Space Innovation Spotlight: Zenno Astronautics & NZVC's Ventures
Kia Ora friends!
Fund update
🚀 It is wonderful to share that our portfolio company Archipro had a very successful $35M Series-A offering led by New York-based Tiger Global. ArchiPro is New Zealand’s leading online platform that connects the building and architecture industry. With expansion in Australia, they have achieved a 100% revenue growth year-on-year. This funding round represents a 2.9x growth in valuation after dilution for our largest NZ investment, and we have doubled down on it in this round.
🚀 Our portfolio company Pyper Vision has received New Zealand Government’s Airspace Integration Trials Programme (AITP) to further develop its drone based fog dispersal system at airports. Led by visionary founder Emily Blythe, Pyper Vision has conducted more than 200 tests in New Zealand and Australia so far. The company is raising its next round of funding which we are happy to join.
Startup of the month: Zenno Astronautics
This video is a good introduction to the aspirations of this amazing NZ startup which has developed a superconducting magnetic drive that can turn and position satellites in space. The traditional method of “attitude control” is to use the bulky magnetorquers and reaction wheels, which have been around for 60 years. They create limitations of size, weight and power consumption, which restricts flexibility around satellite design.
The Zenno Drive instead uses magnetic forces created by superconducting wire and miniature freezers (cryocoolers). It runs completely on solar power, and offers 4-8 times better performance on all key metrics: pointing accuracy, reliability, size, weight, available uptime, and range of operation. Their prototype is ready and tested on earth, and is headed for open space trials. Zenno has LOI’s from some of the leading satellite companies for turning, pointing and docking services.
NZVC is excited to support this major deep technology for sustainable space exploration led by founder Max Arshavsky.
Amplifier Speed Networking Event
Great to see Casey Davies-Bell‘s Amplifier continue to expand and facilitate connections between founders and investors. We participated in the speed networking event and met some impressive founders like Jax Garret of GGWP and Arash Tayebi of Kara Tech.
New Zealand Border Update
The border continues to open ahead of schedule and if you need the latest information please reach out to Mark.
As per this Covid NZ government website: From 11:59pm 1 May 2022, vaccinated visitors from visa waiver countries, and visitors from other countries who already hold a valid visitor visa can enter New Zealand and self-test on arrival.
Best regards,
Mark Pavlyukovskyy, Ajay Gupta, and Glen Anderson