When Bodhi Hawken was 17, his uncle told him he wanted to build a paddleboard vending machine on the Murray River.
At the time, it sounded slightly absurd. Renting something physical usually meant someone had to be there, handing it over, checking it back in, keeping track of what was happening. The idea that you could remove that person entirely didn’t really fit with how rentals worked.
But they built it anyway.
What started as a one-off project became one of the first self-service paddleboard setups in the World. Customers could arrive, unlock a board, use it, and return it, all without needing to speak to anyone. It was simple in theory, but surprisingly difficult to get right in practice.
That project didn’t stay isolated. Over the next few years, Bodhi found himself working with more rental businesses trying to automate parts of their operations. Trailer hire companies, equipment rentals, operators experimenting with unattended sites. Each time, the details were different, but the pattern was consistent.
Rentals still depended on people to function.
The insight: traditional rentals don’t scale
Despite being a massive global industry, most rental businesses still operate the same way they always have. There’s a counter, someone on-site, and a process built around manual handovers. That approach works at a small scale, but it starts to break down as soon as you try to grow.
Every new location needs staff. Every booking depends on someone being available. Expanding means committing resources before demand is fully proven, which makes it harder for operators to move quickly or experiment with new sites.
The software supporting these businesses hasn’t helped much either. Most of it was built for that same model, assuming there’s always someone present to manage the transaction.
Over time, it became clear that the limitation wasn’t demand. It was the way rentals were structured.
A different way to run a rental business
Lockii was built around the idea that renting should feel closer to e-commerce than traditional hire.
Instead of coordinating with a person, the entire process can happen automatically. A customer books an item online, verifies their identity, receives a time-limited access code, and picks it up themselves. When they’re done, they return it and submit any required photos or condition reports.
Behind the scenes, Lockii handles the parts that usually require manual oversight, including identity checks, access control, tracking, and communication.
For the customer, the experience is straightforward. For the operator, it removes a significant amount of day-to-day involvement.
Most bookings run from start to finish without anyone needing to step in.
Built from working through the edge cases
What makes this work isn’t just the interface. It’s the experience behind it.
After that first paddleboard setup, Bodhi spent years working closely with operators who were trying to automate their businesses. That meant dealing with the realities that don’t show up in a product spec. Fraud, late returns, damaged equipment, lock failures, and all the small edge cases that can break a system if they’re not handled properly.
Those experiences shaped how Lockii was built.
Rather than adapting traditional rental software, the platform was designed specifically for automated environments, where the system needs to handle not just the happy path, but everything around it.
When it became clear this could work
In the early stages, there was still a question of whether a rental business could run fully without staff involvement.
That changed as operators began using Lockii in real-world environments. Over time, more and more bookings started running end-to-end without intervention. What initially required oversight became something the system could handle reliably on its own.
At that point, the product started to feel less like a tool and more like infrastructure.
Today, they have rentals operating on every continent in the world, customers who've already sold major franchises with Lockii’s tooling and customers who are deploying into larger existing rental businesses as well.
What this unlocks
For operators, the impact shows up quickly. Businesses can run continuously, without being tied to opening hours or staffing constraints. New locations become easier to test and launch, because they don’t require the same upfront investment.
It also changes who can enter the market.
Running a rental business no longer requires a physical storefront or a full team from day one. People can start smaller, often alongside other work, and scale as demand grows.
As more operators adopt this model, the economics become hard to ignore. Assets are used more frequently, overhead is reduced, and expansion becomes less constrained.
A broader shift toward access
Lockii sits within a wider change in how people think about ownership.
Across different categories, more people are choosing to access things when they need them rather than owning them outright. That shift has already happened in areas like media and software, and it’s starting to extend into physical goods.
For that to work at scale, renting needs to become easier.
Right now, it still involves coordination, timing, and friction. Removing those barriers changes the equation. It makes renting something as simple as deciding you need it.
Looking ahead
Lockii is starting with rental businesses that are already pushing toward automation, but the ambition extends further.
The goal is to make it possible to turn any physical asset into a rentable product. In the same way that platforms like Shopify made it easy to start an online store, Lockii is building the infrastructure that allows people to launch and scale rental businesses without needing to rethink how they operate from scratch.
As that becomes easier, the range of things that can be rented expands. What starts with trailers or equipment can extend into almost anything that can be accessed, used, and returned.
And over time, that begins to change how people interact with physical goods altogether.
The ask
If you’re running a rental business, experimenting with self-service models, or building in this space, the team at Lockii would love to hear from you.
Watch them pitch at Demo Day
When: Thursday, 30 April @ 7:00 PM (pre-party starting at 5 PM)
Where: Carriageworks (at the close of Blackbird's Sunrise Festival)
What: Pitch night (19 companies)
Tickets: Grab your ticket here
