James Donald: Engineering a $100 million start-up

James Donald has built a career by following his curiosity, from studying engineering and working in oil and gas to launching technology start-ups, including AI-powered consumer insights company Ideally.

Founded in 2023, Ideally combines AI with feedback from real consumers to help businesses test concepts, products and marketing quickly, turning a traditionally slow and expensive research process into insights that can be delivered overnight.

Donald’s path to becoming a founder wasn’t straightforward. His journey has taught him that sometimes it pays to step outside the expected path and try something new.

In 2001, two weeks before Donald was due to begin studying law at the University of Auckland, a Bachelor of Engineering information pack caught his eye. He made a last-minute decision to change direction, eventually combining engineering with a commerce degree.

“I hadn’t been exposed to engineering before. There was something in it that just clicked and I knew it was for me.”

The decision changed the course of his career and was an early sign of Donald’s willingness to follow opportunities in unexpected directions.

Engineering led to a 12-year global career with Shell. As the industry changed, Donald began looking towards software and technology. His first software venture, Leap Booking, was a relatively short-lived online platform connecting travellers with outdoor equipment.

Yonder HQ, a business-to-business software company, followed. It was eventually sold, but not before teaching Donald important lessons about testing assumptions, understanding customers and knowing when to change direction.

“We made so many mistakes and assumptions. We also asked our friends for insights, which just leads to confirmation bias.”

Yonder began as a consumer tourism marketplace, but data from the platform showed that the bigger opportunity was solving operational problems for local tour operators. The team pivoted to a business-to-business model.

“We really just felt relief that we’d found a solution to why customers weren’t converting.” 

By the time Donald sold Yonder in 2024, he had already spotted another opportunity. Generative AI was developing rapidly, while traditional market research remained slow and expensive.

“I knew the space well, but I could see a much better way to do it. It ticked every box I look for in a business: a huge market, strong tailwinds and an industry still dominated by enterprise incumbents.”

Donald co-founded Ideally in 2023 with Joshua Nu’u-Steele, now the company’s Chief Revenue Officer, and Brendan Cervin, who has since moved on to new projects.

The team built a simple minimum viable product and secured its first 10 paying customers before publicly launching.

Growth followed quickly. By 2026, Ideally had raised $16 million in funding, valuing the company at more than $100 million. It has grown to more than 60 people across Auckland, Sydney, Melbourne and New York, with more than 300 brands and agencies using the platform.

For Donald, having co-founders has been an important part of that progress.

“There are so many advantages compared to doing it alone. One is capability: three people with experiences in their own worlds. There’s the process of bouncing ideas around and not being in a vacuum. You get called out on assumptions.”

Growth has brought trade-offs too. A larger team has enabled Ideally to hire specialist talent and take on bigger challenges, but it has also changed Donald’s role.

“My role now is to build systems, not be in them, but I still need to be at the forefront with our customers and ensure we’re constantly addressing their needs.”

He also wishes the company had entered the United States earlier. The scale of the market, the competition and its appetite for risk, he says, could have accelerated Ideally’s learning.

Some of Ideally’s most important lessons have come from experiments.Early on, the team added a marketing campaign feature without considering it a core part of the product. Customers responded strongly, and it now represents a substantial share of the business.

For Donald, it reinforces a lesson that has followed him from Yonder to Ideally: founders need to test their assumptions in real life and stay open to what their customers are telling them.

It’s a lesson that also connects back to his time at the University. As a commerce student taking an introductory entrepreneurship course, Donald remembers having a very different idea of what an entrepreneur looked like.

“I always thought entrepreneurs were a different type of person. I thought they were those people like Richard Branson who’d dropped out of school at 16 and were just big risk takers, but that’s just not always true.

“For a long time, I didn’t identify as an entrepreneur. It didn’t feel like my calling. Everything about it was actually my calling, it just took me a long time to recognise and embrace it.”