About
I build free tools people trust, and I build for clients.
I'm James Graham. For seventeen years I have been making practical knowledge easier to reach, and turning data into decisions for the organisations I have worked with. Crucible is my company: the products I have built, and the work I now do for other businesses.
Who I am
Numbers to keep it honest. People to keep it real.
I'm a data and analytics professional, and I have worked as a quantitative analyst for agencies and companies. At the University of Auckland I took a BA in Human Geography, with spatial analysis and mapping, and Biological Anthropology. Studying how people live and behave alongside how places and data are measured shaped how I work. The numbers keep the work honest. The study of people is a constant reminder that behind every calculation is a real person making a real decision, often at the kitchen table late at night.
I have led teams of up to 17 analysts, engineers, designers and content specialists, and the 32 people who have worked on my teams rate me 4.97 out of 5. Across my own ventures that has also meant doing every part of the job myself: finding the question, sourcing the figures, building the tool, getting it found and making it pay for itself. That end-to-end view is what clients get.
I'm also, by most measures, deeply introverted. I have turned down television and radio over the years because the spotlight was never the point. The person with the question was.
What people say
James is a deep thinker and a brilliant analyst. His ability to see through data / information and surface the story is second to none.
What sets him apart as a data leader is his integrity with the numbers. He takes the time to understand the question being asked, and he makes sure the data leads to the right conclusion, even when an easier story is available.
From recommendations on James’s LinkedIn profile.
Recognition
Checked by others.
The story so far
- 2009A free course and a small grantIn the global financial crisis I completed New Zealand Trade and Enterprise's free "Be Your Own Boss" programme and received one of the two grants given to the strongest business cases. That small help, at the worst economic moment in a generation, changed the direction of my life. Everything since passes it forward.
- 2011The first calculatorA plain, fast GST calculator reached the top of Google within weeks. I could not outspend the established players, so I outworked them: narrow gaps the big companies ignored, domain names that matched exactly what people searched for, and tools that simply worked better.
- 2011 to 2019More than 200 free sitesOne calculator became ten, then fifty, then more than two hundred sites, each answering one question for one group of people. At its peak the portfolio ranked among the top ten Google publishers in New Zealand.
- 2015Exams For NursingFree NCLEX, HESI and college exam practice for nursing candidates who could not afford paid preparation. It became the world's number one nursing exam website and reached several million people.
- Along the wayPropertyPrice and SalaryPropertyPrice.co.nz brought property price transparency to more than 400,000 people. Salary.co.nz published pay ranges across more than 200,000 roles. When a prominent business figure offered to buy that data, I declined: it was built for the people using it. Both are now retired.
- 2019Calculate.co.nzI brought the sites together into one platform held to one standard. Since early 2020 it has been the calculation partner of interest.co.nz.
- February 2026Crucible is incorporatedCrucible Investments Limited was formed to hold the products and the work.
- 2026Three new productsCalculatorHub.com took the Calculate.co.nz standard to the world. Jobtracker.co.nz turned it on the job hunt, on a domain I bought in 2021. Understand.co.nz applied it to understanding itself. All three are built with AI-assisted engineering and human checking.
- September 2026Crucible full timeCrucible became my full-time work: running our own products, and bringing the same capability to other businesses.
- October 2026Diamond awardCalculate.co.nz won a Diamond award at the Selwyn Responsible Business Awards, run by the Lincoln Envirotown Trust.
Why the name
Where ideas converge.
A crucible is the vessel that holds separate materials through the heat and turns them into something that did not exist before.
Different skills, one place
Data, maths, engineering, search and commercial sense, held together. Combined, they find answers none of them would find alone.
New from existing
Good products rarely come from one new idea. They come from joining two that were already there, such as an official tax table and the question a person types late at night.
Shaped by the heat
A crucible does not just hold things, it changes them. We test an idea, question its assumptions and keep working it until people can use it.
More than the parts
The thread through all five products. Each joins two things that already existed, official figures and real questions, knowledge and clear teaching, and makes them more useful together.
What carries across
The standard behind every product.
The same rules run through all five products, and through client work.
Built from primary sources, never copied
Every calculator is written from scratch against an official source and tested against a worked example, so the formula and the published answer agree.
Defined once
Shared rates and thresholds live in central data files. Change the GST rate or an ACC levy once and every tool that uses it follows.
Checked on a schedule
Sources are re-checked on a cycle, and automated sweeps catch broken logic and stale figures across the whole library.
Corrected in public
Report an error and it gets fixed promptly. On Understand.co.nz, a reported error comes down the same day and every correction is listed.
Free, and not for sale
No sign-up, no profiling, and personal data is never sold. Where there are ads, they never come at the expense of the tool.
Why Crucible
CrucibleWhere ideas converge.
I chose the name for what a crucible does. It is the vessel that takes separate materials, holds them through extreme heat and turns them into something that did not exist before. Ideas work the same way.
Most of what I have built came from joining two things that already existed: an official tax table and the question someone types late at night, a school topic and a clearer way to explain it, a job advert and what the job really pays after tax. The common thread is not an industry or a technology. It is seeing the connection between things, then doing the work to turn it into something useful.
Crucible is where that happens: product, data and commercial skill in one place, proven on our own products before we use them on yours.
The products stay free and keep their promises. Client work is how Crucible brings the same craft, and the same AI-assisted, human-checked method, to New Zealand businesses that need it a few days a week or for one important project.
The promise
I live in a small country village west of Christchurch, in Canterbury, raising my young family. Much of what I build is the help I would want my own children to find if they were ever the person on the other side of the screen. There is a line usually credited to Robert Ingersoll that sits at the centre of all of it: we rise by lifting others.
How we buildPrinciplesEvery number, sourcedWhat we are working on now