Startups and Ventures
Founder work, product concepts and practical market judgement.
These ventures are presented honestly: some became active businesses or recognised products; others demonstrate product thinking, timing judgement and the discipline to stop when the market changed.
Equip Mining Parts & Components
2025 onward
Mining equipment parts venture combining China sourcing, Australian resale, OEM-quality parts positioning and a custom Odoo operating platform.
- Problem
- Mining parts knowledge is often fragmented across people, supplier emails, spreadsheets, part-number variants and informal memory.
- Concept
- Build a lean parts business where sourcing, RFQs, product integrity, supplier workflows, customer workflows and target-account management are embedded into the operating system from the start.
- Benjamin's role
- Founder, business builder, technology architect and AI-assisted ERP product owner.
- Stage reached
- Active build and operating-system development.
- Outcome
- Custom Odoo workflows, supplier and customer RFQ concepts, data cleansing, part-number governance, enrichment workflows and Codex-assisted module development are being used to reduce manual administration and make repeatable process visible.
- What it demonstrates
- Founder execution, ERP architecture, AI-directed delivery and practical conversion of ambiguous business knowledge into repeatable process.
Source notes
- User-supplied, confirm before final publication.
- Local Equip Mining development repositories and current bsmith.id.au content.
NightKey
2018 onward
Biometric identity and venue-safety product concept for licensed hospitality and nightlife environments.
- Problem
- Venues need practical ways to manage patron safety, access control, self-exclusion and identity risk while respecting privacy and operational reality.
- Concept
- A biometric identity-management system designed around safer venue operations, patron protection and accountable access decisions.
- Benjamin's role
- Founder, product lead and solution-definition author.
- Stage reached
- Concept, solution definition, stakeholder engagement and award-recognised product profile.
- Outcome
- NightKey received Good Design Award Australia recognition and became a foundation for later identity-management thinking.
- What it demonstrates
- Product design, governance-aware biometrics, public-safety problem framing and practical commercialisation thinking.
Source notes
- SharePoint search results: NightKey Solution Definition v0.6.docx; NightKey Solution Definition vNTG.docx; NightKey Solution Definition v0.5.docx.
- Benjamin_Smith_Executive_Website_Content_Pack.docx.
humID
2024 onward
Identity-management venture concept connected to NightKey and NeoKey thinking.
- Problem
- Identity verification, privacy, trust and safety remain hard to balance in environments where people, organisations and systems need reliable identity signals.
- Concept
- A broader identity-management approach using biometric and privacy-aware design principles developed through earlier NightKey and NeoKey material.
- Benjamin's role
- Founder and concept lead.
- Stage reached
- Commercialisation and concept-development phase.
- Outcome
- Solution-definition and business-case source material exists in the SharePoint archive, with further claims requiring confirmation before final publication.
- What it demonstrates
- Persistence across related product concepts, privacy-aware technology judgement and product-family thinking.
Source notes
- SharePoint search results: Clients/humID/Solution Definition and NeoKey concept approval business case material.
- Outlook search result: CXO Advisory - Capability Statement references commercialising humID.
- User-supplied, confirm before final publication.
iFall
Pre-Apple Watch concept
Early health-technology concept for fall detection, emergency alerting and location notification.
- Problem
- A personal health scare highlighted the risk of a person falling, becoming incapacitated and being unable to tell emergency services or loved ones where they were.
- Concept
- A device concept to detect a fall and send emergency alerts with GPS coordinates, date and time information.
- Benjamin's role
- Originator and founder.
- Stage reached
- Concept stage.
- Outcome
- Commercialisation was halted when Apple released the first Apple Watch, making the standalone opportunity commercially redundant.
- What it demonstrates
- Product instinct, health-technology imagination and the discipline to stop when market conditions changed.
Source notes
- User-supplied, confirm before final publication.
- Outlook search result: Re: EM Parts & Components references iFall.
Email-to-SMS alerting and MGM Wireless school communications
2000 to 2002; downstream school communications and Spacetalk history from 2002 onward
Early mobile-notification venture concept that filtered desktop-bound email for high-value senders or topics and alerted executives by SMS, then connects into the MGM Wireless school absence-notification and family-safety communications arc.
- Problem
- Before smartphones made mobile email routine, professionals were often tied to office or home desktop computers and could miss important messages while away from their desks.
- Concept
- Allow selected senders, subjects or topics to trigger short SMS alerts so an executive knew when an email was important enough to return to a computer. When platform vendors moved similar alerting into enterprise email, the commercial path shifted toward SMS communications use cases in schools.
- Benjamin's role
- Originator of the email-to-SMS alerting concept and early product/startup contributor. Formal MGM Wireless founder, title and shareholding relationship to be confirmed against corporate records before publication.
- Stage reached
- Prototype/product concept and subsequent pivot into SMS school communications. MGM Wireless/Spacetalk public sources support the school messaging and wearable product arc from 2002 onward.
- Outcome
- MGM Wireless became known for SMS-based school communication and automated student absence notification, with later Spacetalk public materials describing school messaging as pioneered from 2002 and WA Government material confirming a 2007 contract for SMS communication software in public schools. The precise link between Benjamin's early concept and the commercial MGM Wireless entity remains user-supplied until confirmed.
- What it demonstrates
- Early mobile product judgement, pattern recognition before smartphone-era assumptions, willingness to pivot when platform vendors absorbed functionality, and the ability to see SMS as an operational communication channel rather than only a marketing tool.
Source notes
- User-supplied: Benjamin developed a 2000 email-to-SMS alerting concept for professionals and executives; confirm before final publication.
- User-supplied: Benjamin's formal MGM Wireless role, co-founder/title details and relationship to the commercial entity; confirm against corporate records before final publication.
- Spacetalk public about page states it pioneered school messaging systems and that its technology has been used by more than 30 million people since 2002: https://spacetalk.co/pages/about-spacetalk
- Spacetalk Schools rebrand page states the company invented the world's first SMS-based Automated Communication Solution for schools in 2002 and references 1,500 schools and 2 million families: https://spacetalk.co/en-nz/pages/schools-one-brand
- Startup Daily reports MGM Wireless was founded in Adelaide in 2001, began SMS school applications in 2002, created the first SMS-based Automated Student Absence Notification Solution and later rebranded as Spacetalk: https://www.startupdaily.net/topic/adelaide-tech-co-mgm-wireless-rebrands-as-spacetalk/
- WA Government media statement confirms an October 2007 five-year contract with MGM Wireless for SMS communication software in public schools: https://www.wa.gov.au/government/media-statements/Carpenter%20Labor%20Government/Truants-warned---new-SMS-alert-system-will-roll-out-to-WA-schools-in-2008-20071002
NeoKey / NeoFusion identity concepts
2016 to 2020
Related identity and law-enforcement concepts connected to field identification, face and fingerprint use cases and broader biometric identity thinking.
- Problem
- Law-enforcement and public-safety contexts require fast, governed and accountable identification workflows.
- Concept
- Identity concepts exploring face, fingerprint and related biometric approaches for field and operational environments.
- Benjamin's role
- Solution and product concept contributor.
- Stage reached
- Concept and solution-definition material.
- Outcome
- Concepts informed the wider identity-management body of work around Police Watchhouse, Forensic Face, NightKey and humID.
- What it demonstrates
- Pattern recognition across adjacent identity problems and the ability to reuse lessons without treating technology as context-free.
Source notes
- Benjamin_Smith_Executive_Website_Content_Pack.docx.
- SharePoint search results: NeoKey concept approval business case material.