Anne Fulton & Jo Mills — Fuel50
“Everyone deserves to love their job and bring their best self to work,” say Anne Fulton (on left, below) and Jo Mills (on right), of Fuel50. Co-founders, the pair design and develop cloud-based career path software and services. The aim, they say, is to enable leaders to engage and motivate their teams and “empower employees to map an inspirational career journey, leveraging critical talents and positioning themselves and their organisations for the future world of work”.
The pair had been doing one-to-one career coaching before developing their signature Fuel50 software, which has been translated into 28 languages and used in more than 35 countries. It delivers a career path for employees and engagement at work. Largely because of automation, the future of work is uncertain and traditional HR practices are becoming increasingly irrelevant. Fuel50 can help leaders cross this “talent chasm” and enable their employees to drive their own careers, and businesses to future proof their workforce.
The pair’s big break came when they secured key US flagship customers after jointly raising $1 million in angel investment funding led by IceAngels and NZVIF in Auckland. In the US, they have built up a sales team of more than 12 people who produce 90 per cent of the company’s revenue from global operations. Fuel50 has added some of the world’s biggest brands, like Walmart, PepsiCo, eBay and Mastercard, to its client base. Its next market is Europe, where there is high demand from companies such as Expedia, Virgin Media, Virgin Atlantic, BMW and Bosch. shift and monitor their herds remotely. It will self-herd cows and send data about their behaviour, emotions and health to farmers by phone, Piggott says, giving farmers “unprecedented control over cow movements”.
The device uses sound and vibration to create a virtual boundary to keep cows in one place or to herd them to another.
Testing is being done on a Waikato farm and Halter is working towards having its first paying farms by the end of this year.
Piggott (above) had to top up his student loan to buy parts for his prototype and used his own belt to attach the device to the cow. But Halter has now raised US$8 million from Silicon Valley investors, including Data Collective, Ubiquity Ventures, Promus Ventures, Tuhua Ventures and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund.