New Zealand Sales Director at Xero

LinkedIn

Rob Borland is the New Zealand Sales Director at Xero, where he leads the Account Executive, Customer Success and Solutions Consulting teams responsible for helping thousands of accounting and bookkeeping firms grow through technology.

Before returning home to New Zealand, Rob spent seven years in the United States leading high-performing SaaS sales organisations at Zendesk during a period of rapid growth and the emergence of AI. Along the way he was recognised as Zendesk's highest-attaining second-line sales leader globally.

Alongside his role at Xero, Rob advises Miami-based AI startup Cyrus AI, helping shape AI agents built specifically for go-to-market teams. Having worked across both global SaaS companies and AI-native startups, he's passionate about how AI is reshaping sales leadership, customer engagement and the future of go-to-market.

Content Growth Marketing Lead at Starshipit

LinkedIn

Kendyl Morris is Content Growth Marketing Lead at Starshipit. She's spent close to a decade in B2B and SaaS content marketing across London and New Zealand - building content engines that pair AI tooling with human editorial judgement. Her focus is on where content marketing is heading next: earning visibility in GEO and LLM-driven discovery, where the rules of who gets found are being rewritten. 

CMO at Serko

LinkedIn

Nick is a technology marketing leader with a 20-year track record of commercialising technology through the development of effective go-to-market strategies and leads Serko's global marketing and communications function. Serko's technology is used by tens of thousands of companies to book and manage travel under the Booking.com for Business brand and white-labelled through travel management companies such as Flight Centre. Serko has recently announced its direct-to-traveller AI service; serko.ai. 

RevOps Lead at Oxygen Advisors

LinkedIn

Jacques Lourens is the Head of Fractional RevOps at Oxygen Advisors, delivering embedded revenue operations across a portfolio of high-growth B2B SaaS businesses.

With 8 years of SaaS go-to-market experience, working both internally and as a fractional RevOps leader, Jacques has built GTM foundations, tech stacks and workflows for businesses at varying stages of product-market-fit and go-to-market-fit. In the age of AI-powered GTM, Jacques is navigating the build-versus-buy decision, the foundations required to avoid AI slop, and the use cases that are genuinely moving the needle.

Director of Re-Leased, Cogo & Tapi

LinkedIn

Serge van Dam is a hands-on Investor / Director of going-global Kiwi SaaS companies, such as: Re-Leased, Cogo and Tapi.  

Originally an Organisational Psychologist, Serge is most interested in novel growth strategies, and has deep experience in B2B sales, marketing and distribution.  He spent a decade as an acknowledged thought-leader in fintech, having been part of the leadership team at M-Com - the world’s leading mobile banking and payments platform - which was acquired by Fortune 500 company Fiserv in 2011.

Serge is an Operating Partner at New Zealand’s most successful venture capital firm - Movac - and is an advisor to various New Zealand Government agencies.  He has previously been named New Zealand’s Angel Investor of the Year, organises / anchors several tech events, and co-hosts New Zealand’s most prominent startup podcast; Startup Theatre.

Serge grew up in Argentina, and lives in Wellington.  When not helping grow tech companies, you will find him in the great outdoors, arguing over politics, playing cards or with a novel in hand.

Sales & Growth Leader

LinkedIn

Charlie Marsh is a results-driven senior leader with a proven track record in scaling businesses through revenue growth, operational excellence, and customer success. She has led and scaled multiple global sales, operations, and customer teams through funding rounds and acquisitions — including as part of the Senior Leadership Team at Tradify.

Charlie specialises in strategic transformation, optimising sales and customer experience teams to drive efficiency and growth in tandem. She thrives in fast-paced, high-growth environments, and has hands-on experience setting up overseas operations.

Charlie believes the key to success is building high-performing teams, and is passionate about enabling others to grow in their roles, with a particular focus on championing women in tech.

Raised between the UK and France, Charlie now lives in Auckland with her young family, spending as much time as possible outdoors, travelling in summer, hiking, and skiing in winter.

Executive Director

LinkedIn

David Clearwater is Executive Director of KiwiSaaS, bringing over two decades of leadership in technology, startups and community building to New Zealand’s SaaS ecosystem. 

David is an organiser and a growth leader, having had a range of roles spanning digital channel management at Vodafone, facilitating startup community at Startup Weekend Wellington, building out the social enterprise ecosystem at Ākina Foundation, or growing SaaS companies as COO of Milkround Online, Cogo and Storypark. 

For David, SaaS is about working with incredible people and constantly evolving technology to build stuff that changes the world.

