Built by someone who couldn’t be found either.
The origin story, in third person, because Phillip would rather you read about it than hear him pitch it.
Our mission
To make it easy to find a local business you can actually trust.
Every listing on Hereabouts HQ is a real, registered business that has proven who it is. We want you to spend less time second-guessing search results and wondering if a business is genuine, and more time backing the good operators near you.
How Hereabouts HQ started
In early May 2026, Phillip Lubowicz was talking to a local remedial massage business in Redcliffe, Queensland. The owner asked a simple question: do you know anyone who builds websites?
Phillip’s consulting business already ranked well in search for the kind of work he’d been doing for years, big tech systems, organisations, infrastructure. But for the local plumber down the road, or the cafe two suburbs over? Practically invisible. The owner hadn’t been able to find him. And it turned out, finding any local small business in Australia or New Zealand, verifiably local, verifiably trustworthy, was harder than it should be.
The directories that existed were largely overseas, scraped data, hard to filter for local. The ones that weren’t were expensive for the businesses trying to be listed. Neither really worked for the customer or the business.
Phillip had been a sole trader for years before incorporating, helping small businesses with affordable websites and tech support. He knew what it felt like to be invisible, and he knew what it felt like to be the customer trying to find someone trustworthy. In an age of fake reviews, AI-generated business profiles, and the general unease about whether a business is even based where it claims, the kind of verification he wanted to build didn’t exist.
So he built it.
Hereabouts HQ is a verified Australian and New Zealand business directory. Every business on it is checked against ABN (Australia) or NZBN (New Zealand). Regulated industries, health, legal, finance, real estate, are checked against the right professional bodies. We re-check each registration every couple of weeks (licensed trades and health providers sooner), so a verified badge keeps meaning something, and if a registration lapses the badge comes down. Every verified business gets a numbered physical sticker for their window, traceable back to the directory in seconds.
No scraped data. No overseas listings hiding under “Australian-friendly” labels. No bidding on customer leads. Just verified, real, local, with a sticker on the door to prove it.
Long-term, Phillip wants to keep expanding based on what customers and businesses actually need. Not based on what’s easiest to monetise.
Who’s behind it
Hereabouts was built by IAWSA Consulting Pty Ltd, an Australian cyber security firm. Its Managing Director, Phillip Lubowicz, has spent years protecting organisations, from large corporations to government agencies, against the very impersonation and fraud Hereabouts is built to counter.
In practice, that foundation shapes how the directory works. Every business is here because its owner signed it up, never scraped or imported. Any sharing of a customer’s details is opt-in and off by default. And each listing is checked against the official register and re-checked on a regular cadence, so a verified badge keeps meaning something.
The problem verification is built for
- New Zealanders lost an estimated NZ$2.3 billion to scams in the year to mid-2024, up from NZ$2.1 billion in 2023 (Netsafe and the Global Anti-Scam Alliance, State of Scams in New Zealand 2024), with online shopping scams the most prevalent type.
- Phishing is the most-reported incident to the National Cyber Security Centre, which routinely takes down scam sites impersonating businesses. Postage and financial services are among the most copied.
Instead of asking people to spot a fake, Hereabouts gives a positive, checkable source of truth: a register-verified listing (NZBN register in New Zealand) with the business’s genuine details, re-checked on a cadence, and a numbered sticker anyone can scan on the public lookup.
Sources: Netsafe and the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (State of Scams in New Zealand 2024); National Cyber Security Centre. Figures cited as at July 2026. Verification confirms a business is real and registered; it is not a guarantee against all wrongdoing.
LocalsNearYou
Our consumer discovery brand, same verified data, different lens. Where Hereabouts HQ is the directory and the sticker, LocalsNearYou is how customers stumble across the great local business they didn’t know existed.
Built for New Zealand, run from across the Tasman
We’re an Australian company, and we’re upfront about that. Hereabouts HQ runs the same verification across Aotearoa New Zealand as it does at home: every business checked against the NZBN or its professional body, no scraping, no pay-to-win bidding. Māori-owned businesses are recognised through proper certification from Amotai or an equivalent authority. We’re here to back genuine local businesses, not to play local ourselves.
Our Australian sister site, hereaboutshq.com.au, does exactly the same for businesses over in Australia.