Our People: Partnering with the best

Rod spent 30 years in Corporate New Zealand in the likes of Fletcher Challenge, Ericsson NZ, Vector and Spark. He spent 10 years on the Spark Executive as Chief Strategy Officer, Chief Product Officer and then finally as Founder and CEO of Spark Ventures. After leaving the Corporate World he founded strategic advisory agency The Exponential Agency. He has significant global and local governance experience, having sat on over 30 Boards including Southern Cross Cables, 3 Australia, AAPT, The Icehouse, YahooXtra, Metlifecare, Mobile World Capital and Forsyth Barr. He has been an angel investor for over 10 years with over 40 investments. After meeting Jonathan in 2016 on an innovation trip to Israel he started active co-investing with Jonathan. This together with his existing relationships with Marko and Hemant was the genesis of Maker Partners. He has a BCA in Finance from Victoria University, an Executive Management Diploma from Darden Business School, a Masters in Growth Scaling from The Growth Institute, is a Member of the NZ Institute of Directors (MInst) and a Fellow Chartered Accountant (FCA).

Jonathan is a serial entrepreneur, early stage investor, and venture builder. In addition to Maker Partners, he is the co-founder of The VMG Group, VMG Ventures, and Goat Ventures. VMG Group is a multinational conglomerate operating blue-chip offshoring and technology businesses VMG Premedia, VMG Digital, Red Pepper Digital, and VMG Connect. VMG Ventures is a material early-stage investor that has been active for a decade in the NZ start-up ecosystem. Past and present deals include: Rush Digital, Woop, Nyriad, Icehouse Ventures (management co.), Sunfed Meats, Two Bit Circus, WoolAid, No Issue, Compostic, Supergenerous, and NexDo. Goat Ventures is an AI venture-building business that, together with its three respective corporate partners MinterEllisonRuddWatts, Chemist Warehouse, and Rank Group, has created three globally successful start-ups: McCarthyFinch, Insite AI, and BuildingEstimates.com. Externally, Jonathan retired in 2020 after 5 years as a director of the Icehouse Group and is currently a director of the American Chamber of Commerce in New Zealand.

Marko has built a varied career in finance, sales, and investment management in New Zealand, Australia, and the United States with a number of roles within financial services, FMCG, start-up, corporate, and private equity firms. For the last 13 years Marko has been Chief Executive of Infratil and Infrastructure Investment Manager H.R.L. Morrison & Co., based in Wellington. Prior to that, Marko was CFO of Telecom NZ from 2000 to 2007 leading finance, M&A, and strategy where he worked alongside Rod Snodgrass. He has had significant public company governance roles with Infratil, Auckland Airport, Z Energy, Trustpower, and Sky TV and numerous private director roles within the telecommunication and renewable energy sectors and is currently sitting on the boards of Vodafone NZ and Amplitel Pty. More recently, Marko has become a significant shareholder and director in Tend Health. He has a BCA from Victoria University and MBA from the Harvard Graduate School of Business, and is a Fellow Chartered Accountant.

Hemant has significant experience with multi-national corporates, SMBs and start-ups. In addition to Maker Capital, he is the founder of Maker.Tech, a cornerstone company of the Maker Partners group. Hemant’s technology involvement started in 1999, while still in school, he helped build India’s first e-commerce site. He never turned back and finished his corporate days in 2010 leading a $200m+ automation transformation in APAC for Hewlett Packard. He then went into the entrepreneurial world, across product, tech services, and hospitality. Since then, he has led some of New Zealand’s largest digital transformations for household names across public and private sector, got involved early in a logistics start-up and led the split-pivot forming a global order management SaaS. He founded Wrashport Ventures that founded a hospitality group, which within 2 years grew to 3 sites across NZ, and has investments in both early stage and established entities in New Zealand, Australia, and India.