Founding Aware Group: AI in the Southern Hemisphere

In 2016, I co-founded Aware Group with a simple thesis: AI and IoT were about to transform every industry, and New Zealand — despite its small size — could be at the forefront.

Why New Zealand?

New Zealand punches above its weight in technology. The country's primary industries — agriculture, conservation, tourism — are perfect proving grounds for AI and IoT. Farms need precision agriculture. Conservation needs species monitoring. Cities need smarter infrastructure. The use cases were everywhere.

What We Built

Over eight years, Aware Group grew from a startup to a recognized leader in AI/IoT systems integration. We built solutions across:

• Conservation: Working with WildMe and Microsoft AI for Earth on species identification and monitoring
• Agriculture: Partnering with Microsoft Research on FarmBeats — bringing edge computing and computer vision to farms
• Biodiversity: Building the Brussels Biodiversity Garden at the European Parliament
• Smart Cities: IoT infrastructure for urban environments
• Manufacturing: Edge AI for quality control and predictive maintenance

We achieved over $3M in services revenue by our third year, secured over $500K in government innovation grants, and led the facial recognition legal regulations workstream in New Zealand.

The Microsoft Relationship

A defining aspect of Aware Group was our deep partnership with Microsoft's IoT and AI teams. I led strategic engagements for 10+ major global events annually — building keynote demos, designing booth experiences, and creating the kind of high-impact demonstrations that made abstract technology tangible.

This wasn't a vendor relationship. It was a creative partnership. We were the team backstage making sure the live demo worked when the executive walked on stage.