PowerbyProxi: Powering Up the Business

Name: Fady Mishriki & Greg Cross
Business: PowerbyProxi
Year Founded: 2007
Industry: ICT
Location: Auckland and International
Icehouse Programme: Startup/Incubation, 2007-2009
FTEs before the programme: 2  • FTEs today: 70 

With a bit of tenacity, a lot of market understanding, and the right people onside; a great idea always pulls through in the end.

The journey started in 2003 when, Fady Mishkiri and Kunal Bhargava entered their 4th year engineering project into the Spark $40k Challenge at The University of Auckland. They ended up placing second, and through that excellent result won time at The Icehouse.

Through connections made at The Icehouse they were introduced to Greg Cross and together they founded PowerbyProxi in 2007 and set out to change the way people think about wireless technology. The new company set their sights on the target market: wireless power for industrial applications.

Fady explains “If you think about it, the power cable hasn’t changed for well over 100 years, our vision is to unplug that last cable and you’ll know that we have succeeded when big clunky power sockets in the middle of your board room tables in your office, in your home, are a thing of the past.”

PowerbyProxi officially joined The Icehouse Incubation Programme in 2007 to get support and advice on how to build and scale the company.

Fady believes that things like “building the team, meeting co-founders, market validation; learning what that is, learning how to do it; getting some experienced people around you teaching you how to do things a bit smarter and a bit faster – a lot of those things would have been much harder without the support of The Icehouse and the team there.”

Fady learnt early on the importance of working on the business rather than in the business. “The Icehouse really taught us to do that but also gave us the skills and access to training and mentoring to do that. It is a very important part that I often think gets missed, so just do it.”

“The traditional route is to graduate university, get a job, get a network of people to learn from, but if you start a business right out of university it's just you and maybe a co-founder. It’s hard. At The Icehouse, having all those companies around you is just phenomenally helpful.”

Fady credits his rapid success to the networks and expertise he found while working with The Icehouse. “One of the key things that enabled us to grow was The Icehouse’s access to networks. This was really instrumental in the early days, in terms of allowing us to build and grow our team as well as connect with international customers.” PowerbyProxi’s very first semiconductor licensee was a company called Linear Technology which resulted from an introduction made by The Icehouse. Although it took 3 years for the work to be done and the deal to be announced, the strength of the Icehouse networks, enabled PowerbyProxi to sign the first licensing deal that a New Zealand company had ever done with a Silicon Valley chip company. These connections and established Icehouse brand also enabled significant investment into the company from Movac which satisfied the high capital requirement for success.

PowerbyProxi has transplanted a piece of Icehouse culture in the company with the use of the famous gong that startups hit when they have a piece of good news or have achieved something significant. To this that day they continue using that to celebrate success. “Even though we have left The Icehouse, their very much part of the family…always happy to help and support us where ever they can.”

“We licence wireless power technology into a wide variety of industries…probably the one people are most familiar with, is the smartphone. At the end of last year, we signed a licensing deal with Samsung Galectromechanics. What we do is develop reference designs which we licence to them, that allow smartphones to receive power wirelessly using this technology. So we don’t make the end product but we enable the ‘smarts;’ that allow that product to receive that power wirelessly.”

Since the Icehouse, the company has grown to over 70 staff from 2, have offices in the US on both coasts, and hope to have doubled in size by 2015. PowerbyProxi has established itself as one of New Zealand’s biggest high-tech success stories. The company has several customers in the Fortune 100, and more than 90% of their revenue is from export. Their focus has broadened as well, now encompassing the consumer market as well as the industrial. In September of 2013, Samsung invested $4 million in a wireless charging partnership with PowerbyProxi, with the PowerbyProxi board gaining veteran Samsung investor Michael Pachos. Early in 2014 they signed a royalty deal with one of the world's biggest semiconductor companies, Texas Instruments. PowerbyProxi now claims over 220 patents, have expanded into Asia and have developed many industry first.

This company is one to watch.