Lockii

What Lockii does

A customer books and pays online, a smart lock releases the equipment, and the system handles the return, so a paddleboard hire, a tool library or an equipment yard can operate around the clock. Bodhi Hawken founded it in Melbourne after four years building bespoke systems for rental operators, and it launched in October 2025 through the Startmate accelerator.

The secret

Every rental business runs on the same loop of book, unlock, return, and every one of them was paying someone to stand there for it. Lockii makes the lock the shopfront, which turns a business that needed a staffed counter into one that needs a box and a phone.

Why NZVC invested in Lockii

NZVC invested in Lockii. We file the company under AI and B2B SaaS on the portfolio wall.

We backed Lockii because the rental economy is enormous, fragmented and almost entirely unautomated, and Bodhi Hawken had already spent four years learning it from inside operators before he productized it. A solo technical founder who ships fast and knows the customer's night shift by name is the profile we look for, and Lockii's model of software plus a lock gives it a physical footprint competitors cannot copy from a laptop.