It’s been a quiet year for California-based startup prodigy Victoria Ransom.
Ransom is one of New Zealand’s most impressive tech exports. With Switzerland-born husband Alain Chuard she founded Wildfire Interactive in 2008. The social marketing software developer spread like, well, wildfire, and soon had 400 staff, offices in eight countries and thousands of high-ranking clients. It caught the attention of internet giant Google, who bought it for a reported $US350-450 million in 2012.
The sale bought Ransom both massive financial success and widespread renown. In 2013 she was awarded the prestigious Champion of Change Award from President Barack Obama in recognition of her contribution as an immigrant entrepreneur; two years later, in 2015, she joined the Carnegie Endowment Board. The same year she won the World Class New Zealander Award.
She stayed with Wildfire as it integrated into Google but, when the parent company decided to wind Wildfire down and fold it into the main advertising platform in 2015, Ransom and Chuard left. Since then she’s frequently been in touch with young Kiwi entrepreneurs, giving them advice and encouraging them to dream big.
Raised in Bulls, Ransom received her first taste of life overseas by winning a scholarship to United World College in New Mexico while at Whanganui Girls’ College. She attended Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, graduating with a BA in psychology in 1999, before moving to London to work as a business consultant. She returned to the US in 2001, moving to New York and working for banking giant Morgan Stanley. She later received an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
Founding New Zealand-based adventure travel business Access Trips proved the pathway to Ransom’s fortune; while the company itself proved moderately successful, Ransom created Wildfire to promote it.
Ransom and Chuard (who was once a professional snowboarder) have travelled widely, although their primary home is in Palo Alto, California.
Photo: Alain Chuard
2018: $315 million