Investor and technology whiz Tim Williams continues his upwards trajectory to even greater wealth with a range of involvements that span technology, construction and video production.
Earlier this year video production company 90 Seconds, of which Williams is a director, raised an eye-watering $US20 million from a range of heavy-hitting investors. The company, which founder and chief executive Tim Norton dubbed the “Uber of video production,” has grown by more than 400% since 2016 and expanded into 160 countries.
It’s just the latest of many such successes for Williams since he made his name and fortune during a 17-year stint working in Japan. Fluent in Japanese, he arrived as a 24-year-old in the 1990s and quickly navigated the country’s sometimes bewildering business landscape. He soon co-founded ValueClick and then ValueCommerce, both of which were eventually listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Aside from their stock exchange success, they were notable endeavours in other ways – ValueClick was the first foreign business to be listed on a Japanese stock exchange while ValueCommerce sold a 49% stake to Yahoo Japan for 11 billion yen.
Returning home to New Zealand earlier this decade, Williams quickly became involved in a variety of different investments. In 2015 he invested in Donovan Group, a Northland engineering company, buying a 16% stake with Takapuna Grammar schoolmate and investing partner Jonny Henricksen. Recently, Donovan Group company Coresteel Buildings was tasked with building a Marsden Point distribution hub for farm nutrient supplier Ballance Agri-Nutrients.
Along with Hendricksen, Williams also holds a 39.3% stake in Shuttlerock, a visual marketing group that is expanding at a rapid rate internationally.
He has a bachelor of science in molecular genetics from the University of Canterbury. He lives in the suburb of Belmont on Auckland’s North Shore.
2018: $200 million