Some people use webcams when they’re at work to see what their pets get up to. Software engineer Nathan Li wasn’t quite so desperate when his now 4-year-old daughter started at a childcare centre, but he and his wife did feel they were missing out on a big part of her upbringing.

It was the spark that ignited the idea for Educa, a software as a service product that gives parents and wider families a window to a child’s learning — and gives early childhood centres a learning management tool.
When Li told people he was quitting a successful career at IT services giant Datacom to join smaller consultancy Redvespa, they told him it was career suicide. So you can imagine what they thought earlier this year when he launched Educa and started working 90 hours a week between his day job and the new venture.

“It’s extremely scary to do this on my own. It’s very risky business because you have a child that’s about to start school and a mortgage and suddenly you want to go out on your own with an idea that you don’t even know will be successful. But the way I see this is I’m quite adventurous, I don’t want to stand still. I see starting a company as probably the most challenging and exciting thing in someone’s professional life.”

Li and business partner Lei Zhang are already getting strategic support and resources from Wellington incubator Creative HQ. They entered the Unlimited Investment Challenge to put a rocket behind Educa’s growth plans, which include expanding their system for use on mobile devices, and incorporating speech recognition technology.

“We want to go even faster so we’ll need to have money to do the marketing and sales and take on the market at lightning speed.”

David Bennett is another to quit a well known firm in the pursuit of challenging himself.

Call him crazy, he says, but he reckons his company could become as big as Google.

The former manager of Weta Digital’s facial motion capture team has written provisional patents for some artificial intelligence software, along with a deformable robotic surface. ‘A what?,’ you might ask. It’s an elastic multi-point surface with attached robotic muscles, motors and other drivers — the 3D equivalent of the wire frame commonly used in animation.

Bennett holds a Masters in Fine Arts, but says he “couldn’t be further away from it” in his current career path. Before arriving at Weta he focused on electronics arts, 3D work and virtual reality projects, then got into motion capture. He was recruited to work on the 2004 animated picture Polar Express and says his experience in facial motion capture on this and subsequent movies made him the ‘go to guy’ for evaluating and enhancing such systems.

Bennett quit Weta nearly two months ago to pursue the Mimic startup. He stresses he’s had many collaborators, but he’s been determined in his efforts to develop technology that’s useful in industries like video games, television, film and even the back end workings of the search world occupied by companies like Google and Microsoft.

“I come up with these inventions because I just keep on getting up and trying and I don’t give up. As long as I keep an open mind and don’t mind changing I can create these really viable options for high end robotics. It really energises me to keep on doing this.”

The Unlimited Investment Challenge finalists:

Ackrom: A low cost, energy efficient water recovery system for use in polluted streams.

Communico: Offers controlroom.co — a software as a service product that combines the tools needed to set up a web presence and interact via email and social media.

Educa: Software as a service product for early childhood centres and families with children at early childhood centres.

Healthy Memory Company: Selected by Spark, the University of Auckland Entrepreneurship Challenge.

Hello Dolly Brand: DIY products for women. Think pink hammers.

Kids Friendly Travel: A website for families travelling with children.

Mexis: Invented technology that allows freedom of movement in virtual reality environments.

Mimic Productions: Offers artificial intelligence software and a deformable robotic surface.

PeopleMine: The PeopleMine system adds sales details and analyses data so small businesses can understand concepts like frequency and recency metrics and defection risks.

ProFellow: A database of professional and academic fellowships.

Tru2U: Produces a range of functional foods including Sleep Support and Joint and Muscle Recovery.

Virtuoso Tutoring Services: Offers tutoring to high school students by year 12 and 13 students and first year university students who have achieved highly in a particular subject.

unlimited.co.nz/investmentchallenge