Orchestra – the centralised company and stakeholder hub

  • Written by Snowball Effect
  • Published on

We regularly see first-hand the inconvenience that companies go through trying to locate missing or incomplete company/investor data and legal documents. 

The lack of a unified company and stakeholder management platform is what prompted us to partner with two NZ tech startup veterans to create and launch our solution, Orchestra.

What is Orchestra

Orchestra is New Zealand's centralised company and stakeholder management hub that helps companies of all sizes, their investors and service advisors manage share registries, company compliance, stakeholder engagement and Employee Share Option Plans (ESOPs). It simplifies investments by providing investors with greater visibility of their private investments, which helps establish and grow a more reliable connection between investors and companies.

The all-in-one platform is digitally integrated with the New Zealand Companies Office website, ensuring a 'single source of truth', which helps save companies and their service providers time and money.

We're pleased to say that at the time of launch in June 2020, more than 60 New Zealand companies and over 10,000 shareholders had already signed up to Orchestra, with more coming on board each week.

The team behind it

Drawing on our own experience as New Zealand's leading private equity marketplace, Orchestra is a joint venture with Kiwi tech start-up veterans, Casey Eden and Shane Bradley. Between them, Casey and Shane have a wealth of experience, having founded and exited successful online platforms Neighbourly.co.nz and GrabOne.co.nz.

Who can Orchestra benefit?

Orchestra can help companies of all sizes and stages. The centralised company and stakeholder management hub ensures that time-consuming back-office tasks are taken care of, and legal requirements are met. Orchestra maintains a company's share register, stores legal documents and makes communicating with investors easy. All changes made within Orchestra are updated in real-time on the New Zealand Companies Office website, ensuring consistency across your records.

We believe a big part of what makes a company successful is its investors. Orchestra provides visibility of a private company investment portfolio, tracks share transactions, and ensures investors have access at their fingertips to essential documents and the latest investor information.

Service providers like lawyers, accountants, and financial advisors can also benefit from using Orchestra to manage tasks and compliance regulations. Having a single source of truth for their clients' company data means less time and stress spent reconciling different company share documents.

Key features

Orchestra's features are continuously being added to, and include:

  • Maintains accurate company and investor legal records
  • Provides secure document storage to create an audit trail
  • Helps streamline investor communications
  • Integrates with the New Zealand Companies Office, ensuring consistent records
  • Gives investors and directors control to update their details and documents
  • Works with service providers like lawyers and accountants
  • Manages secondary market trading
  • Provides ESOP support
  • Seamless onboarding

What's coming next

Orchestra's platform is continually evolving, and the team is working on rolling out new features in the coming months. Keep an eye out for advances in share transactions, notification improvements, annual return filing, document e-signing and a personal asset tracker.

We believe that Orchestra can help companies and investors not just in New Zealand, but also overseas. The team plan to launch Orchestra in Australia in late 2020, before expanding to additional international markets.

Find out more and request a demo at orchestra.co.nz.

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Financial Market Conduct Regulations – Warning statement about equity crowdfunding
  • Equity crowdfunding is risky.
  • Issuers (companies issuing shares) using Snowball Effect’s facility include new or rapidly growing ventures. Investment in these types of businesses is very speculative and carries high risks.
  • You may lose your entire investment, and must be in a position to bear this risk without undue hardship.
  • New Zealand law normally requires people who offer financial products to give information to investors before they invest.
  • This requires those offering financial products to have disclosed information that is important for investors to make an informed decision. The usual rules do not apply to offers by issuers using Snowball Effect to raise funds. As a result, you may not be given all the information usually required. You will also have fewer other legal protections for this investment.
  • Ask questions, read all information given carefully, and seek independent financial advice before committing yourself to any investment.
Please read on
Snowball Effect warning – Please understand the characteristics of this new marketplace

Snowball Effect is proud to provide access to early stage equity investments for everyday Kiwis. We’re passionate about improving financial literacy in New Zealand and increasing investment into wealth-creating assets.

However it’s crucial for you to understand the characteristics of this new marketplace.

Companies making offers through Snowball Effect will range from very early stage businesses with little more than an idea, to more established businesses that may already be profitable. The risk of investing in a business tends to decrease as a business develops and matures. For very early stage businesses, history suggests that perhaps only one or two out of ten will make significant returns for investors. Despite the hopes and belief of the promoters, some will putter along without much happening for a long time. In others the total investment could be lost.

Investing in early stage businesses is risky. Overall, investor returns tend to be greater than the amounts invested, but you might not be one of the winners. Some of the other key risks include:

  • Loss of capital – You could lose your entire investment.
  • Illiquidity – There is no guarantee that you will be able to sell your shares when you want to, or at all. Currently, there is no recognised secondary market for trading shares in companies funded by equity crowdfunding. Buying and selling among existing shareholders is generally lawful, but some companies may not facilitate it. We expect that open market trading facilities will eventually be authorised, but that is not certain at this time.
  • Lack of returns – Few early stage unlisted businesses pay dividends. They tend to reinvest what they earn in the growth or survival of the business.
  • Dilution – Companies may need more funding to grow or to survive. If they issue further shares, your share of the company will reduce unless you put up your proportion of the new investment. That reduction is called dilution.
  • Material events – Early stage businesses are often small and have narrowly focused offerings. This can increase the vulnerability of the business to internal and external threats, and make it harder to absorb material events such as loss of key staff and customers.
  • Lack of control – As a minority shareholder, you may have little influence on how the company develops. Companies are ruled by simple majority for most decisions. For example, you will not determine who the directors are unless the majority of shareholders who vote on an issue agree with you.

To decrease exposure to the risks, these types of investments should only be made as part of a diversified portfolio. Spread your risks. Only invest money that you can afford to lose.

Remember that you will never get enough information to know in advance how things will turn out. No one, even the directors of a company, can know in advance with 100% certainty just what will make a business fly, and what will bring it down. Even in large public offerings the information available is never enough to be sure how the future will turn out.

Please seek independent advice if you don’t fully understand the characteristics of this marketplace or the information in an offer.

Snowball Effect (FSP350046) is licensed as an equity crowdfunding platform by the New Zealand Financial Markets Authority (FMA)
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