From mining safety startup to $150M exit
Pegasus didn't begin as a platform. It became one.
At I2N's Founder Stories, Adam and Jo Boyle shared how a Hunter Valley mine surveying business evolved into a contractor compliance system used across multiple industries and eventually, across the world.
When they got involved in the early 2000s, Adam was coding inside a business still finding its shape. The gap they were solving was obvious once you saw it. Large organisations had no consistent way to verify contractors before they arrived on site. Pegasus built a system to change that, covering company compliance and individual worker credentials so that when someone badged on, everything that should have happened already had.
As it expanded from mining into construction, ports, rail and retail, the value compounded. By 2017, they had 3.5 million workers in their Australian database and had passed what Adam describes as the tipping point.
What had once needed to be explained now sold itself and the scale behind it was significant — Pegasus ultimately enabled more than four million casualised workers to carry their credentials between employers, reducing the need to repeat the same compliance process every time they moved sites. Safety, not just efficiency, was the point.
In 2017 they raised $28 million on a $60 million valuation to expand into the UK and US. Then COVID hit three months later and stopped everything. Rather than retreating, they reached out to competitors. One conversation took a different turn — "We'd rather just buy you" — and twelve months to the day after the raise, a deal was done entirely online at a number well above the original offer. They didn't meet the buyers in person until two years after the transaction.
The exit number is impressive. What they're proudest of is that 15 to 20 members of their team each made close to a million dollars when it sold — people who'd been there 15 years and were offered equity when times were tough, long before any deal was on the table.
Top takeaways
- Solve a problem that already exists in the real world
- Value compounds when adoption builds within a network
- There is a point where proof replaces persuasion
- Be ready to move when the opportunity comes — the end can arrive faster than you expect
- The people you bring with you are as much a part of the story as the outcome
Today Adam and Jo are back in the trenches at Engage RM, a sports tech company building premium ticketing platforms for clubs across the NBA, NFL and Premier League. It's early days again. The flow hasn't arrived yet. But they've been here before, and they know what it looks like when it does.
If you missed it, catch up on Adam and Jo's story here.
Contact
- Integrated Innovation Network (I2N)
- Email: i2n@newcastle.edu.au
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