Retail crime-fighting company Auror got its start at the University of Auckland. Now co-founder Phil Thomson is gifting $30,000 to help the next generation of innovators.
Retail crime costs New Zealand retailers billions of dollars a year, but one homegrown company has become a worldwide force in fighting it.
More than a decade ago, Auror was an early-stage venture competing in the University of Auckland's Velocity $100K Challenge. Its second-place finish gave co-founders Phil Thomson, James Corbett and Tom Batterbury money to keep building their idea and, Thomson says, the confidence to pursue it.
Now Thomson is donating $30,000 to the University's Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE), with $10,000 gifted each year for the next three years, to help other emerging entrepreneurs take their ideas further.
Beyond the money, it gave us the confidence to quit our jobs and go all in on the idea.
Phil Thomson Auror
"Fifteen years ago, we won second place in Velocity, and that prize money is what let us keep building for another year, and it's genuinely part of why Auror exists today," says Thomson.
"Beyond the money, it gave us the confidence to quit our jobs and go all in on the idea. That kind of early belief is rare, and it's easy to forget how much it matters once you're years down the track.
"This donation isn't really about looking back, though. It's about the founders coming up right now who are exactly where we were: full of conviction, short on proof points, and needing someone to bet on them anyway.
"CIE has spent two decades doing exactly that for Kiwi companies, and donating $30,000 is a way of giving back and keeping that door open for the next generation of founders who will continue to build the future of New Zealand."
CIE supports University of Auckland alumni, students and staff to develop entrepreneurial skills, test ideas and turn promising concepts into ventures with real-world impact.
Thomson's contribution will help give more emerging entrepreneurs access to that early-stage support. CIE director Darsel Keane says, "Supporting founders at this stage matters because it helps turn good ideas into real ventures."
Since its early days at CIE, Auror grown into a major retail crime intelligence company, using technology to connect reports of retail crime and identify patterns, repeat offenders and organised crime, while helping retailers securely collaborate with law enforcement.
The New Zealand-founded company now connects more than 85,000 retail stores and 3,500 law enforcement agencies across New Zealand, Australia, North America, the UK, Ireland and other markets. Its customers have included Walmart, Woolworths and Coles.
From taking a chance on an early idea to building a company operating around the world, Thomson has seen first-hand what can help New Zealand founders succeed. We asked him about entrepreneurship in Aotearoa, Auror and what the next generation of founders needs to thrive.
When it comes to New Zealand's entrepreneurial ecosystem, what could we improve or further develop?
We should be more confident in our ambitions and ideas. Kiwi entrepreneurs and our companies are world-class - I've seen it time and time again. It's extraordinary how much the start-up sector has grown in just the last 15 years alone. Take New Zealand's venture-backed tech ecosystem, which has grown more than six times in value since 2019, outpacing Australia, Ireland, Israel and Sweden - so let's be bolder.
What's the best advice you've received from a mentor, and what advice would you give an aspiring student entrepreneur today?
Our early investor and board director Danny Gilligan challenges us to think bigger every few years. For student entrepreneurs, I would say don't wait for a finished plan. Get out and start talking to potential customers and road-testing your ideas. And enter the Velocity challenge!
Retail crime remains a significant issue in Aotearoa and internationally. How has the problem evolved since Auror was founded, and how is technology changing the way you respond to it?
When we started in 2012, retailers treated theft as a cost of doing business, reported it on paper, or didn't report it at all, and the sector didn't fully understand the scale and impact of violent and organised retail crime.
Now, consistent reporting by retailers through Auror across the country has surfaced the trends impacting frontline retail workers. We now know the top 10 percent of offenders are responsible for more than 60 percent of retail crime, and repeat offenders are four times more likely to be violent.
Digital collaboration between retailers has fundamentally changed how they manage risk for their frontline teams, including how they focus on repeat offenders and make decisions around target hardening, guarding, and rostering. NZ retailers have done a phenomenal job in using Auror to surface the true impact of retail crime, and now we are on a mission with our partners to reduce violent retail crime by 50 percent in the next five years.
What has been the biggest challenge in building and growing Auror?
The biggest challenge has been patience: building something that only pays off once you reach scale, and working with large enterprises and police agencies that don't generally move at the speed of a start-up. The lesson for me was that speed and patience aren't opposites - you can move fast on the things within your control, like your product and your team, while playing a long game on the things you can't rush, like trust. That combination is what eventually let us grow "quickly" and across the world.
Looking ahead, where do you see the company, its technology, and its impact over the next few years?
We're excited to bring more global retailers into the Auror Network and expand into new markets around the world.
The Auror platform is currently protecting about six million retail workers across more than 86,000 retail stores globally, which is amazing when I step back and think about it - but it motivates me to know how much more we can do to help people around the world through better reporting and greater collaboration through tech.
