Kate Gatfield-Jeffries: the entrepreneur loving the ride

When Ingenio meets Kate Gatfield Jeffries in a shared office space above Ponsonby Road, she is poised, crisp, well contained, fizzing on the inside – the epitome of the front-facing founder.

Kate recently featured on the Forbes 30 under 30 Asia list for her role in driving her company’s meteoric rise through retail and e-commerce channels.

Moodi, co-founded with Nick Ward, champions women-centric supplements, sodas and protein snacks and claims a lion’s share of the trans Tasman wellness market. The team is targeting an early 2027 direct launch of Moodi’s products to North American consumers.

But that challenge is already dwarfed by a greater audacious goal. By 2030, Kate wants Moodi to be the biggest women’s wellness brand in the Western world.
“I am very ambitious,” says Kate.

“Deep down, I love the thrill. I continue to push because I don’t want to be sitting in one place for too long. I am relentless. I’m intense. I push the boundaries.

“I never feel comfortable in my job. Everything evolves so quickly … the business is unrecognisable every six months.”

She gives a wry smile. It is a discomfort that the 28-year-old creates for herself and there’s a sense that the speed of change at Moodi is theme-park addictive. This is her first ride, her first full-time job.

“There are huge pivots, learning and leading the beast,” she says.  

But the entrepreneur has tossed out the rule book on experience. “When you don’t have a framework of what you like in a manager, going in blind can be good. You just create your own idea of it.”

Kate says in the early stages of Moodi she sought little external input. “Many decisions were just instinctive; a lot, in hindsight, were the right decisions.”

Arguably, Kate’s intuitive calls rest on solid theoretical foundations. She graduated with her conjoint Bachelor of Laws and Commerce degree the same year Moodi incorporated. And, for at least a decade, she has consumed the rules of business and the trajectories of people who made them and broke them, reading business tomes, founder autobiographies, podcasts and self-help books.

On top of that, her father Mark, a University alumnus, is a serial founder.

Kate describes herself in her early years as “a conscientious eldest child and a big rule follower, never a risk taker”. The entrepreneurial fervour grew in stages, propelled by three defining experiences.

The first came as an “unfit and asthmatic” child struggling through cross country at Wentworth College.

“You know what, I don’t like coming last. I thought, I’m going to beat those kids. I trained and trained, and I did.”

She placed third, despite being the youngest in her age bracket. Kate became her own living proof that fierce ambition coupled with sustained effort was the recipe for success.

At university she channelled her ambition and effort into creating a CV of great grades and leadership positions. She also sought out scholarships and internships, ticking the unwritten checklist for top-tier graduate consulting roles. Then, while summer interning at PwC, Kate met fellow high-flying student Caterina Barton.

Caterina recalls the pair bonding over entrepreneurship, championing women in business and a mutual love of vegan food. Kate recalls Caterina cajoling her into the 1,000-word Ideas Challenge – an entry stage of the University’s Velocity $100k Challenge.

“As plant-based food enthusiasts,” says Caterina, “we identified a market gap for plant-based baby formula, sized the market, pitched a business model and outlined the resources needed to develop the idea.”

Kate witnessed the transformative power of an idea transposed succinctly on to paper. This key moment, Kate says, shifted her immediate consulting path to entrepreneurship.  

Caterina was to be influential in other ways. When the EY Corporate Finance Woman of the Year competition came around in 2020, Caterina encouraged Kate to enter.

“I had competed the year before and I was confident Kate had what it took. She knocked it out of the park, going on to win the global title – the first time a New Zealander had won the worldwide competition,” she says.

“What struck me was that Kate hadn’t formally studied finance, yet threw herself into it as a quick learner, thoroughly prepared and open-minded about the challenge. It showed she could excel at virtually anything she set her mind to.”

Caterina joined McKinsey & Company in 2021, where she also crossed paths with Nick Ward. Later that year, Nick and Kate entered the next $100k Challenge with “a fairly formed idea”. That was Moodi.

Kate’s next eureka moment was sparked during her co-presidency of the student-led Women in Business club – a role she considers her most entrepreneurial prior to Moodi. Equipped with ambition, effort and a formula for a convincing pitch, Kate secured funds from professional services firms and learnt to incentivise a team of volunteers.

“With the budget to create excitement, I discovered the power of marketing. We were the hottest, freshest club to be a part of and, by default, everyone wanted to sponsor us.”

Fast forward four years and Kate describes how Moodi entered supermarket chains and gained premium shelf space using the same vortex of excitement.
“It’s an open secret: e-commerce,” says Kate.

“I built a really big business online, then went to the retailer with an easy sales pitch. ‘I have all these women wanting this great product. I think they want to buy it from you.’”

Kate hailed a victory when demand for Moodi pre and probiotic soda outstripped supply. The exhilaration continued with a big-ticket Range Rover giveaway and the lure of golden tickets in protein balls – a promotion smacking of Roald Dahl’s mysterious and eccentric Willy Wonka.

Midway through writing this, I make my own dash for sustenance. A trolley stacked with partly unpacked Moodi soda cartons is in a prime position at the entrance of the local retail store. It is out of place – far from the refrigerated shelving where Moodi drinks have horizontal and eye-level status and nowhere near the stock chiller. I can’t help thinking the serendipitous late-lunch display could be a very clever marketing tactic that interrupts the retail playbook.

Through the exhilaration, Kate says she never loses sight of her ultimate mission, which is to give back to women in business. She stays connected with the University as an annual guest speaker for Professor Christine Woods’ Women in Entrepreneurship course and has welcomed ten paid student interns to share the wild climb of Moodi’s start-up phase.