/ Kōrerorero blog / 5 Aug 2021 / Katie Hickmer
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With multifaceted experience, Michael is no stranger to the worlds of start-ups, corporates or venture capital firms ...
Michael Carden is the founder of Sonar6, a HR SaaS company that was acquired by NASDAQ:CSOD in 2012, co-founder for Joyous (employee feedback SaaS), was the Chair of Promapp (process mapping SaaS acquired by Nintex), AskNicely (an NPS SaaS company) and Narrative (AI driven photo desirability) - both of these later companies are also in our Aspire fund portfolio, Mike is also a Limited Partner of Icehouse Ventures Tuhua Fund 2, Blackbird NZ, and previously sat on the NZTE Beachheads Advisor Board.
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I got made redundant from a large corporate 20 years ago and decided to find something more meaningful to do with my life than being a stiff in a suit.
I feel there are three distinct roles;
There are functional requirements of all tech start-ups.
Too often I see one or more of these missing for too long.
Plus, many entrepreneurs chase market opportunities where either the TAM (total available market) is too small to ever build a big business, or the average deal size is too small to make the unit economics stack up.
I just stay on multiple Boards so I can see what others are working on. Plus, I investigate lots of potential investments each year for our family office.
At Joyous we open source every thing that is working for us. So for instance, we have an excellent parental leave policy which we think can work for other tech companies. But we’d also like their input. So we get something to a useful point, then we open source publish it.
Read this example HERE
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Our Aspire NZ Seed Fund is a generalist early-stage investment fund that invests in Kiwi start-up companies with a focus on four technology areas/sectors; Software, Health-tech, Deep-tech and Agri-tech. Narrative, Joyous and AskNicely all fit within the Software sector.
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This is our 10th Kōrerorero of the series.
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In collaboration with PWC and AANZ, we share insights on growing a sustainable ecosystem
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