Stephen Steddy
Co-founder
Before AI, I kept heavy machinery running. A diesel mechanics apprenticeship took me underground and into the gold mines, where I worked up from serviceman to team leader, then into technical services, bringing SAP and other software into maintenance and production teams, most of it with Newmont Mining Australia. In a mine, you learn fast what happens when a system nobody checks fails.
That’s the instinct behind SAGE8. Small businesses are adopting AI quicker than anyone can check it: exposed keys, unreviewed plugins, tools nobody’s tested against the Privacy Act, and no way to tell whether the AI is paying for itself. Most advisers stop at the report. I advise and build the fix.
The AI products I’ve built are live with NZ students, and I build security-first: changes are tested against an isolated copy of the database, never production, and permissions are re-checked on the server rather than trusting the browser.
After 23 years in mining I took a sabbatical and sailed for seven years across the top of Australia and around the Pacific, arriving in New Zealand in 2015. Since 2016 I’ve been a Technical Manager, replacing paper processes with software. When I found AI in late 2025, I knew it was the next version of the same work.
The name comes from Sage, the second guide dog puppy I raised. The 8 sits where an infinity sign would go; there isn’t one on a keyboard. I raise puppies for Blind Low Vision Guide Dogs New Zealand, and Pixie, number five, is six months old.