StaplesVR
StaplesVR is a pioneering immersive technology company developing advanced VR/AR training solutions across aviation, defence, healthcare, emergency response, and high-risk industries.
Fund: Te Pae ki te Rangi
Transaction Summary
Fund: Te Pae ki te Rangi
Date Invested: June 2025 (Seed)
Instrument: Equity Investment
IRIS+ Category: Diversity & Inclusion | Quality Jobs
Why We Invested
The best training in the world has always required the real thing nearby: a cockpit, an operating theatre, a burning building close enough to feel the heat. StaplesVR removes that dependency. Their VR and AR simulations replicate high-stakes conditions with enough fidelity that trainees in aviation, defence, healthcare, and emergency response build genuine competency before they encounter the actual stakes. That the training works was clear from the beginning. What really got us looking closer was the workforce behind the technology. StaplesVR is built by creatives from diverse backgrounds in a genuinely inclusive company. That is how they recruit, how they build and how a better product is made.
Industries that have historically lacked workforce diversity are now buying a product shaped by the people those industries ignored. That's the position StaplesVR occupies, and it compounds.
Measuring What Matters
Problem:
VR and AR training tools are mostly built by a narrow slice of the creative industry, which limits both who gets hired to build them and what the training actually accounts for.
What:
A broader range of creative practitioners building VR training tools, and safety-critical industries (aviation, defence, healthcare, emergency response) getting more effective training because of it.
Who:
Creative practitioners entering VR technology from a wide-range of backgrounds. Trainees in safety-critical sectors who use what they build.
How Much:
Scale: StaplesVR's team and client base across Aotearoa and international markets.
Depth: real employment and career progression in an industry not know of diversity, and measurably better training outcomes for the people who use the platform.
Duration: careers and training tools that keeps improving as the team behind it grows.
Contribution: StaplesVR builds its hiring and team practices into the daily running of the organisation. The investment lets that scale alongside the client base.
Impact Risk:
Endurance risk. If how the team is built and managed isn't codified as the company grows, it can dilute. What makes StaplesVR's output distinctive needs to survive past the founders.
Impact Measures:
Size and composition of the creative team. Client base growth. Training outcomes for end users in safety-critical sectors.
