Approach

 Long-term gains to investors come from companies that focus on creating great end user experiences.

While we are numbers people, we first look at the business fundamentals from an end user’s perspective. We see that companies who focus on the end user, who often is not the paying customer, are most able to create lasting value.

We help investors identify great companies, and we provide advice and help to those companies where required. Our focus is on technology, web and internet and design-led companies in New Zealand.

Long-term horizon

We believe in buying to hold — and by that we mean Warren Buffett’s definition of holding for a lifetime. But for now let’s think about what happens at 15 years after founding.

The collective wisdom is that it takes three years from founding to decide whether you have a viable company, five years to see decent profits, seven to see actual dividends and 10 to see a very meaningful change in income to shareholders.

At 15 years nobody talks about that income stream anymore, as they are usually embarrassed about the size. So isn’t it smarter to wait?

Expert advice

We focus on helping CEOs and management teams expand their capability, rather than on doing the work for them.

We like working with smart people, as they don’t like getting the same advice twice. We also expect them to listen to the advice but follow their own path reaching further than we see in some areas. Isn’t fun to watch excellent people build businesses?

A partnership approach

We work with an ever-expanding ecosystem of companies, founders, staff, advisors, incubators, networks and investors.

There are some very different ways of doing business and philosophies in the early stage ecosystem in New Zealand. We see the quality of these efforts is collectively improving, to a point now where the number of people who are able to start, grow and effectively advise companies has reached critical mass. Lance is part of two Return on Science (Uniservices) investment committees, and is well known within a number of sub communities.

Fairness and honesty

We are New Zealanders, and hold vigorously to our values. We treat everybody fairly, are open and honest with our communication and do not try to win at the expense of others.

We all win when we all win and our engagements and investments reflect that.

Speed and practicality

We value time and money of all parties. CEOs need to focus on building companies, investors on making decisions and lawyers on solving problems.

So let’s do what we do best, and hold off on the inches of paperwork and months of due diligence.