Lumini Founders: Why it was needed
Our Story: why we created Lumini
The consultation had already closed. The policy direction was set. And the organisations most affected hadn’t even seen it. That wasn’t unusual. It was the system.
Across New Zealand’s policy landscape, critical signals appear constantly, buried in speeches, briefings, Cabinet papers, working group reports, and agency updates. Thousands of documents. Dozens of sources. No single place to see what matters.
What this means, is that things get missed. “We didn’t see the signal”. “The consultation closed before we saw it”. “We didn’t make a submission”.
Not because people aren’t capable. The system made missing a signal almost inevitable.
The gap hiding in plain sight
Public policy is one of the most important professional domains in New Zealand. But the tools hadn’t kept up.
While technology has transformed how people work in law, finance, and intelligence, policy and advocacy professionals were still manually searching, filtering, and piecing together fragmented information. The result is more than inefficiency. It’s lost influence.
Because influence isn’t equal across the policy process.
By the time a consultation opens, much of the direction has already been set, and the ability to shape it is already reduced.
The real opportunity sits earlier: in emerging signals, shifting language, and early-stage thinking.
That’s where the system was falling short.
Why now?
The answer to why now is more than just new capability from new technology.
Yes, the tech has finally reached the point where complex, fragmented information can be brought together and understood quickly. But just as important are the people behind it.
Entrepreneurs with experience building software that changes how professions operate.
People who understand the policy world from the inside. A clear focus on solving a problem that had been overlooked for too long.
The capability, the timing, and the intent all aligned - for the first time in New Zealand. So we created Lumini.
3x Founders. 1x shared conviction
Tom has spent his career finding professions where the right technology, applied well, could fundamentally change and improve how people work. Sixteen years building and scaling Kitomba, a SaaS platform serving the hair and beauty industry, before selling it to a Canadian acquirer. In 2018, he co-founded Frankie AI alongside Lumoini co-founder Bunty Agrawal. Frankie AI is a real-time personalisation platform that Bunty and Tom grew to serve e-commerce customers in over 180 countries before it was acquired by a Silicon Valley company.
Bunty is the creator who brings product visions to life. Most recently as CTO and co-founder of Frankie AI, and subsequently co-founder of an award-winning sustainability platform later acquired by global consultancy ERM. Bunty has nearly two decades of experience turning complex technical problems into products people love to use.
Geoff’s path ran through the heart of the industries Lumini now serves. From Press and Private Secretary to the Undersecretary of Agriculture in the New Zealand Government, through a decade in senior international communications roles at FleishmanHillard in Hong Kong, to marketing leadership at Kitomba, where he and Tom first worked together. Geoff arrived at Lumini with a rare combination: deep knowledge of both advocacy and the organisations that practise it.
Together, we kept coming back to the same conclusion:
This is a profession doing critical work, without the tools it deserves.
So we didn’t set out to become advocates. We set out to build for the people already doing the work.
Built for the profession. Built for Aotearoa New Zealand
Lumini is purpose-built for Aotearoa, 100% focused on the New Zealand policy ecosystem.
It continuously monitors over 200 government sources, from Parliament and the Beehive to agencies, regulators, and think tanks. But monitoring is just the starting point.
Lumini changes where you sit in the process:
- From reacting to consultations, to seeing signals early
- From reading documents, to understanding what matters
- From scrambling to respond, to shaping outcomes
Because effective advocacy requires more than awareness.
It requires:
- Comprehensive visibility across the system
- Clear understanding of complex policy
- Institutional memory to build consistent positions
- Time to act when influence is still possible
Lumini delivers all of it, in one place.
From reaction to influence
Our goal isn’t to help people write better submissions. It’s to help them shape policy earlier, while it’s still evolving.
To move from reacting to what the government has decided, to influencing what it considers in the first place.
Today, Lumini is used by leading organisations across industry, advisory, and corporate New Zealand, all facing the same challenge:
Seeing what matters, early enough to act.
The work was always strong
The people doing policy and advocacy work have always been dedicated, capable professionals.The work has always mattered.
The tools just hadn’t caught up. Until now.
And the organisations that see first, shape what comes next. That's why Lumini exists.
