Aaron is a proven entrepreneur offering investment and success-based advice.
With over twenty years’ of commercial experience, Aaron’s experience includes founding and providing major start-up funding to a cloud-technology company and leading it, as CEO, through growth, NZTE funding, IPO, globalisation, rationalisation and successful exit to a Silicon Valley corporation.
Aaron also founded, grew and managed through to a successful exit New Zealand’s most successful independently owned Vodafone mobile dealership – First Mobile Takapuna. He led Deloittes 5th fastest growing company in New Zealand as CEO of Datasquirt in 2005 and was awarded NZ Young Entrepreneur of the year in 2007.
Aaron is currently the CEO, largest stakeholder and a Director of Vadacom Ltd, an investor in, and advisor to, Larki and an advisor to Tillered and Chair of their Board.
CURRENT ROLES
CEO, investor and Director at Vadacom
Privately Held; Computer Software industry; Mobile technology
September 2014 - Present. Auckland, New Zealand
Aaron secured $1million of investment funding for Vadacom in September 2014 and joined the team as CEO to lead the next stage of growth and development. Having secured distribution with major partners, including Kordia, and brought in an additional $600K investment during 2015, Aaron is now Vadacom’s largest stakeholder.
Vadacom is a New Zealand owned and operated Cloud PBX and VOIP solutions provider focused on bringing companies closer to their customers, improving productivity and saving capex and calling costs. Read about Vadacom achievements including the distribution partnership with Kordia, the Callaghan grant and having Xero as a customer here.
Investor and Advisor to Larki
Privately Held; Computer Software industry; 3D-data technology
2021 – Present. Melbourne and Sydney, Australia
Aaron is and investor in and advisor to early-stage 3D-data tech company, Larki. This Australian-based business creates precision, high resolution 3D imaging from 2D data, enabling more efficient and accurate surveying, architectural design and planning.
Advisor and Board Chair, Tillered.
Privately Held; Computer Software industry; 3D-data technology
2021 – Present. Manapouri, New Zealand
Aaron is an advisor to Tillered founders Davey Goode and Daryl Blake, supporting this disruptive, early-stage tech company to achieve their disruptive vision for internet as fast as its meant to be. In April 2022, Aaron was appointed Chair of the Tillered Board.
PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE
Senior Vice President International Sales at LiveOps
Privately Held; 201-500 employees; Computer Software industry
December 2011- July 2012 (8 months)Auckland
Aaron joined the LiveOps team in December 2011 after closing the $17M sale of Datasquirt to this Silicon Valley based corporation. Prior to that he had been CEO, director and major shareholder of Datasquirt since 2001.
LiveOps President and CEO, Marty Beard, described the purchase as “placing LiveOps at the forefront of enabling contact centers to transform customer interactions by allowing their agents to engage across multiple channels including Twitter, mobile, SMS, email, and web chat.” And as providing access to “a world-class team of cloud contact center engineering and sales experts.”Aaron was responsible for LiveOps’ international business development, managing the LiveOps sales teams in Europe and Australasia and strategic relationships with channel partners outside North America during the important acquisition and post-acquisition period.
Read the LiveOps press release on buying Datasquirt.
Founder, major shareholder and CEO of Datasquirt Ltd
Privately Held; 201-500 employees; DSQ; Information Technology and Services industry
January 2001- December 2011
Founded and provided start-up funding to call centre SMS innovator Datasquirt in 2001, Aaron led the company from start up, through growth, globalisation, rationalisation and successful exit in December 2011.
By 2005 Datasquirt was recognised by Deloittes as the 5th fastest growing company in New Zealand. Expanding the cloud-based services to include web chat, fax and email channels, Aaron led Datasquirt to diversified revenue streams and increased client loyalty.
To support the company’s growth, Aaron, as CEO secured every available NZTE funding option. NZTE support and connections, including the Beachhead programme, enabled further growth, as did the private equity funding secured from Nightingale Partners. In 2007, Aaron led the company through a successful, fully subscribed IPO on the Australian Stock Exchange raising 10M, making Datasquirt the first New Zealand IT company to list on that market. This funding injection allowed further global expansion. In 2010, Datasquirt became the first company in the world to offer a social media management solution to contact centres.
In 2011, Datasquirt won Best Call Centre Technology in the UK in the prestigious Call Centre Helper awards and in December that year was bought by Silicon Valley based Liveops.
In January 2012, the Datasquirt multi-channel contact centre technology, by then under the ownership of LiveOps, won the 2011 Product of the Year award from TMCnet’s Customer Interaction Solutions magazine, the leading US industry publication.
Founder of New Zealand’s largest independently owned Vodafone dealership – First Mobile Takapuna
January 1992- June 2010
After 12 months employment, becoming NZ’s most successful BellSouth Atlanta mobile sales person at a young age, Aaron invested in his first mobile dealership. Growing to a chain of 8 retail stores at its peak, the First Mobile Takapuna Franchise became the largest and most successful independently owned Vodafone dealership in the country. Aaron successfully sold the dealership to Vodafone in 2010.