Ready to put a rocket under NZ

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know about venture capital, but it helps.

Well, it helped former Nasa scientist Paul Coleman anyway.

Coleman - in Auckland to address the fourth annual Venture Capital and Private Equity conference - worked for Nasa during the golden years of space exploration. He worked on the Apollo missions to the moon and the Pioneer and Mariner interplanetary space probes.

Coleman is now chief executive of the US-based Girvan Institute of Technology - a non-profit organisation dedicated to accelerating the development and application of cutting edge technologies - and has joined New Zealand fund Pioneer Capital Partners as an advisory board member.

But Coleman says his relationship with New Zealand science goes back much further, to his time working with Bill Pickering - the Wellington-born scientist who masterminded many of Nasa's early space missions.

"So, I have a great deal of respect for the scientific capabilities of Kiwis," he said.

Coleman is now interested in doing whatever he can "to move technology from research and development centres and into the hands of entrepreneurial people who build businesses and get that technology into use".

His message for New Zealand is that the relative immaturity of the venture capital market presents a huge opportunity.

He said there was a chance here to set up a blueprint that avoided the pitfalls that still dogged the sector in the US.

There was still a "valley of death" for start-up companies in the US. The industry had to find a way to help the "techies" get from the point where their own funds ran out to the point where the big VC funds were ready to come on board.

The costs of doing due diligence made it difficult for traditional VC companies to take on smaller deals.

New Zealand had an opportunity to do things a different way. "I'm here to say that maybe there is a better way."

Coleman's own work on the moon missions involved building lunar satellites.

He recalls the 60s as a "halcyon era" for space research where funding was virtually unlimited and politicians did not dare question the validity of research projects.
"The country was gung-ho."