By Dita de Boni
They used to say you could tell you were an engineer because you had no life - and could prove it mathematically.
But the blokes at M2 Technologies claim the right amount of venture capital could help them fulfil "every engineer's dream: wealth, success and happiness" as suppliers to the world of a range of high-tech solutions.
M2 was founded in 1991 as an engineering contract design company by Mark Perkin (M1) and Mark Watt (M2), but the company soon found a limit to consultancy work in this country and last year hired former Dannevirke High School chums Ahmad Zainudin and Peter Bodley to start aggressively canvassing for projects overseas.
Mr Zainudin, originally from Malaysia, has been busily trotting the globe over the past year looking for contract work and selling the company's patented inventions. But he says New Zealand's provincial reputation tends to precede him.
"I was in Singapore and meeting an old friend," he says.
"When I explained I was living in New Zealand, he thought I must definitely be working in sheep farming.
"We have a big problem with perception when we are trying to sell New Zealand as a high-tech venture capital partner."
While M2 has had problems raising seed capital in New Zealand - chief technical officer Mr Watt says they have only just qualified for an overdraft at the bank - the company has struck up some very profitable deals overseas, both with contract work and their own inventions.
M2 is working on three creations of its own. One is a GSM (digital telephone network) "party-line" to be installed in South Africa.
General manager Peter Bodley says the project, which is a 50/50 joint venture with a French company, uses GSM digital technology because analogue copper phone lines are expensive and are often ripped out by enterprising thieves.
Another system the company has patented, in a joint venture with an Australian company, is a centralised system for hotels to deliver cheap Internet services to guests and cut costs by 70 per cent to 80 per cent, according to Mr Zainudin.
The third project is a GSM alarm allowing up to 32 houses or 128 zones to be alarmed on one "line." Mr Bodley says it has huge potential for apartment buildings.
The company has also been contracted to make car alarm systems, again for South Africa, which permit a GSM phone to contact a lost or stolen car and "tell" it to switch off or determine levels of fuel. A global positioning system (GPS) will give the vehicle's location.
"With New Zealand as the second most dangerous country after South Africa, we could have plenty of business for that here soon," jokes Mr Bodley.
While Mr Zainudin reckons the company makes about $1 million a year from consultancy work, including a contract from Mitsubishi - the only one granted to a company outside Japan - the men believe they could increase the figure 4000 per cent if they could raise enough capital to fund more development and the manufacture of products.
"Seed capital for R and D in this country is a huge problem," says Mr Zainudin. "We are going to apply for a Technology New Zealand grant, but the paperwork alone takes about 150 hours."
Mr Zainudin and Mr Bodley cite overseas examples where software researchers, mostly from Silicon Valley, are paid to create IT villages in host countries and work on attracting high-tech venture capital.
"New Zealand is too small and far away from anything to make manufacturing a viable industry," says Mr Zainudin.
"We should be marketing ideas and innovations because it is cheaper and, anyhow, a much more satisfying line of work than boring factory jobs.
"We could attract more foreign interest if we changed our attitudes and trusted our abilities instead of just promoting tourism all over the globe. Let's get migrants down here to work on R and D by promoting the lifestyle - there's really nothing much else to come here for."
Mr Watt says when they visited the United States to drum up venture capital - "no one in New Zealand lends out $10 million at a time" - they were asked to move their operations to the US and offered the very enticing incentive of unlimited work and research opportunities.
But although the company is dismayed with a lack of support for high-tech ventures in New Zealand, they say they are also attracted to the lifestyle and believe they can bridge borders using a highly placed network of expatriate New Zealanders.
"We hope to get the business and then contract out the manufacturing part - locally or internationally, wherever is most profitable," says Mr Zainudin.
"An IT company has high overheads: salaries are high and equipment is expensive, so it makes a lot more sense to outsource to cover a potentially very high workload."
All three principals had a chance to expound their theories for the benefit of Sir William Birch, who scheduled a 90-minute meeting at M2 just before the Government's Five Steps Ahead plan was released last week.
"We told him it was better to focus the promotion of New Zealand on attracting money to high-tech R and D ventures than anything else," says Mr Zainudin.
Mr Watt: "The Government has to be involved for New Zealand to progress - and banks open to hearing the requests of technology pioneers.
"I had to mortgage my house to get enough capital, and I know that most high-tech companies are working on owners' capital alone.
"Yes, high-tech ventures can be high risk, but not many fail and when they do, it's usually from exactly that - a lack of capital."
High-tech ideas need nurturing
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