Head of People at Ideally

LinkedIn

Jenae designs organisations where commercial performance and employee experience strengthen each other. As Head of People at Ideally, she's helping scale the AI-powered market research platform globally.

Prior to this, Jenae spent nearly a decade partnering with ambitious organisations across a diverse range of sectors through Humankind and her own consultancy, Un/Bound. Working as a consultant and fractional executive, she helped founders, boards and leadership teams navigate the challenges that come with rapid growth, while building for the future of work. Her background in psychology, general management and competitive sport shapes how she creates the conditions that enable high performance and turn strategy into execution.

Curious by nature, Jenae loves bringing people together, exploring new perspectives and asking the questions that challenge conventional thinking. Outside work, you'll usually find her surfing, freediving, hiking or taking photos of marine life somewhere remote.

Principal Product Manager at Envato

LinkedIn

Suhel Mangera is a Principal Product Manager at Envato with 18+ years of experience across data, machine learning and product, spanning AI, search and recommendations, SaaS and marketplaces. His career has taken him across diverse industries and companies including Trade Me, Xero, Storypark, LawVu and Envato, covering everything from recruitment and education to legal and creative technology.

Suhel specialises in early-stage product development and has taken multiple products from 0 to 1 and beyond. He thrives in ambiguity and uncertainty, bringing clarity to complex problems and turning emerging opportunities into products that create real value for customers and the business.

He’s particularly interested in how new technology changes what’s possible — and the product judgement needed to decide what’s actually worth building.

Director of Growth Marketing at Serko

LinkedIn

Director of Growth Marketing at Serko, where she's built lifecycle marketing and personalisation from scratch for serko.ai, the company's new direct-to-traveller AI service. Her background spans growth strategy and global GTM execution, including roles at Booking.com for Business and Xero. Her current focus is on Braze-driven lifecycle, AI-powered personalisation experimentation, and AI-search strategy.

Product Management Trainer

LinkedIn

Iryna Melnyk is a Product Management trainer and coach based in Christchurch, New Zealand, helping individuals and organisations build strong product practices. 

She brings 13+ years of experience as a product manager and leader, with deep expertise in B2B SaaS. 

Lately, that work has centred on AI: how it's changing the way PMs test assumptions, make decisions, and collaborate.
Iryna coaches product managers to use AI as a lever for sharper thinking, not a replacement for it.

Product & Technology Executive | CTO at Serko

LinkedIn

Simon has more than 20 years’ experience in local and global technology companies, with a track record of building high-performing engineering teams and delivering product excellence. He has held a number of executive leadership roles, including Chief Product and Technology Officer at Trade Me and VP of Engineering at Halter. Simon joined Serko as Vice President of Engineering in 2023 and was appointed Chief Technology Officer in 2024.

CTO & Engineering Leader | AI Enablement & Engineering

LinkedIn

Mick Clarke has spent decades as a CTO and engineer across the US, Europe, China and New Zealand. Hands-on with generative AI since early 2023, he founded the education AI company Kayshun. Recently, as Head of AI Enablement at DataTorque, he lifted company-wide AI use from near zero to over 90% daily in three months, then built the "Factory": an agentic pipeline of ontology, modularity, deterministic tooling and independent proof, for pure agentic software delivery. Four people used it to deliver an externally assured tax platform in under six months. He is now building his own factory, Crepuscular, and helps companies like Kindo on their AI journey.

Product Management Leader, Trainer & Strategist

LinkedIn

Tasneem (Tas) Gould is an experienced product practitioner, strategist, and trainer with over 15 years of experience in B2B Product Strategy, Product Marketing, and Software Delivery. Currently driving product management excellence at Caterpillar Trimble Control Technologies, she has spent her career helping some of New Zealand’s top software and engineering companies—including Xero, Orion Health, MYOB, and SLI Systems—build empowered product practices and deliver high-value customer outcomes.

Based in Christchurch New Zealand, Tas is deeply committed to growing the local tech ecosystem. She serves on the board of Product Aotearoa, runs the ProductTank Christchurch meetup group, and was named the APAC Community Leader of the Year at the Leading the Product conference. Additionally, she collaborates with the University of Canterbury’s Executive Education Programme to deliver their Product Management Bootcamp, and serves as a mentor for local startup programs. 

VP Engineering, Pushpay

Chief People Officer, Auror

Product Strategist

Founder, Projectworks

CEO, Tech New Zealand

CEO, Matomo

Co-founder, SquareKicker

VP Product, Re-Leased

Director of People Experience, Timescapes

CFO, DataTorque

GM of VAS, Re-Leased

CEO, Apprento

Founder, Backkr

COO, Lumin