TRA Labs and Previously Unavailable, alongside founder James Donald, launched their latest start-up, Ideally, a platform offering remarkably fast, affordable, and accessible customer insights to help bring great ideas to life.
The partnership, well-known for creating the successful brand health-tracking platform Tracksuit, has appointed Donald as Ideally’s founder and CEO to drive growth across Australia and New Zealand.
Ideally, an on-demand insights and innovation platform, enables clients to rapidly test concepts, ideas and messages with their target audience and receive robust answers overnight. The platform is self-service, using built-in generative AI to discover patterns and reveal opportunity. Coupled with an easy-to-use UI, Ideally enables more people involved with ideas to use customer insights on a more regular basis.
Donald brings more than a decade of experience in start-ups, product development and high-growth business innovation to Ideally. He was most recently the founder and director of NZ-based SaaS company Yonder, growing it from a start-up to a globally recognised travel industry AI Chatbot and Review system in five years.
Donald said: “Enterprises in consumer products and services are continuously innovating but the success rate in the market is low. A recent study from FMCG Innovation found up to 80% of these innovations fail.
“Insights, innovation, and marketing teams have incredible ideas but moving them through the development process is hard – ideas get watered down and opinion reigns. The current innovation and insights process finds winners and losers, not opportunities, so ideas typically emerge smaller, not bigger.
“That’s why we built Ideally – to help people bring great ideas to life. Our clients don’t have to bet the house on an idea anymore. They can test, grow, and develop ideas with the voice of the customer throughout.”
Chris Paykel, partner, Previously Unavailable, said: “As an innovation and ventures studio, we know how important it is to champion people who advance ideas. Bringing great ideas into the world requires insight, momentum, and the confidence to be bold – Ideally solves for this on all counts. By making research and testing more accessible, affordable, and efficient, our platform empowers users to grow their ideas and aims to give them a greater chance of success.”
Connon Bray, partner, TRA Labs said: “Since Tracksuit, TRA Labs has been developing our next venture. Ideally will empower brands to unlock the full potential of customer insights and generative AI to help bring their great ideas to life. Ideally’s rapid growth shows that innovation teams have been waiting for this. We’re delighted by this response and can’t wait to see James and the Ideally team take this global.”
Ideally has already welcomed 15 clients across Australia and New Zealand, with over 100 ideas tested to date. Clients already on the platform include a mix of services and FMCG enterprises across Australia and New Zealand, including Danone, Tegel, Kiwibank, Spark, Soulfresh, SBS, Asahi, Southern Cross, and Treasury Wines.
Stephanie Nilson, global marketing manager, Soulfresh, said: “The platform delivers robust results really quickly, helping us to save valuable time and money. The insights we gain through Ideally have empowered us to have evidence-based conversations with retailers. Ideally is a game-changer.”
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Top image: James Donald