Early leader at Canva. Exec and board member.Candidate in the 2023 New Zealand national elections. Helped nurture New Zealand’s next wave of epic tech businesses - Kiki.club, SugarWallet, Latch.io, Cotiss, KiwiFibre Innovations, NextWork, SugarWallet, Polymath and more. Currently focussed on supporting and developing the New Zealand startup ecosystem. Founder and CEO of Phase One Ventures. Phase One is a Y combinator style early stage Kiwi founder community which is backed by GD1. The Phase One mission is to make New Zealand an even happier place by transforming the startup ecosystem. Mahesh has held multiple executive roles in some of Australia's most iconic startups. He has experienced how to build a global Unicorn from ground up as an early employee and the first Head of People at Canva (SAAS) helping to scale to 200+ people. He had the opportunity to drive operational excellence, helping Airtasker (marketplace) become profitable, go global and go public. He was the COO at Simply Wall St (Fintech), as it hit an inflection point setting up the right foundations for it to accelerate and grow. Prior to all of this, he had his own startup, which lay the groundwork to win in scaling startups. He has also been an investor and mentor in Startmate, ANZ's premiere accelerator and has had the opportunity to consult and advise many startups as they navigate their way to success. His experience includes, identifying early product market fit, productisation, helping founder teams crystallise their vision, scaling finance capability, building world class talent acquisition and human capital teams and ensuring leadership teams are set up to excel. Mahesh regularly presents at industry events and contributes to various respected publications. Scaling experience:. Over 10+ years experience across strategy, product, growth, people and org Entrepreneurship experience:. Taken new platform from (conceived) idea to market; oversight of people and operations for two of Australia's leading scale upsCorporate experience:. Strategy, customer excellence and quality oversight of a key player in the Australian construction industry. Merger and rationalisation of two of Australia's largest public sector organisationsInternational experience:. Worked in different functions in Auckland, Tokyo, KL, Sydney, Mumbai etcInterests: Touch rugby, All Blacks and Tottenham Hotspur. A proud Kiwi.Back in Aotearoa to contribute back into the Kiwi startup ecosystem.