Blake Richardson
Blake Richardson is an entrepreneur and early-stage investor, with a wealth of experience in commercial and residential property, tech, and alternative energy. After getting a law degree at the University of Otago, Blake worked as a Tax Consultant for BDO. He left BDO to act as in-house lawyer at the Imarda Group, a corporation designing, building, and managing enterprise grade business automation and fleet management systems, where he saw the company through an attempted IPO. Blake went on to consult to a number of early stage companies particularly around capital raising and acquisitions. Blake co-founded the residential property development company, Sabre Developments. With Sabre Developments and now through his involvement with WTS Homes Limited, a company constructing residential and non-residential buildings, Blake is applying alternative housing models to drive affordable housing solutions and promote the uptake of important technologies, such as electric vehicles.
Valedictorian of his MBA class at Trinity College in Dublin, Blake was selected as a Young Global Changer at the 2018 Global Solutions Summit. Through his work as a trustee on Xtreme Waste, and later as Chair of Sustainable Coastlines, he saw firsthand how social enterprises with sustainable revenue streams could multiply their positive impact, rather than being subject to the uncertainty of funding rounds. He believes impact investment has the ability to be the best of both worlds – where we acknowledge the need for an organisation or project to be sustainable through investment returns but focus is on a triple bottom line. Blake, his wife and their two children live on a couple acres of land in Raglan, where, when he’s not working or spending time with his kids, he’s planting trees or surfing. Blake would like to be able to tell his kids that we contributed in some way to leaving them a better world.