Great brand decisions start with real consumer feedback, not guesswork. This insight was a key driver that grounded our investment decision in Ideally, and we’re excited to have led their $16M NZD Series A round. Our co-investors in the round include Altered Capital, Icehouse Ventures and Ecliptic Venture Capital.

Founded in Auckland through a partnership between TRA and Previously Unavailable (which spun out Tracksuit), we first met James Donald, Joshua Nu’u-Steele and the wider Ideally team last year. From that first interaction, we were intrigued by their deep understanding of the problems faced by brands, their pace of executing decisions, the clarity and thought behind their product roadmap, and their ability to hire exceptional talent.

The Ideally Team – April 2026

The platform solves one core problem for brand teams – consumer trends move faster than any static dataset can track. 

The solution? Marketing, brand and innovation teams can now test new concepts, campaigns, products and messages with real consumers and unlock insights at a fraction of the cost of traditional research. Ideally turns what was once a slow and expensive process into overnight answers that keep up with the speed of decision making. Customers are “in the room” from day dot (being 250+ brands including the likes of Google, Asahi, Bupa and Treasury Wines amongst others). 

This is the unlock for a broader market opportunity. While data would suggest significant global spend on consumer and market research, much of that spend reflects an older model that tests bespoke projects with long timelines and larger budgets. 

In contrast, Ideally’s offering is iterative. It turns that traditional model into a quicker and lower cost process. Once marketers see how they can test their insights overnight, the Ideally platform becomes a workflow essential. This iterative offering opens up a long tail of customers (which adopt Ideally not only in their marketing teams, but embed Ideally deeper into product and other teams too) who can now test a longer tail of products and creative (i.e. not just their flagship product).

Next stop: USA. Joshua has relocated to open Ideally’s New York office and lead the company’s next phase of growth in the US market. Ideally’s rapid growth across Australia and NZ over the last two years puts the team in a prime position to disrupt the $90B market research industry.

We’re pleased to back James, Joshua and the wider team as they continue to build further into Australia, NZ, the US and beyond.