Auror closes $30 million capital round, empowering retailers and police to reduce more crime

Being a successful criminal is easy right now. Violence against retail workers and organized retail crime levels are at an all time high, and some shoplifters are making $1 million per year. Most people don’t see this darker side of society and the negative impacts crime has on retailers, their customers, profitability, and safety. While these trends started before COVID (organized retail crime has been driving store theft for years) they’ve definitely accelerated over the last 18 months. 

It’s now obvious that the Crime Intelligence Platform we’re building is needed now more than ever. We need a purpose-built platform for our communities to collaborate in safe and secure ways to reduce crime. Auror has the opportunity to empower front line store employees to report these crimes so that their organizations and law enforcement can prevent further loss and harm. The impact of this crime is massive and this hurts our communities -  people are getting hurt and stores are shutting down as they can no longer make a profit or provide a safe working environment. 

To help us on our mission to reduce crime we’re proud to announce that Auror has completed a NZ$30 million capital round that was led by our newest investor Movac (NZ’s largest Venture Capital fund) with support from GD1, Shasta Ventures (US-based VC), K1W1, NZGCP, and Folklore Ventures. This new funding, expertise, and support, will assist Auror in building out it’s world-leading crime intelligence platform to keep our retailers and communities safe, and continue the expansion into North America. The raise has also provided some of our early shareholders and team members (current and former) with a liquidity opportunity.

We’ve seen significant growth over the last 18 months: 

• We have some of the world’s best and biggest retailers using the Auror Platform across 13,000+ stores to help keep their stores and communities safe. 
• We have grown the team to 80 people and brought on some amazing new team members and industry leaders. 
• Our NPS continues to be above +70 (which is world-class).
• Our customers now report over 100,000 crime events every month.
• We’re working with over 500 law enforcement agencies.
• The platform has assisted police to solve thousands of serious crimes, including homicides, kidnappings, drug investigations, and even terrorism.
  

But we’re just getting started!

“Auror has the trifecta we always look for - great team, great product, great customers. Their metrics are also globally best-in-class. We’re excited to be on the journey to help prevent more crime and keep our communities safe.” - Lovina McMurchy, Movac Partner

Why did we raise money?

We’ve been cashflow positive for the last 12 months and have been in a strong position to grow. We’ve got a talented, engaged team who do incredible work, we’ve seen strong validation and growth prospects in North America, and our product is thriving with the scale we’re bringing on board. So, earlier this year we decided it was the right time to raise more capital and double down on the opportunity in front of us.

We’ve always said that raising capital isn’t success in itself, but it does provide us with the ability to create better and more sustainable outcomes by being able to hire more great people, invest in growth ahead of the curve and continue to build game-changing technologies for our communities to reduce crime.

Our new investors and a new member of our board

As Founders, one of the things that we are excited about is giving back and making NZ a global tech success story. One of the ways of doing that is ensuring that capital flows back into our tech ecosystem. And it’s great to see that the NZ VC landscape has developed so much that capital and experience from NZ is now just as good as investors from the rest of the world. Especially capital that comes with global connections and reach. So, after speaking with nearly 50 investors from across the world we ended up finding the right partners for the next stage of our growth journey right here in New Zealand. 

Movac (NZ’s largest VC fund) led the round and has a great track record of backing amazing NZ companies going global and they’re focused on building and supporting the NZ ecosystem. They’re also well connected and introduced us to Shasta Ventures (US-based VC) who joined the round and will bring invaluable experience in our fastest growing market. 

“Shasta Ventures invested in Auror because we believe that the company uniquely solves an enormous problem for physical retailers around the world. We were impressed by the breadth and depth of customer traction Auror has already achieved, and believe the company is well-positioned to scale globally into a very large and important business.” - Rob Coneybeer, Shasta Ventures Managing Partner

Completing a capital raise often provides an opportunity to make changes to your board and we saw this as a great opportunity to bring in someone with more experience in the North American market and also address something we have talked a lot about at Auror - the lack of diversity on our board. When we were introduced to one of Movac’s newest partners, Lovina McMurchy, we knew immediately that she would be great for our Board. Lovina has spent the last 20 years in the US, including at Microsoft, Amazon and Starbucks across a variety of commercial, strategic and product roles. We've really enjoyed getting to know Lovina over the last few months and are excited to add someone of her calibre to our Board. She is astute, an active listener (which aligns well with our guiding principles), and has big ambitions for NZ companies, which all really resonated with us.

Global from Day One (GD1), another NZ investor that focuses on backing teams that export NZ tech, also joined the round. They have deep operational support and expert advice on navigating the US market which will help supercharge our growth.

‍“GD1 has long been an admirer of Auror’s global ambition, leadership, team culture and customer traction. We firmly believe that Auror will continue to dominate their position as the leader in retail crime prevention software globally.” - John Kells, GD1 Partner

What’s Next?

We’re really proud of the company we’re building and one of our core objectives is getting Better with Scale. We want our team to be excited about how we’re growing Auror and we’ll do that through ensuring that we are deliberately designing the systems, processes, and opportunities that enable people to do their best work. This has a huge impact on how we are able to build a product that customers love and continue to be the valued and trusted partners to the retail and law enforcement communities that we are today. 

We’ll continue to focus on the three pillars to a successful company  - People, Product, and Customer.

People -  One of our aspirations is to build the best company to work. The culture we’re developing, the team we have, and the problems we’re solving, have made something unique in the Auror DNA, and it is something our team are incredibly proud of. 

Product - We’re globally unique. We’re not fast following and no one has built what we’re building. We’re developing best practice around privacy and technology in this space, and are progressing new opportunities that incorporate AI and machine learning into the platform. That makes it exciting and rewarding to know our product makes a difference in our communities by helping reduce crime. 

Customer - We’re excited to continue to evolve our Platform to support the world’s largest and most innovative retailers to keep their stores, workers, and customers safe.

Ultimately we’re on a mission to empower connected communities to reduce crime. So while the capital raise is done, there’s plenty of work still to do. We have to help retailers, law enforcement, and our communities make it harder to be a successful criminal. Why don’t you come and join us?