About

For more than twenty-five years I have moved between businesses and industries — sometimes as founder, sometimes as investor, sometimes inside the company as operator, sometimes as adviser when the people in the room need someone who has actually been there.

I was CTO of Aston Resources through its A$400 million IPO and the period leading to a merger with Whitehaven Coal reported at approximately US$3 billion. I co-founded Reddog Technology in 2004 and sold to customers in 2017. I was inside the Newcastle Knights and Newcastle Jets when both clubs needed corporate restructure and modern systems. I was Chief Technology Officer at Patinack Farm — joining before the business was established and helping build it from inception into one of Australia's major thoroughbred racing and breeding businesses, valued at approximately A$500 million or more at the time. I co-founded Laikim PNG — strategy, capital and technology — in one of the harder operating environments I have worked in.

Those are not entries on a CV designed to impress. They are situations where the answer was not obvious, the stakes were real, and someone had to make decisions, persuade people, raise capital, change direction and live with the consequences.

I have worked in mining, finance, technology, manufacturing, tourism, fashion and professional sport. I started working with drones in 2002, before most businesses had a category for them. I have spent time in Papua New Guinea, Mongolia, South Africa, Indonesia and dozens of other countries — often where the business problem and the human problem are the same problem wearing different clothes.

The breadth is not accidental. I am usually useful when a situation does not fit one professional box — when strategy is fine on paper but something in the people, the incentives or the way the problem is framed is determining the outcome.

Much of my work now is direct: with investors, founders and owners inside businesses, around capital, transactions, and problems where the situation on the ground does not match what everyone thought they were buying.

Nathan is also the author of The Art of Gaslighting.

The book challenges the accepted definition of gaslighting. Nathan argues that making someone doubt their reality is an effect of gaslighting rather than the underlying mechanism.

His work focuses on the use of existing fears, perception, interpretation and the way human beings can mistake internally generated meaning for external reality.

Long before it was fashionable, I was experimenting with drones, data, robotics and customer technical work — including projects around retail loss prevention, asset management, video analysis and permissions systems. That is evidence of technical depth over time, not a claim to be an AI or machine-learning specialist.

Specific situations are on the track record pages. Current and past company involvement — with the relationship stated — is on Companies & Investments.

Bare Metal — a separate methodology for identity and performance constraints. Not the same as commercial advisory work on this site.

Further reading: Track record · Companies & investments · Where business took me · Speaking