Check out the interview on Spotify or YouTube.
Skim the show notes from my chat with Tim:
Tim’s story begins in classic startup fashion: “Three broke dudes, $700 each, working fulltime jobs,” he laughs. Their pooled $2,000 bought three “pretty munted scooters” (only one of which ran), which they fixed up in a Mt. Victoria garage. Sitting on scavenged pallets they coded the first version of their platform after hours.
The early days were a relentless grind: “We’d work our day jobs, then at five it was battle stations. I’d build the software, the others would run ops. If it got busy, we’d all jump on the road delivering.” Every dollar earned from delivery fees went straight back into guerrilla marketing. Talking to people at local markets, community posts, and a shoestring $140 monthly ad budget. “Looking back, it was actually the most fun time. I genuinely miss those days.”
Convincing restaurants to join was no easy feat. Their first four partners signed on more for the vision than the (admittedly “rubbish”) website. “The tech was rough, but we sold the dream of what it could be,” Tim says. Even with just a handful of cuisines, early adopters were happy to finally have a delivery option beyond pizza or fish and chips.
Getting customers was even tougher. “If you Googled ‘Delivereasy’ in 2016, the top hit was a YouTube video of a home birth. We were four pages back!” Tim laughs. With SEO out of reach, they relied on grassroots tactics like handing out flyers and watching Google Analytics light up as people checked out the site. The first big breakthrough? A free delivery promo on a local deals page that netted 30 orders in one night, a milestone that made Tim realize, “This thing actually has legs.”
Today, Delivereasy delivers up to 11,000 orders a night, a far cry from those first 30. But scaling brought its own challenges. “You need drivers, restaurants, and customers. If you’re out of balance, it all falls apart,” Tim explains.
Their playbook for launching new markets is now finely tuned: send in the sales team, sign up restaurants, recruit drivers, and have spare hands on the ground for opening week. “It’s definitely easier now, but the early days were not as smooth.”
Perhaps the most daunting chapter was launching in Auckland just as Uber Eats arrived with millions in promo dollars. “We ground it out for a year, barely making headway,” Tim recalls. The real existential threat came when Uber launched in Wellington, their home base. But instead of folding, Delivereasy doubled down on their local roots and actually grew by 23%. The key insight? Pivoting to smaller cities and towns, where Uber hadn’t yet arrived, let them build a loyal customer base and become the local favorite before the giants moved in. Not all superheroes come from the United States.
One of Tim’s biggest surprises? The enthusiasm of smalltown New Zealand. “Places like Invercargill and Masterton go hard for delivery. They love having these services,” he says. By focusing on these overlooked markets, Delivereasy built a moat that even global competitors struggled to cross.
The Delivereasy DNA is built on relentless hustle, community focus, and evolving as expectations from consumers rise. From fixing scooters in a garage to orchestrating thousands of nightly deliveries, Delivereasy’s story is proof that with the right mix of grit and smarts, even the smallest team can take on the big guys and win.
Last week, the US got access to Google’s AI Mode. It will soon be available elsewhere. Alphabet CEO, Sundar Pichai, says “AI Overviews gets 1.5 billion uses per month in more than 200 countries and territories.”
AI Overviews are on the rise: 13.14% of all queries triggered AI Overviews in March 2025. That’s up from 6.49% in January 2025. Informational content is most likely to trigger AI Overviews: 88.1% of queries that trigger an AI Overview are informational. The number of navigational queries that trigger AI Overviews has doubled since January — from 0.74% to 1.43%.
More business decision makers are using generative AI (GenAI) as a virtual advisor in setting strategy, buying software services, exploring new markets and developing new products. Without investment, SaaS and deeptech companies face a tangible risk of being out-ranked or left out of large language model (LLM) answers.
At Atlas Digital, we think it’s time for tech companies to take their big swing at discovery within LLMs. Back in the early 2000s, the first-movers captured search opportunities in Google, and reaped the commercial benefits for years. This is the next Google moment.
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Congratulations to all the Hi-Tech Awards winners who were announced on Friday last week. With alumni like Rocket Lab, Seequent, Pushpay and Xero, the future looks bright for all 2025 winners and nominees 👏
Company of the Year: Syos Aerospace
Young Achiever: Luke Campbell VXT
Software Company of the Year: Toku Eyes
Highly Commended Software Company: Carepatron
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