We believe business owners deserve better decisions.
Who we are
D/srupt is built by people who’ve run businesses.
We’ve been in the same position as the people we work with. Making calls without perfect information. Trying to work out what matters, what doesn’t, and what to do next.
Over fifteen hundred New Zealand business owners have used D/srupt. They’ve worked through our Market Scan or Growth Program to get clearer on their direction and make better decisions about where to take their business.
D/srupt started from that experience. We saw the same patterns come up again and again. Good businesses getting stuck. Decisions being made too late, or with too little clarity. A lot of effort, but not always in the right place. So we built something to help with that.
It’s not a consultancy. It’s a set of services, tools and frameworks we’ve tested and refined across those fifteen hundred businesses. A way to step back, see what’s going on more clearly, and make deliberate decisions about what comes next.
Meet the Team
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Debbie Humphrey
FOUNDER
From Fonterra to founder-led businesses, Debbie has spent two decades turning strategic complexity into scalable growth. She built D/srupt to give ambitious business owners the same calibre of thinking once reserved for corporates.
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Aaron Humphrey
SALES
Aaron spent a decade running Spring, an insights-led strategy business, before co-founding D/srupt. He brings a sharp commercial instinct and a genuine curiosity about what makes businesses grow, and what's quietly holding them back.
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Hamish McLachlan
OPERATIONS
Hamish turns strategy into traction, bringing a sharp, data-led lens to execution that keeps teams aligned and outcomes measurable. Where others see operational complexity, he sees a clear path to performance.
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Ben Akin-Smith
PRODUCT
With nearly two decades in digital, Ben's north star is simple: technology should serve people, not the other way around. He brings a founder's instinct and a strategist's discipline to every product challenge, insight first, solution second.
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Liam Fletcher
TECHNOLOGY
Liam leads the development engine that powers D/srupt, bringing a proven ability to get agile teams building the right things, fast. He's as comfortable in the technical weeds as he is aligning product delivery to real business outcomes.
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Chris Simmons
ADVISOR
Chris has scaled startups, opened international markets, and led executive teams across Asia Pacific and the Middle East — and as a certified YPO facilitator, he brings the rare combination of strategic rigour and human-centred leadership that growth-stage businesses need most.
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Mark Robotham
ADVISOR
Mark's trademark is pace, passion, and pragmatism — cutting through complexity to create the kind of action that actually moves the needle. With 20+ years across technology, commercialisation, and executive leadership, he's the person founders call when the stakes are high and the path isn't clear.
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Michelle McLean
INSIGHTS
Michelle brings a rare combination to D/srupt … fifteen years of corporate research at PwC, KPMG, and EY, and over a decade running her own business. She knows what it takes to work in a business and what it takes to work on one, and she has a talent for surfacing the detail that shifts thinking and opens up possibilities clients hadn't seen before. goes here
Good decisions change businesses. Not luck, not market conditions, not the right hire at the right time. The owners who grow are the ones who make better decisions, more consistently, with more clarity about where they're headed.
We believe most business owners already know what they need to do. What they're missing is the structure to think it through, and the confidence to act on it.
We believe strategy isn't a document. It's a habit. The businesses that win aren't the ones with the best plans on paper. They're the ones that build a way of thinking about the market, their position in it, and what to do next.
We believe that being small doesn't mean thinking small. New Zealand businesses can compete. They just need better tools and a clearer view of where the opportunity actually is.
And we believe in being straight with people. No jargon. No long engagements. No telling you what you want to hear. Just a clear picture of where you stand and what to do about it.
What we believe
Growth Navigation
Read the collection of articles and stories on how we think about growth
