Huckleberry founder Aaron Ward. Photo / Dean Purcell
Whisper it quietly, but not all staff are huge fans of incessant HR surveys, which sometimes run to dozens of questions about your job and workplace.
Aaron Ward (Ngāti Maru) says his new start-up, Huckleberry, can fix that.
Using AI tech from OpenAI and others, it lets employees give natural language verbal feedback to its software. The AI then analyses your words, cleans them up and summarises them, then presents them to the relevant manager as constructive feedback.
Ward presents it as easy, engaging and time-saving.
What if I want to really stick it to my boss for, say, always being late and want my angry words repeated to him verbatim? (Lawyer’s note: this is a hypothetical example.) Huckleberry won’t go there.
I might tell the AI, “Dave’s a real dick. He’s always late to meetings. I find it incredibly disrespectful and I can’t stand him.”
If I did, Ward says, “Huckleberry would hear that comment, then tell your boss he needs to work on punctuality. It’s the same feedback, but without the toxicity and the barbs that could damage your relationship.”
Ward says it’s all about being constructive and the AI acting as an executive coach.
Others like that approach. Ward has just raised $2.1 million in an oversubscribed “pre-seed” round from backers including Rowan Simpson (Trade Me, Vend, Xero) and Serge van Dam (M-Com, Movac, Re-leased).
And Ward’s already signed an anchor customer, NZX-listed retirement village giant Oceania Healthcare, for Huckleberry’s just-released Version 1.0 (which is free for individuals or $110 a month for a team of up to 20, with custom pricing for corporates).
Ward has been here before. In 2014, he co-founded AskNicely – a maker of those quick online surveys that pop up after you’ve just bought a product or completed a service – in an Auckland garage.
It went on to raise US$50m ($89m) across several venture capital rounds and saw Ward and his family relocate to Portland, Oregon, as its North American business grew.
He is still on AskNicely’s board and involved as a co-founder, but he stepped away from his chief executive role in mid-2023.
He’s now splitting his time between the United States and NZ, but says he wanted his new venture to have “Kiwi DNA - Kiwi investors and Kiwi employees”.
His Huckleberry co-founder Diogo Böhm (a former Eroad development team lead) is based in Ōrewa, in North Auckland.
On the VC side, the Oregon Venture Fund and Oregon tech investor Nathan Christensen are also on board. Ward wants strong Kiwiana roots but will also utilise his own and others’ corporate American links to open doors in the US.
The name comes not from the Mark Twain novel Huckleberry Finn but the wild-west phrase “I’m your huckleberry” - recently popularised by Val Kilmer’s character in Tombstone.
“It means ‘I’m the right person for the job,’” Ward says.
“It reflects the idea that each of us is blessed with a particular set of skills or strengths that qualify us for a particular purpose.
“The career journey for most people looks like a drunkard’s walk, zig-zagging from one role to another, hoping to stumble into work that fits,” Ward says.
“Honest feedback can help people discover the work they love, where they can play to their natural strengths. Huckleberry turns that insight into a regular habit, not a once-a-year event.”
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.