Jo Wickham believes the ultimate entrepreneur is a farmer.
That Kiwi No 8-wire approach, or practical, can-do mentality, was well aligned to entrepreneurship, she said.
Having been raised in a North Otago farming family, Ms Wickham — now a partner at venture capital investor Icehouse Ventures — saw first-hand the value in working hard. And there were real analogies with venture capital and watching entrepreneurs start their own companies, she said.
Take Craig Piggott, the founder and chief executive of Halter, the ag-tech innovator whose virtual fencing and farm-operating system included solar-powered smart collars and an app that allowed farmers to remotely guide and monitor livestock while precisely managing pasture.
Earlier this week, Mr Piggott was named New Zealand Innovator of the Year in the Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year Awards. Halter topped the 2024 Deloitte Fast 50 Index with 1539% revenue growth and, in 2025, secured $165million to accelerate global expansion.
When Mr Piggott initially approached Icehouse Ventures not long out of his teens, his first idea was a non-starter. But the Icehouse team liked him and he later returned with the concept of Halter, having left Rocket Lab to start his own entrepreneurial dream.
A dairy farmer’s son from Morrinsville, who had studied mechanical engineering at university, he had unique insight into the problem he was trying to solve and he had the ability to figure out how to do that, Ms Wickham said.
Icehouse Ventures, which had backed Halter, was trying to find other companies like it and Rocket Lab — companies that were going to "change the future for the better" and had exceptional founders.
When Ms Wickham (nee Purvis) completed a double degree in law and arts at the University of Canterbury in the early 2000s, entrepreneurship in technology was "not a thing".
Her first job as a graduate was at a law firm in Queenstown where she spent two years gaining experience and desperately saving the £2000 needed to get to London where she spent seven years working for Clifford Chance, a British multinational law firm which was a member of the Magic Circle, a group of leading London-based multinational law firms.
She worked in the private equity real estate team doing property joint ventures in emerging markets during the boom times of the mid-2000s and setting up private equity real estate funds.
In her final year in London, she gained her first real in-house experience of finance during a secondment at Credit Suisse Asset Management working in alternative assets where she developed a taste for the financial responsibility that came with being a capital allocator.
While Ms Wickham loved living in London, she knew it was not a place where she wanted to bring up a family and she returned to New Zealand in 2011 and worked for a boutique law firm.
Law firm life and hours were not overly conducive to starting a family — she and her husband now have three sons — and she applied for a job on Seek for a company she had never heard of in what she described as a "sliding doors moment".
Vista Entertainment, which made software for film and cinema, turned out to be an "amazing opportunity". Bootstrapped by its four founders who mortgaged their houses, she joined just before the company went through IPO.
The IPO went well, Vista Group was formed and acquired other tech companies and it was now listed on both the New Zealand and Australian stock exchanges.
Ms Wickham was with Vista for about nine years; she learned about tech and fell in love with it, particularly its scaleability and productivity.
New Zealand might be "at the edge of the world" but it was so good at building things. There was not a lot of resources or capital to solve problems and company founders were very creative.
It was a great environment to build tech; there was an easy business environment, great universities and smart people.
"You can build awesome companies from New Zealand," she said.
Ms Wickham loved New Zealand and believed in it. She initially thought career had to be sacrificed for lifestyle but, with the tech and what was being built in New Zealand, she did not believe there had to be a compromise any more and she hoped that continued.
Part of the motivation for her role at Icehouse Ventures was to increase productivity in New Zealand. While she wanted her own sons to learn about the world, she hoped they would be able to come back to New Zealand and also have a great career and lifestyle and she saw tech and venture as a way to achieve that.
Prior to joining Icehouse, she had become interested in angel investing and had been thinking about getting involved herself. She found it interesting listening to entrepreneurs doing their pitches.
Then she was intoduced to Icehouse chief executive Robbie Paul.
It was 2021 and it was looking to build its team and he suggested she might like to work there. By that time, she was ready for a change and, while she had been there now nearly five years, that was not long in terms of venture life cycle. In a nutshell, Icehouse raised money from wholesale investors and invested in high-growth tech startups at very early stages. It was quite high risk but there were potentially high rewards.
It was about finding those great companies, doing due diligence and bringing them to Icehouse’s investment committee and making a decision whether to invest.
And it was not just about the investment; the Icehouse team helped them, introduced them to the right people and hosted events.
"We are very big on community," she said.
The other side was talking to investors about the companies Icehouse was investing in. While it was a privilege to support entrepreneurs and see what they were building, it was also fascinating to discover the backgrounds of investors.
Building a company was hard and having a whole community involved helped it to go faster. Collaboration and getting people together was a huge part of what Icehouse did.
Icehouse now had a team of about 25 and was expanding and it was fun to be part of a growing organisation that was "doing good". It was now also investing in offshore Kiwis, trying to bring some value back to New Zealand.
