NEWSROOM
Expat entrepreneur brings his expertise back to benefit
Aotearoa New Zealand
After more than a decade living in the US, Sam Blackman, the founder of hugely successful logtech enterprise Nuvocargo, is bringing home his experience, his research, and a commitment to improving Aotearoa New Zealand’s economy.
It’s hard to know where to begin in an exploration of entrepreneur Sam Blackman’s achievements. Perhaps with his career as a leading software engineer in notable American companies, including teaching at Dev Bootcamp? Or with his entrepreneurial success, particularly his pioneering logtech enterprise Nuvocargo? Or maybe with his Master of Laws from Harvard Law School, during which he also collected two prestigious academic awards? “I think getting my hands dirty and solving complex problems is fulfilling for me,” muses Sam.
The multi-hyphenate has always been driven by an innate intellectual curiosity. When he embarked on his university studies (initially enrolling in a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in a mind-bending combination of Philosophy and Logic and Computation at Waipapa Taumata Rau, the University of Auckland), he confesses that he was more interested in sating this curiosity than learning specific vocational skills. But entrepreneurship was his long-term goal – and participating in many of the programmes delivered by the Business School’s Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) further fuelled this passion. “That community certainly felt like ‘my people’,” he recalls.
His earliest entrepreneurial ventures, however, were unsuccessful. “A friend and I tried to build a product similar to what Sonos offers today. We were great dreamers and builders, but we didn’t know anything about sales and marketing,” he says. Deciding that he needed a “real career” to fall back on, he enrolled in the University of Auckland’s Law School – but he couldn’t suppress that entrepreneurial urge for long and launched another start-up during his degree. This, too, ultimately failed.
These early setbacks could have been crushing. Instead, they simply hardened his resolve – and today he highly values those brutal lessons about the realities of business. “At a macro level, my numerous entrepreneurial failures over the last 20 years have taught me the importance of grit, perseverance and a growth mindset – specifically embracing and learning from failure,” he observes. “At a micro level, each failure or experience taught me something different and nuanced. And interspersed throughout all these experiences, I learned a lot about building great software and great teams.”
This is evidenced in his success in taking not just one, but two start-ups – craft distillery Isolation Proof and Nuvocargo – from “zero to one” in the cutthroat commercial climate of New York. Professionally, this is the achievement he’s most proud of. “I love the learning curve and stimulation that comes from the multiple roles you have to play when you’re on the founding team,” he says.
Sam co-founded Nuvocargo, his most successful venture to date, with Deepak Chhugani in 2019. The company makes logistics software to manage cross-border freight shipments between the US and Mexico – the biggest trade lane in the world. “The plan was, and continues to be, offering a one-stop-shop, best in class, digital experience for organising door-to-door freight between the US, Mexico and Canada,” he explains.
However, Sam had little prior experience in logistics. “Our biggest challenge when we launched Nuvocargo was that neither Deepak nor I had ever moved a truckload of goods across the US/Mexico border,” he recalls. To overcome this, the pair surrounded themselves with people who “lived and breathed” freight border crossings. “One of the things I love about building businesses in domains I know little about is the personal growth trajectory of attempting to become an expert in that domain as quickly as possible,” he says.
Five years on from its launch, Nuvocargo is now valued at US$250 million, securing US$36.5 million in a Series B funding round in June 2023. “Raising tens of millions of dollars in venture capital and growing a company of that size has certainly been a highlight,” says Sam. “Nuvocargo is the first time I have grown a company from zero to over 200 employees.”
Sam stepped back from Nuvocargo in early 2023 as he and his wife finalised plans to move back to New Zealand. However, a detour into academia beckoned, and Sam spent 2023 completing a Master of Laws programme at Harvard Law School. His motivation for pursuing further study was to research how to leverage law as a toolset to catalyse long-term economic change in his home country. “This dovetailed with my concern that the Foreign Investment Fund (FIF) tax rules were deterring entrepreneurial Kiwi expats who hold illiquid shares in start-ups from moving home,” he explains.
His master’s thesis thus focused on a critique of the current FIF rules, proposing an amendment to New Zealand’s FIF tax regime to account for illiquid or hard to value assets using a new realisation-based method, equivalent to the Fair Dividend Rate (FDR) method. He is currently revising his thesis for publication in the New Zealand Law Review next year. “Assuming the issue gets enough attention to make its way into a Bill in the next couple of years, I’m excited to make submissions in the legislative process,” he says.
What New Zealand needs most to achieve economic transformation is “the right talent onshore building businesses,” believes Sam. “We should be doing everything we can to lower the barriers for entrepreneurial migrants to move to New Zealand and incentivising them to stay. This includes New Zealand expats who have cut their teeth on start-ups, scale-ups and innovative corporations overseas.” Much like himself. “In some sense, I consider myself a walking experiment,” he says. “I plan to come home and apply the past decade-plus of experience in the US to my own entrepreneurial endeavours in Aotearoa.”
And he can’t wait to get started. “I’m passionate about leveraging entrepreneurship for societal progression – and wielding software and the law as tools in the process,” he says. “I am itching to take all of my learnings over the last ten years and combine them into something value-creating. I think New Zealand will be a great launch pad and testbed for ventures that can have global impact.”
