Shauli Zacks
Published on: July 22, 2025
At the intersection of sustainability, connectivity, and smart innovation sits IoT Ventures, a company focused on making the physical world smarter through intelligent, long-range IoT solutions. Whether it’s improving animal health, protecting marine environments, or enhancing agricultural operations, their mission is rooted in building purposeful technology that works seamlessly—even in the most remote corners of the planet.
SafetyDetectives recently interviewed Michael Ellyett, one of IoT Ventures’ founders and current Director, to learn more about the company’s full-stack approach to IoT development, how they overcome the industry’s toughest challenges, and what excites them most about the future of connected devices.
Can you tell us a bit about your background and what led you to join IoT Ventures?
After studying computer science and architecture I worked in the IT industry for a number of decades. I started in technical roles (e.g. operating systems and languages, CAD/GIS), transitioned to whole system design and integration and then on to strategy. I spent decades working with large enterprises trying to help them improve shareholder value through optimisation and transformation
I then wanted to do something that would genuinely make the world a better place. The emergence of LoRaWAN and increasingly smaller, cheaper and more efficient sensors and electronics seemed to open up new ways of improving the environment, and the life of animals so that is now my focus.
IoT Ventures operates across industries like agriculture, animal health, and marine safety—what sets your approach apart in such a competitive and fast-moving field?
We focus ‘end to end’ and believe that only by optimising each element in the technology value chain will you get an optimal solution for a consumer or enterprise. From devices (electronics, enclosures, fixtures) to the firmware on those devices, to the network architecture (terrestrial, satellite, relay, etc) to the systems (logic, user experience, etc).
Many try to do some kind of ‘plug and play’ approach with off the shelf components, no-code systems etc. and while that may quickly produce a PoC and pilot it is not a strategy that we think will lead very directly, or affordably, to an optimised solution.
What are some of the biggest challenges customers face when managing assets in remote or hard-to-reach areas, and how do your LoRaWAN solutions help solve them?
Optimising devices to do exactly what is needed and no more (making sure there are no unnecessary components on devices) and ensuring those devices can be controlled and configured to do just what is essential in different circumstances (e.g. when communications may not be 100% reliable) while ensuring they never run out of power.
Battery life, data reliability, and maintenance can make or break an IoT deployment. How does IoT Ventures tackle those long-term operational concerns?
Our devices typically incorporate solar recharging capability. By enabling end to end dynamic control, we allow systems and users to easily monitor the state of devices and to adjust the behaviour of the devices, sensors, etc so they can recharge.
One really needs to understand the materiality of the data and what exactly is required to allow decisions to be made. We have strategies for dealing with situations where a certain number of messages may be dropped.
Your solutions seem designed for simplicity and ease of use. How do you balance that with the complexity of IoT architecture behind the scenes?
We have established a modular end to end technology framework that deals with many of the complex problems e.g. measuring coverage, determining normals, scoring, control and configuration confirmation and many of the common business concepts e.g. entities, devices, users, areas, places, etc. We then enable solutions to be built on top of that framework that can do precisely what is required (hardware, firmware, software).
It has taken a great deal of work, experience and experimentation to find the right balance between achieving reuse and allowing specialisation.
Looking ahead, what emerging use cases or innovations are you most excited about in the IoT space—and how is IoT Ventures positioning itself to lead in that evolution?
On-device AI shows great promise to allow exponentially more data to be captured, analysed and processed. LoRaWAN satellites, relays and meshes used judiciously provide great opportunities to establish NW coverage exactly where it is needed for the least cost.
The potential to know more about things at increasingly lower costs will allow the health and wellbeing of animals, plants and equipment to be monitored with increasing fidelity. The knowledge gained can be of both immediate and longer term value.
The ability to aggregate data from many sources and apply AI can be expected to give insights into improvements that can be made in almost every area.
We are all on a journey of discovery ie learning more and working out how to optimise the outcomes people seek.
