced set of capabilities across sales and marketing, product development, financial management, strategy and leadership.  Supported by a demonstrable track-record.
• Capital requirements consistent with our and our partners ability to fund – we need to be confident that you can achieve your financial goals within the capital that we can source.  We’re not prepared to take significant follow-on funding risk.
• Return potential commensurate with risk – the returns you are projecting for investors are commensurate with the risk for the stage of business development that you’re currently at.
• You’re predominantly a New Zealand based company today, starting to sell internationally.

We don’t invest in property, retail or reseller businesses.  In general terms, the companies we invest in are underpinned by strong intellectual property that is unique to its target markets.  As an investment team we have significant experience in ICT, Life Sciences / Medical devices, Niche manufacturing / engineering and general IP commercialisation.

We occasionally post entires in our blog that go into more details on what we look for.  Please review these entries which can be found under the “Criteria” category.