Pharmacist wins $1 million backing for his iPad idea

Brett Fordyce has made the leap from pharmacist to IT entrepreneur. Photo/Stephen Parker

A Rotorua pharmacist turned tech entrepreneur has secured a million-dollar investment for his IT venture, which is attracting worldwide interest.

Brett Fordyce and his business partners have developed an iPad cloud-based content management system called StellarLibrary.com that "brings control to file sharing".

Through word of mouth about 20 international customers - mainly large health and FMCG organisations - have already signed up.

And it's just received an investment of more than $1 million from Andrew Bagnall, who floated Gulliver's Travel in 2004 and sold his 27 per cent stake for $67 million two years later.

"I think it's really exciting times," Mr Fordyce said. "It shows that if you have got a really good idea and you want to make it work and you believe in it you can do it."

It began about fours years ago when Mr Fordyce, who operates the city's Life Pharmacy with wife Frances, started an MBA at Waikato University.

He'd been looking for a change but felt, as a pharmacist, he was "put in a box".

"People don't think you can do anything else."

He'd previously tried an IT project but that wasn't successful so he decided to go back and study, leaving his wife to run the pharmacy.

His thesis was a practical project on introducing iPads into the university's MBA programme.

"We [with study partner Johnny Louie] established it was very, very difficult to get information into iPads that is really easy for the end user to receive."

The system they developed is not an app, but a cloud software service. Unlike file sharing sites, end users can only read files unless specifically granted permission - they can't send them, change them or save them.

"The end user turns on their iPad looked for new information delivered to the iPad, information no longer needed is removed."

He said the system was ideal for companies with a large rep force such as pharmaceutical or FMCG companies but there'd also been interest from universities, company boards, local councils and even boards of trustees.

Mr Fordyce said he'd always had an interest in IT and "making things work more efficiently". No one at Stellar, which also includes Rotorua's Gary McAuliffe, has an IT background meaning the normal rules didn't apply, he said.

"You don't need to be an IT person to run it. We don't even have to talk to the IT department."

Mr Fordyce said the system had been kept under wraps until recently, while it was perfected. Now he was ready to let everyone know.

Part of that was investment, but for Mr Fordyce and his partners the right investor needed to offer more than just money.

They were looking for someone with experience who could act as a mentor.

Mr Bagnall came on board just after Christmas, after a chance meeting at a pharmaceutical conference.

"I have always believed if you don't ever ask ... if you get a no it doesn't matter but if you get a yes . . . so I approached him, said would he like to see something we have been developing. He said yes you can have 20 minutes. About an hour and a half later he said we should probably go down [and join the conference]."

Mr Fordyce said they were now looking at employing more people to help grow the company - "we have just opened the door".

"It's designed as a global company, not just a New Zealand company. If we do it right there's no reason why it shouldn't [be a global success]."