Our Portfolio

Seed-stage ventures face a hard road to achieving the kind of wealth implied by their potential. Success isn’t one single achievement, but a string of small wins that incrementally add up to a return. Each success must come at the right time, and in the right order, to prevent new ventures from becoming roadkill on the innovation highway.

The entrepreneurs behind these ventures require not just smart support, but smart capital, invested in a way that brings out the best in their business. Decisions have to be made about which markets to concentrate on, how to break into them, how to manufacture products, and how to get
them to customers. And success must be sustained.

At the seed-stage of the innovation spectrum, a little bit of investment goes a long way. The astute investor uses this investment to coax from companies the decisions that bring out the best in an enterprise. They know when to exercise patience and when to accelerate.

powerHouse brings decades of experience to the art of getting the best out of seed-stage companies. We back our companies with clever support that understands the disruptive nature of innovation. We also attract the all-important capital investment these seed-stage companies need to get the right start.

There are two main aspects to powerHouse’s business:

• raising annual investment funds using the Limited
  Partnership model
• investing these funds, with co-investment from partners, in promising, technology focused, customer-driven companies

Most of the companies in which powerHouse invests are created from breakthroughs generated by Canterbury’s two universities, along with innovations from Crown Research Institutes and private sector entrepreneurs.

powerHouse has won several international awards for its work in science-based incubation, and developing entrepreneurship in students.

This page profiles the five early-stage companies in which powerHouse has invested using its No. 2 Limited Partnership. These companies are in the very earliest stages of their development, and plenty of challenges lie ahead.

But all of the companies described in this document have the potential to become leading contributors to Canterbury’s economy if they are able to successfully negotiate the challenges of starting up in an international marketplace.

We believe they are coming along nicely.