Trans-Tasman AI startup Aether has announced four key hires.
New Zealand-based Tim Farland has joined as Aether’s chief technology officer.
“I’m amped to join Aether at this stage,” said Farland. “We’re building a novel, non-trivial AI platform that will fundamentally change how global marketing teams operate, enabling them to work smarter and more strategically.”
Farland will lead R&D, architecture and strategy to advance the company’s product vision and global roadmap.
It has also appointed Jen Beirne, Matt Meffan and Hugo Rajotte to help the business, which helps marketers activate institutional knowledge to deliver on-brand, ready to use presentation outputs, to its growth team.
Backed by more than a decade of experience leading high-performing marketing teams for global businesses including Amazon, Adobe and Telefónica, Aether said Beirne is well placed to understand the pain points Aether is seeking to solve for the marketing community.
“I’ve seen first-hand the hours wasted building presentations and reports, attempting to find the right data pull or dashboard, tweaking narratives to suit different audiences and the rest. Seeing Aether do all of this and more within minutes was a jaw-drop moment for me,” said Beirne. “We’re already seeing customers win back hours and redirect them into work that is strategic, innovative and influences the bottom line.”
Rajotte is equally enthusiastic about Aether’s potential.
“I’ve been part of turning an early-stage startup into a global category leader,” said Rajotte. “That’s the journey I’m seeing for a disruptor like Aether: scaling fast, defining the knowledge activation category and proving the impact of AI-driven efficiency and smarts for enterprise marketing teams.”
With a track record of scaling early-stage SaaS companies into new markets and setting the foundations for hypergrowth, New Zealand-born Meffan said, “This is a career-defining opportunity to help build the next generational software company out of New Zealand.”
Aether has also added new hires to the customer-facing and data teams.
“These appointments strengthen Aether at every level: technology, growth and execution,” said Aether CEO, Carsten Grueber.
Aether has secured early success in New Zealand, including such household brands as Genesis, Spark Telecom and Kiwibank, and continued Australian growth is firmly in its sights.
“We secured a handful of leading enterprise clients in Australia during stealth mode,” Grueber, “and moved quickly to secure three high-performing Enterprise Growth specialists based in Sydney who will drive adoption of marketing-focused AI there and overseas.”
