Industrial Drone Trailblazer Rory San Miguel Recognised by Pearcey Foundation

The Pearcey Foundation today announced Rory San Miguel, co-founder and CEO at Propeller, as the recipient of the 2025 NSW Pearcey Entrepreneur of the Year Award. The award was presented at an event in Sydney last night by Emma Weston, the 2023 NSW award recipient.

Rory San Miguel co-founded Propeller to revolutionise site surveying in construction and mining through drone-enabled analytics. Propeller's integrated platform, which combines drone imagery with ground control technology and cloud-based analysis, allows teams to measure, model and manage worksite progress with unprecedented ease. Under Rory's leadership, Propeller has grown into a global business with operations in Australia and the US, and partnerships with DJI and Trimble. His work has brought enterprise-grade geospatial insights to industrial sectors, enabling more efficient and safer worksites.

"At the Pearcey Foundation we love to see Australian entrepreneurs forging ahead in new and emerging technology fields and taking that success globally. Rory is the perfect example of this, applying drone technology with Propeller to solve intractable problems and create greater efficiencies across a range of industries in innovative and revolutionary ways," said Benjamin Chong, partner at Right Click Capital and chair of the NSW Pearcey judging committee.

The Pearcey NSW Entrepreneur Award is presented to an outstanding individual who has "taken a risk, made a difference and is an inspiration to others" in the NSW ICT industry. The process draws on nominations from the public and the Pearcey Foundation network. Selection is made in consultation with past award recipients to ensure the continued integrity and quality of this peer-based recognition.

About Rory San Miguel

Rory grew up in his words "making go-karts and fixing engines, and mucking around with the computer"., before starting a degree in mechatronics, robotics, and automation engineering at the University of New South Wales (UNSW).

At UNSW Rory and a group of friends started a maker society club called Create, where they bought engineering parts in bulk from China and resold them to other students. The club made $50,000 in the first six months, had a thousand members and won UNSW's Club of the Year.

Create held weekly courses to teach non-engineering students how to use robot parts to make things like clap-on light switches, with the university eventually paying the club to teach to high school students. A spin-off club called Create UAV taught students how to build and fly drones, which was Rory's hobby project. 

While at university, Rory worked as an intern at a startup called Taggle when he encountered another company in the same building starting a drone delivery company called Flirtey. Asking if they needed a drone person, within 48 hours, he became one of a group of co-founders, along with fellow Propeller co-founder Francis Vierboom.

In 2014, Rory and Francis started their own company to leverage drones for other applications. They discovered how difficult it was for construction companies who'd been using drones to do photogrammetric surveying to make maps of worksites, so developed Propeller as a way to make better maps.

Propeller now has more than 300 employees globally, and has raised over US$35m from investors including Blackbird, Costanoa Ventures, Aware Super, Canva co-founder Cliff Obrecht, and Aconex co-founder Leigh Jasper's fund Saniel Ventures.

As the NSW Pearcey Award recipient, Rory will represent the State in the Pearcey National Awards to be held in November.

For more information about previous NSW Pearcey Entrepreneur Award recipients, go to https://www.pearcey.org.au/awards/state/nsw. 

Other State Awards

ACT Awards: Professor Lachlan Blackhall, Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research and Innovation) at the Australian National University, was the recipient of the 2025 ACT Chief Minister's Pearcey Award. More details on PRWire here.

Queensland Awards: the awards will be presented in Brisbane at a dinner on 22 October 2025. Tickets include pre-dinner canapés, a 3-course meal and drinks. Corporate tables will have signage with the organisation's logo. 

South Australian Awards: nominations can be submitted at https://www.pearcey.org.au/awards/nominations/state-nomination-form.  

Tasmanian Awards: the awards will be presented as part of Enterprize Elevate 2025 in Hobart on Tuesday, 28 October 2025. More event details and registration at https://luma.com/hh4gr3uu.

Victorian Awards: the award was presented to Sam Kroonenberg, the co-founder and co-CEO of Cuttable, founding partner of Glitch Capital and co-founder and CEO of A Cloud Guru. More details on PRWire here.

Western Australian Awards: Chris Morrissey, founder and CEO of Ever Nimble, was the recipient of the 2025 Western Australian Pearcey Entrepreneur of the Year Award. The award was presented as part of the 34th annual WAITTA INCITE Awards, Western Australia's longest running tech awards program. More details on PRWire here.

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About the Pearcey Foundation
The Pearcey Foundation Inc. is a non-profit organisation established in 1998 to raise the profile of the Australian Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry and profession. It was created in the memory of one of the greatest pioneers of the Australian ICT industry, Dr Trevor Pearcey. By celebrating the heroes in our industry, past present and future, the Foundation is looking to attract and encourage young Australians into this most exciting of global high technology sectors of our nation.
Web: www.pearcey.org.au

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