Sam Blackman
Sam Blackman
After more than a decade living in the US, Sam Blackman, the founder of hugely successful logtech enterprise Nuvocargo, is bringing home his experience, his research, and a commitment to improving Aotearoa New Zealand’s economy.
It’s hard to know where to begin in an exploration of entrepreneur Sam Blackman’s achievements. Perhaps with his career as a leading software engineer in notable American companies, including teaching at Dev Bootcamp? Or with his entrepreneurial success, particularly his pioneering logtech enterprise Nuvocargo? Or maybe with his Master of Laws from Harvard Law School, during which he also collected two prestigious academic awards? “I think getting my hands dirty and solving complex problems is fulfilling for me,” muses Sam.
The multi-hyphenate has always been driven by an innate intellectual curiosity. When he embarked on his university studies (initially enrolling in a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in a mind-bending combination of Philosophy and Logic and Computation at Waipapa Taumata Rau, the University of Auckland), he confesses that he was more interested in sating this curiosity than learning specific vocational skills. But entrepreneurship was his long-term goal – and participating in many of the programmes delivered by the Business School’s Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) further fuelled this passion. “That community certainly felt like ‘my people’,” he recalls.
His earliest entrepreneurial ventures, however, were unsuccessful. “A friend and I tried to build a product similar to what Sonos offers today. We were great dreamers and builders, but we didn’t know anything about sales and marketing,” he says. Deciding that he needed a “real career” to fall back on, he enrolled in the University of Auckland’s Law School – but he couldn’t suppress that entrepreneurial urge for long and launched another start-up during his degree. This, too, ultimately failed.
These early setbacks could have been crushing. Instead, they simply hardened his resolve – and today he highly values those brutal lessons about the realities of business. “At a macro level, my numerous entrepreneurial failures over the last 20 years have taught me the importance of grit, perseverance and a growth mindset – specifically embracing and learning from failure,” he observes. “At a micro level, each failure or experience taught me something different and nuanced. And interspersed throughout all these experiences, I learned a lot about building great software and great teams.”
This is evidenced in his success in taking not just one, but two start-ups – craft distillery Isolation Proof and Nuvocargo – from “zero to one” in the cutthroat commercial climate of New York. Professionally, this is the achievement he’s most proud of. “I love the learning curve and stimulation that comes from the multiple roles you have to play when you’re on the founding team,” he says.
Sam co-founded Nuvocargo, his most successful venture to date, with Deepak Chhugani in 2019. The company makes logistics software to manage cross-border freight shipments between the US and Mexico – the biggest trade lane in the world. “The plan was, and continues to be, offering a one-stop-shop, best in class, digital experience for organising door-to-door freight between the US, Mexico and Canada,” he explains.
However, Sam had little prior experience in logistics. “Our biggest challenge when we launched Nuvocargo was that neither Deepak nor I had ever moved a truckload of goods across the US/Mexico border,” he recalls. To overcome this, the pair surrounded themselves with people who “lived and breathed” freight border crossings. “One of the things I love about building businesses in domains I know little about is the personal growth trajectory of attempting to become an expert in that domain as quickly as possible,” he says.
Five years on from its launch, Nuvocargo is now valued at US$250 million, securing US$36.5 million in a Series B funding round in June 2023. “Raising tens of millions of dollars in venture capital and growing a company of that size has certainly been a highlight,” says Sam. “Nuvocargo is the first time I have grown a company from zero to over 200 employees.”
Sam stepped back from Nuvocargo in early 2023 as he and his wife finalised plans to move back to New Zealand. However, a detour into academia beckoned, and Sam spent 2023 completing a Master of Laws programme at Harvard Law School. His motivation for pursuing further study was to research how to leverage law as a toolset to catalyse long-term economic change in his home country. “This dovetailed with my concern that the Foreign Investment Fund (FIF) tax rules were deterring entrepreneurial Kiwi expats who hold illiquid shares in start-ups from moving home,” he explains.
His master’s thesis thus focused on a critique of the current FIF rules, proposing an amendment to New Zealand’s FIF tax regime to account for illiquid or hard to value assets using a new realisation-based method, equivalent to the Fair Dividend Rate (FDR) method. He is currently revising his thesis for publication in the New Zealand Law Review next year. “Assuming the issue gets enough attention to make its way into a Bill in the next couple of years, I’m excited to make submissions in the legislative process,” he says.
What New Zealand needs most to achieve economic transformation is “the right talent onshore building businesses,” believes Sam. “We should be doing everything we can to lower the barriers for entrepreneurial migrants to move to New Zealand and incentivising them to stay. This includes New Zealand expats who have cut their teeth on start-ups, scale-ups and innovative corporations overseas.” Much like himself. “In some sense, I consider myself a walking experiment,” he says. “I plan to come home and apply the past decade-plus of experience in the US to my own entrepreneurial endeavours in Aotearoa.”
And he can’t wait to get started. “I’m passionate about leveraging entrepreneurship for societal progression – and wielding software and the law as tools in the process,” he says. “I am itching to take all of my learnings over the last ten years and combine them into something value-creating. I think New Zealand will be a great launch pad and testbed for ventures that can have global impact.”
EMAIL
CIE@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ
POSTAL ADDRESS
THE UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND BUSINESS SCHOOL
PRIVATE BAG 92019, AUCKLAND
