What Figure NZ does

Figure NZ is a non-profit charitable trust, established around 2013 in Auckland, New Zealand, that operates a free, public-facing data visualisation platform at figure.nz. Its primary product is a collaborative website that aggregates statistics on New Zealand from 40-plus providers — including Stats NZ, multiple government ministries, academic institutions (NZIER, Motu Research, NIWA), and private sector organisations (Chorus, InternetNZ) — and presents them as charts, tables, and maps organised by topic. The platform is complemented by specialised sub-products: Business Figures (industry and employment data), four community data hubs for Māori, Pacific, Disability, and Youth audiences, Tohu (public CC-BY documentation of how the organisation operates), and the 'It Figures' blog on Medium.

Under the hood, Figure NZ built and maintains 'Grace', a proprietary in-house software pipeline used by the Data team to extract, standardise, and transform disparate provider datasets into best-practice open formats suitable for visualisation on the public site. The Development team implements and manages this software stack and the public-facing web platform.

Figure NZ operates as a charitable trust with no direct user charges; the service is free to all users. Revenue consists of partner and patron contributions (ASB Bank has been a cornerstone financial partner since April 2016), supplemented by in-kind advertising through the Google Ad Grants programme. Go-to-market is product-led and community-led: self-serve web access with organic discovery via search and topic browsing, plus targeted outreach through community data hubs. The organisation is led by Founder and CEO Lillian Grace, with a small (1-10) remote-first team structured into eight functional teams (Governance, Partners, Data, Product, Development, Communications, Organisation, Operations).

Name

Figure NZ

Legal name

Figure NZ Trust

Website

https://figure.nz

Company type

Private

Founded year

2012

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Figure NZ is a non-profit charitable trust that provides a free, publicly accessible platform for searching, browsing, and visualising New Zealand statistics aggregated from government, academic, and private-sector providers. It serves the general New Zealand public, educators, students, and specific community groups through dedicated data hubs.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Headquarters

HQ city

Auckland

HQ country

New Zealand

HQ region

Oceania

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2C

Offering type

Digital Commerce or Content

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Partner Funding: Revenue comes from partner organisations and patrons who support the mission of promoting data use in Aotearoa New Zealand. ASB Bank is mentioned as a cornerstone partner since 2016.
2. Google Ad Grants: In-kind advertising through Google Ad Grants programme that promotes coverage of certain topics.

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels1 record

Marketing channels4 records

Core offering

Figure NZ Trust operates a free, collaborative web platform (figure.nz) that aggregates data from 40+ government agencies, private sector organisations, and academic bodies about New Zealand, then standardises and visualises the data as charts, maps, and tables for public use. The platform includes specialised community data hubs for Māori, Pacific, Disability, and Youth communities, plus a Business Figures section covering industries and employment in Aotearoa.

Product overview

Figure NZ operates a data visualization platform centered around its main website (figure.nz), where users can freely search, browse, and interact with figures about New Zealand through charts, maps, and tables organized by topics. The platform is complemented by specialized offerings including Business Figures (industry and employment data), Community Data Hubs (targeted data for Māori, Pacific, Disability, and Youth communities), and Tohu (public documentation about the organization). Content is created using Grace, custom in-house software for data extraction and standardization, while the It Figures blog on Medium provides updates and case studies. Most material is licensed under Creative Commons CC BY 3.0 New Zealand.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• It Figures: A blog publication by Figure.NZ featuring articles about data visualization, organization updates, and case studies.
• Tohu
• Grace

Products and services

• Figure.NZ Platform A collaborative, free web platform presenting data on a wide range of subjects relevant to New Zealanders. Users can search, browse, and interact with figures about New Zealand through charts, tables, and maps organised by topics such as Technology, Crime, Health, and more. Content is aggregated from 40+ government agencies, private sector organisations, and academic bodies.
• Business Figures A specialised section of the Figure.NZ website focused on jobs and industries in Aotearoa New Zealand, covering sectors such as Farming, Construction, Retail, and Science. It provides workforce and industry data tailored for users researching the New Zealand economy.
• Community Data Hubs Specialised data portals for different communities in Aotearoa, including Māori (maori.figure.nz), Pacific (pacific.figure.nz), Disability (disability.figure.nz), and Youth (youth.figure.nz) communities, providing tailored data, reports, and tools for community-specific exploration and engagement.

Named customers3 records

Segments6 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Feature3 records

Partnerships

Three partnerships are on record, tiered core.

• Stats NZ (Tatauranga Aotearoa)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerStats NZ is shown as a key partner committed to promoting data use in Aotearoa. They are a primary government data provider and partner in boosting data literacy and making public data available for free.
• InternetNZcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerInternetNZ is shown as a key partner committed to promoting data use. They support efforts to boost data literacy and make public data accessible to all New Zealanders.
• Data Providers (40+ organisations)coreOthersData providers include government agencies (Stats NZ, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education, MBIE, Inland Revenue, etc.), private sector (Chorus, InternetNZ), and academic/research organisations (NZIER, Motu Research, NIWA, OECD). They provide the underlying data that powers the platform.

Scale indicators2 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights4 records

Direct peers

• Our World in Data: Non-profit research and data publication organisation that produces free, open-access data visualisations on global issues; structurally and missionally the closest analog to Figure NZ's free, curated, visualisation-led open-data model.
• Open Data Institute: UK-based non-profit founded to advocate and build capacity around open data; mission-aligned non-profit operating in the same open-data education and accessibility space as Figure NZ.
• Statista: Major commercial data-publishing platform that aggregates statistics from public and private sources and presents them via charts and dashboards; the closest commercial analog to Figure NZ's chart-led data product, though monetised via subscription rather than partner funding.

Broad incumbents

• data.govt.nz: New Zealand's official government open-data portal operated by Stats NZ; complementary to Figure NZ as both curate and publish NZ public-sector data, though Figure NZ adds visualisation and community layers on top of these underlying datasets.
• OECD Data Explorer: OECD's free public data platform publishing international statistics with charts and visualisations; operates as a broader incumbent data-publishing portal that OECD already includes among Figure NZ's providers.
• World Bank Open Data: Free, public global development-data portal publishing thousands of indicators with visualisations; large-scale open-data publishing incumbent comparable in product functionality to Figure NZ's chart-led approach.
• Data.gov (United States): U.S. federal government's flagship open-data portal hosting machine-readable datasets from hundreds of agencies; a wider incumbent in government open-data publishing that operates at far greater scale than Figure NZ but on the same premise.
• Stats NZ (Tatauranga Aotearoa): New Zealand's official national statistics office and a cornerstone partner of Figure NZ; produces the underlying government datasets Figure NZ republishes and is the closest incumbent statistical agency.

Emerging players

• Kaggle: Data-science community platform with a large public datasets catalogue and visualisation tools; overlaps with Figure NZ on open dataset publishing and community engagement, but targets data scientists rather than the general public.
• Google Dataset Search: Google's free dataset discovery tool that indexes thousands of public datasets across providers; competes indirectly as the entry point many users take to find NZ-relevant datasets instead of starting at Figure NZ.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/FigureNZ
• Facebookfacebook.com/FigureNZ
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/figure-nz

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles9 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Figure NZ