KEY POINTS:
Grant Straker spent his earlier years jumping out of planes in Africa and training in the jungle, but has found converting websites into different languages just as exciting, especially when it involves contracts for the likes of the European Union.
The former British Army paratrooper had not laid
eyes on a computer until he decided to switch to engineering school in the early 1990s. There he sat in front of a chunky monitor with a black screen and green text.
From his first attempt at word processing, it was clear that Straker clicked with computers. He invested in his own PC and every evening after his day job at BOC Gases would sit in the front room of his "manky" Ponsonby flat drawing up spreadsheets.
Word of Straker's computer expertise spread and he accumulated enough odd jobs to justify starting a business.
In 1999 he teamed up with a designer and formed his business, Straker Interactive. It was a time when companies were looking for contractors to help get their business online, and Straker Interactive quickly scooped up clients such as Tourism New Zealand.
Those early years of the internet were a "once-in-a-lifetime environment", Straker says now. The software industry was burgeoning, websites were converting from standard html to dynamic products and everyone in the industry knew one another. Small operators such as his did well because they were adaptable.
Straker doesn't believe in luck, but he believes in good decisions, and specialising in Adobe's new Cold Fusion product proved to be a good move. The company was well-placed when the software took off and large organisations called on experts to work it into their systems.
With its own software and Adobe expertise, the business grew. It moved to a new office on College Hill in Auckland and started to look at opportunities abroad.
Now it has offices in San Francisco, Ireland, Auckland and Sydney, employs 18 staff and has an annual turnover of just under $3 million.
Straker says he didn't have a vision of how he would conquer the world: "We were just playing it by the seat of our pants."
But he had leading technology, skilled staff and was "aggressive" in his approach to expanding outside New Zealand.
The period of high growth slowed about 2005. After the dotcom crash, big vendors who offered solutions for big companies took over the sector and software was evolving quickly.
The period "kind of put a handbrake on business" but the company used it as an opportunity to tighten its systems, Straker says.
"For a couple of years we were working on our technology, positioning ourselves to solve the world's problems."
He saw a new product, Adobe Flex, as the next big thing on the global market so again became an expert in it. That also turned out to be a good decision.
As competition in the computer software sector grew, Straker Interactive also worked to embed itself in a niche - website translation.
The company had a strong bent towards making products in different languages and Straker foresaw the ability to run multi-language websites as an important tool for corporates in the future.
"Enough people have enough issues managing one website; how do they deal with having thousands of pages in different languages? That's what we resolved," he says.
He began attending multi-language conferences, meeting people in the industry, engaging with them and even politely eating their food when it didn't agree with him.
He built a name for himself as the "crazy Kiwi idiot", visiting European clients in a campervan with his entire family in tow.
The company had all the channels in place before he struck the deals: "It's one thing to get them interested in you but another for them to give you a six-figure cheque," Straker says.
Thanks to face-to-face encounters, the business has secured contracts over the past 18 months with big names such as the giant US sporting-goods chain Bass Pro Shop, Canadian financial giant Sun Life and the Malaysian Government. But negotiations for a contract with the European Union - converting 10,000 pages into 22 languages - were conducted online and on the merits of Straker Interactive's software.
Straker doesn't offer in-house translation expertise; that job is done by outside agencies.
This year's contracts saw the company grow 20 to 30 per cent and Straker hopes to increase that to 100 per cent over the next year.
He says he is preparing for $300,000 of software sales from Europe and the United States before Christmas.
With such a rush of business it's no wonder Straker has no desire to return to the rush of jungles and warfare. He is pleased he got that out of his system when he was younger - now he has found his niche and is starting to feel he is "in the flow".
Straker Interactive:
* Chief executive Grant Straker, 18 staff.
* Formed in 1999.
* Sells its trademark software Shado CMS (website content management system) to businesses around the world.
* Translates websites into different languages.
* Picked up a contract with the European Union this year translating 10,000 web pages into 22 languages.
* Is projecting 100 per cent growth over the next year, mostly in language translation.
