Carl Thompson

I'm a creative director, digital marketer, & strategist with over 20 years experience. I started this journey at Media Design School at the age of 17.  I have founded companies; Crowded Elevator (Apparel), TradeGecko (B2B SaaS), Momentum Marketing (Agency), Bronami (B2C SaaS), NZ Coffee Festival (Event), Contento (B2B SaaS), Rethink Beverage Co (CPG), SortMe (SaaS), and Foundation Digital (Agency).  I have worked with many companies including; Fonterra, SkyCity, Lion Nathan, RAW, Remix Magazine, Fitwear, NZ Fashion Week and many more.

In 2012 I co-founded TradeGecko. An inventory and order management software which was recently sold to Intuit.

I now play a creative/strategic roll across various companies going from idea to product-market-fit.

During a COVID lockdown I found myself working on a brand & product launch for a friend. While I had space from other distractions, I realised how much I enjoy working on these projects. Creating meaningful brands, products, and experiences is what I love to do. So I set out to create a new design agency that would allow me to work on multiple creative projects and give me additional resources for my own future endeavours.
Foundation is growing well with Gideon Retief as Managing Director, a fantastic team of creatives, and bold clients.

www.foundationdigital.co.nz

Ingeneous offer gene-based wellness reports for preemptive health and body optimisation. After coming on as a Foundation Digital client, we both quickly realised that our values align and that I could offer much more than design work.

I now sit on the advisory board and have now been working alongside the core team to develop many major functions of the business.

I'm passionate about preemptive health, and I look forward to seeing Ingeneous as a household name, making positive changes in many people's lives.

www.myingeneous.com

Promoting preemptive health is something I'm passionate about. An ethos shared by HealthNow. An app with the aim of making healthcare more accessible by reducing the cost barrier.

Working on strategy and go-to-market campaigns while helping HealthNow find product-market-fit.

www.healthnow.co.nz

For most people, financial worries are a major cause of stress. SortMe plans on relieving this stress by making managing finances easier.

Our goal is to make SortMe a global brand that helps people make better financial decisions.

My brain-child, SortMe is currently in Alpha testing with a handful of users. Open Beta will not be far off.

www.sortme.com

Helping grow ideas into truly valuable companies is my passion. Solutions that add value to the world and have the potential to change lives. These are some of the companies I have invested in and actively support.

In early 2012 myself, Cameron & Bradley Priest moved to Singapore to partake in a startup incubator program, JFDI. A three-month program that took us through validating a solution to a major problem I had when running a clothing label. We pitched TradeGecko at the first JFDI Demo Day with huge success. With funding, we quickly pushed on to launch TradeGecko into the market. It quickly became an inventory and order management software that was top of the recommended lists for SMEs.

TradeGecko was recently purchased by San Fransisco based Intuit. One of the world biggest accounting softwares, and ironically the first company I worked for full-time in New Zealand 18 years ago.

www.tradegecko.com