John-Daniel Trask, chief executive and co-founder of Software development company Raygun, says he was "a bit of a weird kid".
Trask taught himself how to programme a computer as a 9-year-old, kindling a love of technology.
"I was really just spellbound by software development. I'd always been one of those
kids that really liked playing with Lego and it seemed like programming was like Lego but without physics - the only limitation was my ability to think of how to solve a problem, and that excited me."
Raygun - formerly Mindscape - was founded in 2007 when Trask was just 24. The company builds software that analyses and fixes other software programmes. Trask says his youth was an advantage and aspiring business people should start early.
"I generally try to encourage people to get into business early because I didn't have any children or any real costs and I had always been fairly frugal," he said. "I knew that I could live without taking any money out of the company for a year reasonably comfortably - it turned out I didn't need to wait that long because we got a fantastic deal from Microsoft New Zealand on day one of the company, and that helped put quarter of a million dollars into it."
