Ken Erskine

E-mail: [email protected]

Ken Erskine is a mentor, investor and entrepreneur with extensive experience across New Zealand and multiple international startup ecosystems. As an active Angel Ken has personal investments and interests in over 80 high tech ventures. He is an active member of the NZ startup Ecosystem and helped with the setup of the Technology Investment Network and the formation of The Icehouse. He was instrumental in the creation of the Global from Day One (GD1) seed fund and played an active role in the development of the Commercialisation Partner Network (CPN) and what has today become Return on Science (RoS) national research commercialisation programme.

In 2009 Ken was appointed Director of Startups at the Icehouse with responsibility for both the startup incubator and ICE Angels. During his tenure, The Icehouse was acknowledged by Forbes Magazine as one of the world’s top ten technology Incubators and Ice Angels invested over $50m into early stage NZ ventures. He also led the establishment of the Lightning Lab accelerator in Auckland, later to become the Flux Accelerator, and creation of GridAKL co-working space. In 2017 he setup and ran Venture Lab, a new incubator for the University of Auckland which has recently graduated its second cohort of student led startups.

Prior to his involvement with startups and early stage investment, Ken worked with local high tech, high growth software companies responsible for worldwide marketing, sales channels and vendor partnerships. He has also held senior sales and marketing roles at Hewlett Packard and Compaq NZ. Born in Scotland and educated in Europe, he holds an Executive MBA from ESCP business school in Paris.