WNT Ventures Hardware Series

We know that building a hardware business is hard. It is unusual for hardware founding teams to have the full set of skills required to be able to support them to bring their product from concept all the way to market. We have planned six key workshops that will help give the foundational building blocks for any budding hardware entrepreneur.

The Hardware Rollercoaster

There are many high and lows that are encountered on this journey. It’s important to understand that a lot of the things keeping you up at night as a Hardware Entrepreneur, have kept people up at night before! This series is here to answer some of the questions you have but also to give you partners and networks that you can reach out to and ask questions so that you don’t have to go on this journey alone.

What are in the sessions?

In each session, we will be bringing together industry experts and experienced entrepreneurs to help give you a toolkit to help you through some of the sleepless nights that building a company can bring.

Whether you are already on your hardware startup journey and have questions about certain areas or just thinking about embarking on that startup journey there will be useful insights, networks and case studies that you will get from the series.

Session #6 - Go to Market Strategy

What many companies find is that they focus on building the product and expect customers to just find them… it doesn’t happen that way. Finding the right channels to market, engaging with partners and early adopters and ensuring you are continuously learn and improve is critical.

Moderated by WNT's own Managing Partner Maria Jose Alvarez, this session and it will cover everything from building relationships, finding your raving fans, and getting investment. Our awesome panelists and speakers include:

Cyril Ebelweiser

Cyril is a General Partner at SOSV and the founder and co-Managing Director of HAX. He is a board member and advisor to a few startups, including Formlabs, Angel List, Collaborate (ACQ: CISCO), Hackster (ACQ: AVNET), and Adoreme. He is an experienced investor in deep tech (250+) and has invested globally.

Cyril is a frequent speaker at global events (TechCrunch Disrupt, Collision, Pioneers, MIT Forum, etc.) and universities (Stanford, UC Berkeley, etc.), has written dozens of articles and publishes regularly on topics such as technology, robotics, health, and crowdfunding. He has been featured in The Economist, Popular Mechanics, The New York Times, Bloomberg, Huffington Post, Wired, BBC, and more.

Heather Gadonniex

Heather is the CMO and Operating Partner (strategy and Growth) for Venture Capital firm GD1. She has worked for nearly two decades in marketing, sales, and executive go to market leadership roles at Silicon Valley start-ups and multinational companies. She has also been a founder and know what it’s like to take an idea to scale.

Heather spent the first half of her career working in clean tech/ESG, the second working in AI (mainly computer vision and NLP), and am now helping founders and teams create compelling brands, narratives, and growth strategies.

Timothy Wixon

Timothy is the Head of Technology Industries at Bank of New Zealand (BNZ), where he has been leading and scaling the bank's portfolio and proposition for over 1500 technology companies across New Zealand since 2018. He has a strong background in research, financing, law, due diligence, and capital markets, as well as a Master's degree in Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship and a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation.

His professional mission is to support and enable the growth and innovation of the technology industries in New Zealand. He and his team design and launch tailored financing solutions, such as Revenue Based Financing, Project Scale Up, and Contracted Receivables Financing, to help technology companies access non-dilutive capital.