Who We Are

Chris heads up the innovation arm of PU, working with both large corporate clients looking to reinvent and with start-up and scale-up businesses looking to disrupt. His experience spans a wide range of industries and innovation challenges including new product and service design, innovation strategy and innovation model design, ground-up venture builds and solving bespoke innovation challenges, paying special attention to the more technical and commercial aspects essential to making a project, business model, new venture or investment a success. Chris joined Previously Unavailable in 2016 following 4 years in London at the UK’s leading Innovation Consultancy ?What If! Innovation Partners, where he worked with a range of global businesses including EA Games, Jaguar Land Rover, and IHG to set, invent and execute their innovation and venture strategies. Formally trained as a Mechanical Engineer, Chris enjoyed the first 5 years of his career in R&D designing products at Fisher & Paykel Appliances before moving into Management Consulting and M&A with EY, both in Auckland and London.

Chris is a Senior Producer at Previously Unavailable, working across brand strategy, design, venturing and impact projects. He loves the variety of agency life, and his job is making sure all of it runs smoothly. He's always looking for opportunities to innovate, whether in how projects are delivered or how the studio works behind the scenes. Before PU, Chris worked in operations and inventory management, and holds a Bachelor of Commerce in Marketing and Operations & Supply Chain Management from the University of Auckland.

Ed leads the work Previously Unavailable does across innovation and venturing: finding opportunities, shaping them into ventures, and getting them to market. Over his 9 years at Previously Unavailable he has worked across most of our largest projects, spanning new product and service development, research & insights, commercial strategy, and navigating the operational realities of building businesses that work. He believes good strategy is measured by what happens next: not words on a page, but something a team gets behind and turns into something real. Beyond the studio, he enjoys the challenge of governance and serves on a number of boards.

Ellen joined Previously Unavailable as a Senior Venture Strategist mid-way through 2026, having recently moved over from London, where she spent her time at BBH partnering with Blackstone's investment team on the brand transformation of their portfolio companies. Across her agency career, her experience spans pharmaceutical, telco, FMCG, tech, automotive and green energy, across both B2B and consumer-facing work. At PU, she brings a brand lens to the venture team, helping founders build brands as commercially sharp as the businesses behind them.

Erana is Executive Assistant to Group Chair James Hurman and Co-CEO Chris Paykel. Her focus spans executive enablement, governance support, studio operations and culture. 

She manages complex, fast-moving workstreams across PU’s Group leaders of the business; coordinating priorities, speaking engagements and global travel for James, and introducing practical systems that remove friction within the studio. Erana supports governance and compliance across the investment funds, leads the embedding of Te Ao Māori as a long-term PU commitment, and serves as board secretary for Caffeine Daily. She also drives the studio community and events end-to-end; from book launches and community breakfasts to the annual Christmas Party. 

Before PU, Erana spent nine years in operations roles across a broad range of industries, shaping the people-centric approach at the core of how she works. She thrives on ambiguity and finds nothing more satisfying than turning chaos into calm.

Gabriella is a Senior Designer at Previously Unavailable, with a strong focus on brand identity and UX/UI design. With a double degree in Design and Architecture, she brings a structural eye and a deep love of detail and craft; helping tell the stories of brands through considered and purposeful outcomes that innovate, advocate style and endure. Her craft has earned her four Best Design Awards, spanning small and large brand identity, packaging and design craft. Since joining PU in 2025, Gabriella has helped shape brands from start-up to scale-up; including Manifest, BoardPro, Soul Capital and NeuAudio, working alongside strategy and innovation to solve complex brand challenges and empower founders through thoughtful design.

Hannah Small is a Design Director at Previously Unavailable, where she leads brand identity work alongside the team. She's drawn to brands with genuine character and a sense of life.

Hannah joined PU in 2020 and grew up as a designer here, moving from freelancer to Design Director across five years. These days, as much as she loves making the work, she loves helping others sharpen their craft.

Before PU, she cut her teeth on the World's Greatest Internship — a global rotation through leading brand studios in London, New York and San Francisco, and an education in what makes identity work sing.

Henry is Chief Strategy Officer at Previously Unavailable. He works with growth-stage and PE-backed businesses on brand strategy — including across PU's own portfolio of ventures. He helps leadership teams make sharper decisions about who they are, who they're for, and how to grow. He brings 20 years of international experience in brand and communications, and as part of the studio executive team, helps shape how PU works — not just what it makes.

