Arama Kukutai, HBHS Old Boy, Venture Capitalist
Arama Kukutai (pictured with current Head Boy Rahiti Teokotai-White) attended Hamilton Boys’ High School from 1982 – 85, and was Head Boy in his final year with us. This proved to be a springboard for success in the private sector. Arama made himself available for an interview on Tuesday, during a visit from San Diego, USA.
Could you give us a snapshot of what life was like at Hamilton Boys’ High School in the 80s?
It wasn’t that different to the way it is now, in some ways. It had a great faculty, great staff, and the seventh form (Year 13) group that I was a part of, were really nice guys. Educational standards were pretty high, so a number of boys in my year went on to do under-graduate studies at the different universities around New Zealand. I remember it being a very easy-going, but at the same time challenging school, with a good learning environment.
Which subjects did you study at high school that you then carried through to university?
I ended up studying Economics. I mostly did liberal arts subjects, so English, Maori and so forth, and then I studied Economics further on. I graduated in Economics and Law, and I also have a Masters in Finance. I focused more on the liberal arts subjects than the sciences.
Could you describe briefly for us what your job entails?
I lead an investment firm that invests money into early stage innovation companies in the life sciences. We are investing in renewable energy, bio-technology, medical devices and diagnostics. We manage about $1,000,000 USD.
Would you describe yourself as a venture capitalist?
I am a venture capitalist; that is what I do for a living. We pick companies, we put money into them and we try to get them to a point where we can sell them for lots of money.
What is your approach to risk?
Primarily, I look at the management team. It doesn’t matter what the business is, whether it’s a venture capital-funded company, or whether it’s a major corporation like Telecom or Fonterra, it’s only as good as the people running it. This is particularly true of companies focused on innovation. We’re investing in companies run by scientists, engineers and medical practitioners, and they’ve got to be good at a number of things. They’ve got to be good at invention, and then taking the invention and turning it into something that people want. So the best way to ‘de-risk’ an investment from our perspective is to have the right people.
What is the most exciting project that you’ve become involved with?
There are a number of them. Currently I’m on the board of a company that is trying to develop algae as a source of oil for renewable energy. We’re also doing a project funded by DAPA, the US Department of Defence’s Advanced Research Project Agency, trying to make jet fuel out of algae oil for the US military. That’s a pretty interesting one.
We’ve got another project on the medical device side, which is trying to cure atrial fribulation – arrhythmia of the heart. Instead of having to do a coronary by-pass and graft surgery, and open people up, we’re trying to come up with a minimally invasive method where we insert a catheter inside the heart. This has a device in it that uses radio frequenceis to put a scar pattern on the inside of the heart, while it is still beating.
I get to see a lot of really phenomenal technologies invented by people much smarter than me, and we get to go along for the ride. I think every year I have to empty my head of what I did last year to absorb what I am doing this year. The rate of change in these areas is astonishing.
Long term, do you anticipate coming back to New Zealand?
That’s at question I get asked a lot by my family. I think so. Ideally we would spend at least a couple of months a year here. We’re trying to spend about a month in New Zealand; having some flexibility in our business allows us to do that. I’m not reporting to someone else, having to take fixed vacation periods – we work in travel where we can.
At a personal level, I would love to spend more time here. What we do from a business standpoint is difficult to do here at the moment. We are finding more ways to do things here at the moment with research institutions – for example, starting to work in a closer relationship with Innovation Waikato, here on the agricultural side.
I imagine our research and development culture is quite different that it is in America.
It is. The US is such a big place that you run the whole gamut. You’re dealing with places like M.I.T. and Stanford who are on the cutting edge, and not only technically; they’ve got faculty members who start up businesses but don’t lose their jobs, they’re allowed to own stock in companies, and some of them are even investors in companies themselves in addition. You see that reflected when you go on to the campus – half the buildings in these places have been donated by alumni. There is a culture of re-investment back into education and to start up projects.
What we believe is that basically, great science comes from anywhere. Turning it into something more requires an eco-system to support it. I think that this is growing in New Zealand. I believe that we’re making better progress than you might think, but it is a slow process. We spend a lot of time in the US, but we also spend time in Israel as well, and we’ve got a group that we do a lot of partnering with, out of Tel Aviv. The Israeli’s have proven themselves to be very adept at learning this game and playing it. But even they are a long way from the US, so they need to form partnerships with groups who are based in the US and who understand how the game is played. We help them, and nuture companies through. We are starting to do a little bit of that in New Zealand, which (knock on wood) should help me to spend some more time here.
If you had advice for young men coming through the school at the moment, what would it be?
Find that thing that you are great at or passionate about, and do that. Life is too short to spend time working on things that you don’t enjoy. Don’t worry about chasing money – that will come if you do something that you are good at and that you love. Working out what that is can take some time, but it is definitely worth it.
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