Hey, I'm Steve Crowe.
I started a digital marketing agency back in 2009. One-man band to a proper team over the next decade, then sold it in 2021. Brilliant ride. Learnt heaps, worked with some very good people.
Then I took a bit of time out.
Which is where it got interesting, because things look a lot clearer from the outside. Seventeen years in, a few hundred businesses, and once you stop for a minute you start seeing the same thing. The strategy, the technology, the people — all broadly fine on their own, none of them talking to each other.
There's a plan that everyone agreed with and nobody had time to do. There's software that got bought, half-implemented, and quietly worked around ever since. Good thinking sitting in a doc somewhere while the day-to-day carries on doing its own thing. That gap is where the growth goes missing. And it doesn't close by buying more strategy or more software — it closes when someone works across all of it.
That's the bit I came back for, and sticking around to see it actually working.
The other thing seventeen years gets you is a contact list.
Designers, developers, strategists, media buyers, specialist agencies, and a lot of very good freelancers. NZ's a small market and I've been in it a while. I know who's excellent at what, who's reliable when things get tight, and who to avoid.
So when something needs doing properly, I'm not trying to sell you whatever I happen to have in-house. I bring in the right person for that job, brief them well, and make sure it all comes together. Senior help when you need it, nothing when you don't.
Some months the most useful thing I do is make an introduction. Fine by me.
And sometimes what a business needs is something I'm already part of.
I co-founded Part Magic because most businesses have far more expertise inside them than ever makes it into their marketing. It sits with people who are too busy, or walks out the door with the last contractor. So we built Editor — an AI content platform that holds a business's own knowledge, its people, products, customers and language, and gets sharper the more it's used.
I'm also an advisor with Innovation Activator, working with Nick Sterling and his team on strategy and execution for growth-minded businesses. A number of the team came out of Callaghan Innovation, so there's real depth on innovation funding and commercialisation. When a business needs that kind of thinking, I'll pull them in.
Only when it genuinely fits. Plenty of the time it doesn't.
People and systems. In parallel.
That's the whole idea.
Two businesses I'm part of. Neither is the default answer — I bring them in only when they're genuinely the right fit for the problem in front of us.
ADVISOR
Growth strategy with Nick Sterling. Innovation Activator works alongside New Zealand businesses on strategy, innovation and commercialisation — with AI where it genuinely adds value.
- Built by Callaghan Innovation alumni
- Business strategy and growth planning
- Innovation, funding and commercialisation
- AI capability, workshops and delivery
CO-OWNER
AI systems for business operations and decisions. Part Magic builds practical, human-led systems that create leads, streamline operations and improve knowledge access.
- Editor — SEO and AEO optimised content
- Custom AI workflows and agents
- Custom apps and interfaces
- The company brain — searchable internal knowledge