FUEL FOR GROWTH
FUNDING YOUR VENTURE
Tuesday 24 June 2025 - Storyteller Bar Te Awamutu
Options for funding your venture
Exploring options for funding your venture is an essential step in turning ideas into reality. Avenues like bank loans and venture capital can provide substantial backing, while crowdfunding platforms allow you to tap into public support and private investors you'll likely not know about.
Each option comes with its own benefits and challenges, so it's crucial to match the choice to your business goals and the stage of your development. At our fourth Waipa Tech Meetup, we've got 3 experts to guide us through these options, offering insights tailored to tech innovators in New Zealand.
Meetup #4 is sponsored by Airwallex
Emily Heazlewood - Snowball Effect
At Snowball Effect, New Zealand’s leading private capital marketplace, Emily partners with high-growth companies raising $500k–$10M from wholesale, institutional, and retail investors. Snowball has facilitated over $200M in capital across SaaS, consumer brands, hardware, and beyond.
With firsthand experience launching and scaling startups—including Romer, a travel app that reached 120k+ users across NZ, Australia, and Asia, and now Amor App, a matchmaking platform for meaningful connections—Emily brings both sides of the raise to the table. She knows the founder journey, the capital pressures, and what makes investors lean in.
Working with businesses doing $500k–$15M in revenue, she guides founders through the end-to-end raise process—from narrative and financials to investor targeting—helping unlock growth capital with strategy and empathy.
Stuart Inglis - The Investor
Stuart is an operating partner at Altered Capital and uses his deep expertise to advise on technical due diligence and to provide ongoing support to portfolio company management teams.
Stuart has been the CTO, founder, and investor of a number of tech companies, based both in the USA and NZ. He has on the ground experience with SaaS companies, cloud scale production environments, intellectual property/patents, Agile methodologies and testing. He has lead engineering teams and has been involved with many M&A/investment transactions.
Stuart is on the School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences Industry Advisory Board for Waikato University, and holds a Bachelors degree in Math and Computer Science with First Class Honours, a Post Graduate Diploma of Management Studies and a Ph.D, all from the University of Waikato.
Emma Ballantyne + Josh Starky - The Bankers
Emma Ballantyne is our local BNZ Business Partner based in Cambridge who supports local businesses including tech companies with their banking needs. Emma will introduce us to Josh Starkey BNZ's expert on their tech propositions.
Josh provides oversight and support for the development of BNZ’s Technology Industries. His role focuses on building capability across BNZ’s tech bankers, as well as driving key initiatives and propositions that position BNZ as the leading bank for New Zealand tech businesses.
Throughout his banking career, Josh has held several roles across commercial banking, investments, and strategy. He holds a Master’s in Finance and an MBA from Oxford University.
Meetup #4 event sponsor - Airwallex
Introducing Airwallex, our esteemed sponsor for Meetup #4!
Airwallex is the financial suite for fast growing Kiwi businesses. Avoid the pain of managing payments and finances across multiple disconnected providers and banks. With Airwallex, you get a single unified platform, engineered with all the powerful features you need to streamline and future proof your business growth.
