Following the recent growth of Mainland Angel Investors (MAI) to Canterbury, Camille Hunt has been appointed to lead the chapter.

Hunt is an experienced entrepreneur, director and angel investor and previously managed an investor community in Vancouver, Canada called Valhalla Angels.

Board chair Brad Hurndell, said Hunt’s significant experience growing and supporting an angel community would help build momentum to the Canterbury network. “ The scale Christchurch brings to MAI is a major step forward for our community and for local businesses seeking to raise capital in New Zealand”

In April, NBR reported that Canterbury Angels was becoming part of the broader MAI to help make it easier for founders in the lower South Island to raise early-stage capital.

MAI was set up in 2020 after Startup Dunedin Trust, Coin South, and Startup Queenstown Lakes found they had a lot of startups in their regions ready for investment but not many local investors around to provide the growth capital.

It has just over 80 members compared with about 40 or so for the Canterbury chapter.

Hunt said there were already many strong investment clusters to build on in Canterbury, including Aerospace and Future Transport, Food, Fibre and Agritech, Healthtech and HiTech.

“We, the business community, need to nuture our entrepreneurs and make sure our investors are ready to support the growth of emerging companies so that we can see more unicors [billion -dollar companies'] come out of Otautahi(Christchurch). MAI’s presence here is a vital part of that.”

MAI runs regular investment evenings in Christchurch, Queenstown, Dunedin, Invercargill, and Wanaka.