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In Detail
Payper had a thing for Vessev long before Vessev called. Electric hydrofoiling boats, designed and built in East Tāmaki, lifting clean out of the water — exactly what New Zealand should be sending out into the world.
So when Vessev went looking for a PR agency to announce its NZ$32.6 million Series A in New Zealand, we put our hand up fast. The round was led by Blackbird, with Icehouse Ventures, Sir Stephen Tindall's K1W1 and GD1 alongside, and it arrived with a first American customer already signed: FlyTahoe, running a Vessev VS9 on Lake Tahoe.
Funding rounds are their own discipline. A raise is news for about a day, business editors see a lot of them, and whether a story runs usually comes down to whether the pitch actually understands the technology and the cap table. Payper has spent years working New Zealand's business desks, and it shows in the work: we know who covers deep tech and who covers deals, which reporters will want the founder and which want the numbers, and what each of them needs to run it well.
This one had a further wrinkle. Vessev was announcing into three markets at once, so we ran the New Zealand end alongside the company's Australian and US partners — holding the embargo, keeping the timing honest across three time zones, and making sure the local angle, a Kiwi manufacturer exporting to America, didn't get swallowed by a global funding story.
It landed everywhere that mattered. Both major television networks. Every significant business masthead in the country. National radio. Thirteen stories, an estimated 1.5 million New Zealanders reached, for a flat fee of $8,000.
There is nothing we like better than homegrown talent working to get the world off fossil fuels. Getting to tell the country about it is the good bit.