James founded Previously Unavailable in 2014, chasing his passion for helping innovative companies use insightful strategic thinking to create products and brands that become sustainably successful. He chose the name ‘Previously Unavailable’ simply because he loves bringing new things into the world. James was formerly a strategic planner in the advertising industry, where he specialised in innovative marketing and the branding of innovative products and companies. In 2013 he was named the world’s #1 strategic planner. James is the author of The Case for Creativity, a book about how creativity creates business success that The Coca-Cola Company described as ‘beautiful words of wisdom’ and which has been reprinted several times in several languages. He’s also the author of two landmark marketing effectiveness studies, The Effectiveness Code (on behalf of Cannes Lions and WARC) and The B2B Effectiveness Code (on behalf of Linked In’s B2B Institute).

Max joined Previously Unavailable midway through 2026 after working client-side in the outdoor industry at Swazi Apparel. Before that, he cut his teeth in advertising, building a broad foundation in brand and creative thinking. His interests span a wide range of design practices, from typography and type design to design research.

Philippa joined Previously Unavailable in early 2024 as Senior Producer, building on a 10+ year career in the creative industry in Auckland and London.

At PU, Philippa is the go-to for making anything happen, whether it’s a new brand identity, photoshoot, website and more. She brings her passion for design, craft and organisation to every project, and is dedicated to delivering great work.

Phoebe brings design and brand identity expertise to Previously Unavailable, leading a highly creative team who collaborate with all parts of the studio portfolio — from venture and early stage start-ups, established businesses wanting to reinvent, and new product development for a range of clients. Phoebe’s focus is to embed great design into new ventures and start-ups early to create the largest impact. 

Phoebe is a Co-Founder of New + Improved Ventures and is on the Investment Committee for Brand Fund 2 with Icehouse Ventures. She also has a long standing relationship with AUT, contributing her time as a tutor and mentoring undergraduate students. Phoebe has been selected as a judge for the DINZ Best Design Awards, the AGDA Awards, the ADC Young Guns Awards and Spikes Asia. 

Phoebe leads Impact at Previously Unavailable, building PU's practice as a growth partner to impact ventures. Her work sits at the intersection of brand, commercial and impact strategy — helping founders sharpen their positioning and scale businesses that make money, do good, and make sense to investors. In more than five years at PU she's worked across brand strategy and innovation before taking on Impact. Recent projects include Tika, Torrens University, Soul Capital and Friends That Invest. Before PU she was Head of Strategy at creative agency Wrestler. She holds a Master's in human-centred design, lectured at Massey's College of Creative Arts for four years, and has lived and worked in LA, San Diego and China. At her core is a conviction that creativity can move the needle on the world's hard problems.

Simon leads Startup Brand and Brand Fund, working with high-growth companies to define, grow, build and fund brands in innovative ways. Prior to joining PU in 2018, Simon led global brand, creative and communications for Vend, from under $2m ARR to over $20m ARR. Vend exited for ~$500m. Simon has led brand and positioning work for Ideally, aglow, Drumbeat, Appetise, Extraordinary, Spoke, Simfuni, compostic, GD1, Timely, Starshipit, Brancott Estate, and many other great companies. Specialty areas include SaaS, high-growth tech, FMCG, wine, fintech and venture.

Ria is a Creative Strategist with a strong focus on brand positioning and copywriting. She partners with founders and teams to solve complex brand challenges, bringing clarity and conviction to decisions that shape how a brand shows up. She takes a systems-led approach, building brand foundations that hold together across every touchpoint. Ria has been part of the PU fold since 2017 starting as an intern and joining full-time in 2023 after completing her degree at the University of Auckland.

Rupert works across PU's venturing practice, turning complex data into decisions the ventures and businesses we work with can act on. His work spans the full arc of building a business: sizing markets, building commercial cases, designing go-to-market strategy, and shipping the products and tools that put it all into practice. At PU he has led financial modelling and machine learning-driven segmentation work, built sales and performance analytics for brands scaling into major US retail, and developed AI-powered tools used inside PU and by our clients. That mix of commercial rigour and hands-on building is grounded in a double degree in Accounting and Information Science from Otago, and prior years across technology strategy at Accenture and software at a New Zealand fintech. Rupert is brought in when a business needs to know if the numbers stack up, and what it takes to make them real.

Tom works as Chief Operating Officer at PU, with focus on making stuff work. Main focus areas are financial and project management, staff experience and management of the office space.