John Kells
John has 20+ years investment experience, including 14 years in the UK. He spent 3 years as a front office equity analyst for London based hedge fund GLG Partners (previously one of the largest hedge funds globally before being acquired by Man Group). He then went on to work for 8 years at Tesco Pension Investment, a £14B UK pension scheme as the Head of Alternatives, creating, allocating and managing £1.5B in alternative investments globally (predominantly committing to top tier and emerging venture capital and private equity funds and co-investments).
John has also been an active angel investor for a number of years. Upon returning to New Zealand in 2015, he co-founded an e-commerce start-up before joining GD1 in 2017. John is now a Co-Managing Partner for GD1 Fund 3 and holds a BSc (Mathematics), 3x Diplomas in Finance, Financial Planning and Statistics, and is a CFA Charterholder.
John most recently led investments for GD1 Fund 3 into emerging New Zealand software companies: Auror, Formus Labs, Runn.io, VXT, Simfuni, NextWork, Buddy, Flowingly, Orbica, and Vessev.
Vignesh Kumar
Vignesh is a Co-Managing Partner at GD1, a New Zealand based generalist venture capital firm, which invests in companies across deep tech, connected hardware, health tech, SaaS and Internet 2.0 verticals. GD1's most recent fund was launched in 2021 with c.$150M in committed capital and through this Vignesh is an investor and board member of portfolio companies such as Basis, Foundry Lab, Alimetry, Dawn Aerospace, Zenno Astronautics, Type One Energy, among others.
Before GD1, and after overcoming cancer, Vignesh co-founded Journey Health, a digital health oncology platform. Prior to this, while based in California he led engineering execution at Apple across the US and Asia, and before that worked as a design engineer at Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, where he developed neonatal resuscitation technologies for the NICU.
Vignesh is a Kauffman Fellow (Class 28), Fulbright Scholar, and holds an MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, a Bachelor of Engineering (Hons) degree in Biomedical Engineering and a Master of Engineering Studies (Hons) from The University of Auckland.
Chintaka Ranatunga
Chintaka has decades of strategic business experience gained in executive leadership roles including Chief Operating Officer, Founder and Board member. He is passionate about advising New Zealand’s sharpest founders on how to achieve global growth.
His deep expertise in corporate development led to him becoming a respected authority on investing in and acquiring companies. Having invested in over 60 startups as an angel investor, Chintaka is an expert on setting businesses up for success at the outset.
Chintaka plays an invaluable role in mentoring GD1’s founders and portfolio companies to believe bigger; and to operationalise excellence.
“Whatever good thing we build; ends up building us. As a startup founder myself, I love working with founders and teams to build and grow their business from the ground up; from nothing. Venture capital is how we help New Zealanders grow their dreams from scratch to emerge as global leaders...there’s nothing better.”
Nawaz Ahmed
With the ability to ‘hunt down’ the genius in others and a passion for journeying with early stage founders, Nawaz is a respected authority in the crypto/web3 space.
Since 2019, he’s been an avid angel investor - investing in over 15 early stage crypto companies, including US-based. As an entrepreneur, he’s been through all of the phases of successfully starting a company - ideating, coming up with a product proposition, executing on that vision, and selling. Through this came hard-won lessons about the critical role VC plays in the journey entrepreneurs take.
His current focus at GD1 is on raising and investing for the Web3 Fund. He spends his time meeting founders who are leveraging crypto/web3 tech to build new and exciting businesses.
“VC is an amazing way to talk to interesting people doing interesting things which is what I’m passionate about. I love discovering the genius in others. It’s there, if we look for it.”
TLDR:
Respected authority in the crypto/web3 space.
Avid angel investor in over 15 early stage crypto companies, including US-based
Successful entrepreneur
Gary Wong
Gary has a deep love for the power of diverse thinking, a knack for simplifying complex finance and governance requirements and years of experience in mentoring countless disruptive tech companies globally.
He’s spent the past 12 years deeply involved in the strategic growth journey of countless tech companies - right from ‘local SME’ to ‘globally-minded’ entity - including helping startups expand into US, European and Australian markets. That experience has instilled in him an appreciation for different cultural approaches and lenses to problem solving and has helped shape and sharpen his expertise.
At GD1, Gary is deeply involved in financial and corporate governance, including process improvement, standing up policies and procedures and right-sizing these same policies and procedures to be flexible enough and fit-for-purpose for startups.
For our portfolio companies, he brings a strategic lens on growth, including building out complex financial models that scale with international growth.
“Venture capital is about encouraging teams of great people to believe that they have everything they need to build something bigger than themselves. GD1’s team will always challenge founders to be ‘growth-minded’ in their thinking.”
