KEY POINTS:
David McKee Wright is understandably chipper. Four years after announcing plans to create a world-leading company that essentially builds boats with wheels - to general derision - Sealegs is on the verge of turning a profit.
It posted an almost break-even result for the year ending March 31,
falling short by $278,000.
Over the same period, it has doubled revenue, staff numbers and factory space. Income has grown more than 75 per cent a year since the company's inception, and its boats are now in 14 countries, with four months of back orders to clear.
Strong interest has also been shown for its rescue vehicles, which are the subject of tendering cycles with Governments in Italy, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Australia.
"It's a global opportunity and we've only just started," says McKee Wright.
Validation, it seems, is just around the bend.
"One of the reasons we stuck at Sealegs was because it was so very easily laughed at.
"It was more easily mocked than it was taken seriously, and over the last four years we've vindicated ourselves, if you like, for bringing that idea to market, for bringing it to a publicly listed company, for introducing it to 2500 shareholders who now not only believe in the product, but believe in the company's future as well."
What were choppy seas when McKee Wright started the journey are now calmer waters.
But it was pretty stomach-churning stuff at the beginning when Sealegs joined the stock market in 2002 by moving into the shell of tech company IT Capital.
The reverse listing and restructure was not well received. The original business plan to create a hands-on listed venture-capital entity that would establish several companies - Sealegs included - failed. The share price fell as low as 2c, compared with the closing price yesterday of 39c, down from a 52-week high of 64.5c.
Today, the company's shareholders include institutions such as Fisher Funds. Some of them have been there since the beginning, and their patience may finally be rewarded.
McKee Wright says there has been a battle between the hunger for aggressive growth and becoming profitable quickly.
"You can't do one without the other - do we invest in our technology, do we invest in our business for long-term profitability and sustainability, or do we take a short-term view and make money now? And that decision is an evolutionary one that you make as you go through."
Turning a profit is likely in the next financial year. Revenue next year is expected to nearly double from $9.6 million to $18 million.
Sealegs, on the surface, may seem a world away from McKee Wright's beginnings as an accountant with Fortune 500 company Rohm and Haas.
From there he joined PC Direct, where he met its co-founder, entrepreneur Maurice Bryham. That marked the beginnings of a partnership that has spanned three companies. McKee Wright was at the helm of PC Direct when it was sold to Eric Watson's Blue Star Group for $30 million.
He partnered with Bryham again in 1998. Together with Mark Loveys, they started financial software company Exonet International, which expanded rapidly and was sold to ASX-listed Solution 6 for $37.5 million.
McKee Wright stayed on as the managing director of Solution 6 for a year before teaming up with Bryham again to rebuild IT Capital, which later became Sealegs International. McKee Wright sees a common thread running through Sealegs and all his previous companies: technology.
"Sealegs genuinely revolutionises the boat, you could take a boat where you couldn't take a boat before."
But its value does not lie in the boat itself, but in its patented technology. His grand plan for the company is in the licensing of its technology - not in the building of the boats.
"That vision, if you like, gets me up in the morning, energises me because I can really see Sealegs being used all around the world one day." But that ambition doesn't mean the company dominates his life.
"I believe if you can have any skill set in your life, I think balance is it.
"I believe you live your life in five buildings: one's your church, one's your work, one's your home, one's your gym, and one's your solitary space where you can do your own thinking. I try and just disperse my time over those five houses equally.
"Sometimes one house screams louder than the other, so you've got to put more attention to it. But over the course of a month, a year, I always try to make sure that I spend time in each house."
One of his greatest joys is watching his older son, Zachary, 8, play soccer or swim, or daughter Sky, 6, at ballet.
"I was raised a very staunch Catholic but in modern-day society, where - I'm a technology enthusiast - it's pretty easy to discredit the traditional Bible, the traditional religion, but it's very difficult to discredit the values of religion. The values of religion are still important. What's good is good, and what's bad is bad.
"So I teach my kids the values of honesty, and working hard, and being true to yourself and to other people, strength of your own character. And strength of your own body, looking after yourself.
"You get one shot at life, enjoy it."
Born in Auckland to a Malaysian Indian mother and New Zealand father, McKee Wright grew up in Singapore where his father, Ken, was stationed with the Army.
The option of living anywhere in the world is a real prospect for him, yet he remains resolutely in New Zealand.
"I get really tired of New Zealand weather, and I'd very happily up sticks and live on the Gold Coast ... but I think that's true of anybody. What keeps you in your country are the people around you - not necessarily the weather, or the land that's around you, it's the people around you."
But this is not a man who'd happily retire once he's got the BMW, bach and boat - with wheels, of course.
"I do think about it every day. What drives me? Wanting to succeed.
"I badly want Sealegs to succeed. It had a controversial start so I wanted to make that good.
"We've fixed that now. Having kids as well; all my last ventures have sold and disappeared. You've got money in your pocket, but your kids ask, 'well, actually, what did you do with your life, daddy?' And you say, 'I dunno, I put money in my pocket'.
"With Sealegs, I could say, 'well I did that'."
DAVID McKEE WRIGHT
* Chief executive, Sealegs International
* Age: 39.
* Education: Woodlands School, Singapore.
Sacred Heart College, Auckland.
* National diploma of accountancy, Manukau Institute of Technology.
* Qualified Associate Chartered Accountant.
* Married to Christina with "3.5 children" - Zachary, 8, Sky, 6, Cobie, 1, and another due in December.
* Interests: Spending time with family, waterskiing, squash and watching the children play sports.
Career:
* 1990-1994: Accountant, Rohm and Haas.
* 1994-1996: Financial controller, PC Direct.
* 1996-1998: Managing director, PC Direct.
* 1998-2000: Co-founder & managing director, Exonet International.
* 2001: Exonet sold to ASX-listed Solution 6, and McKee Wright assumes the role of Solution 6's managing director.
* 2002: Joined IT Capital, later known as Sealegs.