Heather Gadonniex
As CMO and Operating Partner at GD1, Heather is working with GD1 portfolio companies to supercharge growth, and is leading both marketing and ESG initiatives. She is a growth-oriented leader passionate about world-changing technologies and scaling impact. Heather has worked for nearly two decades in corporate communications, product marketing, sales, demand generation, sustainability/ESG, and executive GTM leadership roles in Silicon Valley start-ups and multinational companies.
Heather's been a founder and knows what it's like to take an idea to scale. In addition to tech, she’s most passionate about mindful leadership, scuba diving, wine and cheese, and her Whānau.
At GD1, Heather lives out her love for invigorating and inspiring founders and teams, guiding them around growth and impact and building purpose-driven brands.
“What really lights me up is catalysing the fire within others - companies, organisations and people - in order to fuel conscious growth and impact. I have deep empathy for those building companies and products."
Doug Bohaboy
Doug has nearly 15 years of experience working in sales, marketing, and customer success. He provides in-the-trenches, functional Go To Market support to GD1’s portfolio, empowering our companies to make smart decisions and execute successfully so they can achieve global growth.
Doug specialises in helping our founders and their teams succeed post investment which is a core part of what we do here at GD1.
"Venture capital attracts brave, daring and determined people - being around startups and helping them is what makes me excited about being in VC…”
TLDR:
Sales, marketing, and customer success background
Providing in-the-trenches, functional Go To Market support
Helping our portfolio companies succeed post investment
Aaron Small
As Investment Principal, Aaron leads the Investment Team at GD1. He has over 10 years experience in Venture Capital roles in both NZ and the UK. Before joining GD1, Aaron was an Investment Manager at NZTE where he helped NZ technology companies connect with local and international VCs. Prior to this, Aaron managed Spark NZ's Corporate VC program and held investing roles at Aspinall Capital (a $100m industrial technology fund) and WHEB Partners (a cleantech venture capital firm with €250m AUM) in the United Kingdom.
Aaron holds a PhD in Chemistry and a BSc Hons (1st Class) from Victoria University of Wellington and the MacDiarmid Institute of Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology. He is passionate about supporting NZ founders in taking their technologies global to solve the world’s biggest challenges
Jonathan Tan
As Senior Investment Analyst, Jonathan sits within the Investment Team at GD1, assisting the co-managing partners and investment principal. Jonathan has a wide range of experience from his time in the corporate finance and business advisory services team, such as business valuations, financial model reviews, and transaction advisory services, offering critical support to corporate clients. He also has experience in ERP implementation during his time at Westpac New Zealand.
Jonathan is excited to learn about new technologies and work with founders to succeed and scale their startups globally.
Catherine Young
Catherine has a passion for building systems; a talent for juggling multiple responsibilities and thrives on the challenge of solving difficult problems by imagining what they might look like fixed.
As an owner/operator for 20 years, her business management experience was gained at the coal face where she did ‘whatever it took’ to ensure the success of the company, including liaising with clients in over 60 different countries; project management on high budget productions; negotiating international sponsorships, dealing with a variety of stakeholders and at all times handling the “day to day” of running a business. This was a great finishing school for ‘learning it all’.
Catherine’s ‘specialist generalist’ background is an invaluable asset to GD1 where she applies what she knows about systems, processes, policies and procedures to set the company and its portfolio companies up for success.
“Operations management aims at understanding the bigger picture so that you can review, decipher and problem-solve around each roadblock with an eye on how everything you do fits into and will help achieve the company’s overarching objectives while remaining compliant and on track.”
Fiona Gardner
Fi Gardner is the Executive Assistant to the Co-Managing Partners at GD1. With over 15 years of experience across diverse industries, including entrepreneurship, health, and sports, Fi possesses the skills needed to navigate fast-paced environments and support high-level executives effectively.
At GD1, Fi's proactive approach and exceptional organizational skills enable the Co-Managing Partners to maximize their time, allowing them to focus on finding and investing in great New Zealand tech companies.
Holding a Bachelor of Arts in Communications and Marketing, Fi combines her academic background with practical experience to enhance her efficiency and effectiveness in her role.
Tracy Han
Tracy is an all-rounded professional with extensive experience in project management, people & culture, and business operations. She has successfully led and supported a variety of projects across different contexts and worked across corporate, non-profit and ed-tech. Tracy is deeply passionate about diversity, equity, inclusion and sustainability, and she currently serves on the board of Tāhono Inclusive Collective Aotearoa and the APEC Voices Trust New Zealand.
Before joining GD1, Tracy completed her Master of Business in Diversity Management. Her expertise lies at the intersection of people, projects, and processes, where she excels in collaborating with diverse teams to tackle complex challenges and develop innovative solutions.
