My Account
Grant Straker of Arkles Bay began his career as an ‘action man’, parachuting into the trouble spots of the world as a member of the elite British paratroopers but these days he is more likely to arrive at an international destination carrying a laptop and wearing a suit. The IT company he and wife Merryn formed has grown into a big player on the world stage despite being run from modest offices in Manly. Grant spoke to Terry Moore about making the transition from paratrooper to programmer.
I grew up in West Auckland and my father used to fly Orions for the airforce – in fact both my parents were in the airforce. When Dad left the service, he flew commercial planes in the UK and so my family moved there when I was 14. On leaving school, initially I did an apprenticeship as an aircraft engineer but soon after decided to join the British army, as did two of my three brothers. During my time in the army I served in Africa and the Middle East, Germany, Hong Kong and many other countries in the Parachute Regiment. Being a paratrooper generally involves parachuting behind enemy lines and away from support, so you have to be self-reliant, resourceful and fit. Joining requires a lot of specific training and a stringent selection process. Many of the lessons and discipline I got taught at a young age have served me well during my working life and I would recommend the military forces as the best possible start any young person could have to their career. I was one of the last people ever to guard the Berlin Wall and was there when it was taken down; I was in the Middle East the day Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and had lots of other exciting experiences! There were a lot of good experiences outside the army too, such as the time when a few army mates and I mountain biked across America from Washington DC to Los Angeles, both on and off road, camping as we went.
In the early 1990s I left the army to be a commercial airline pilot. The military is a very prescribed lifestyle, despite all the exciting stuff, so I figured I’d done my time and wanted to get into other things. But all that changed when I was involved in a bad car crash. An out of control truck smashed into my van; it jack-knifed in front of me and I was lucky to survive. My leg was badly damaged and it took a couple of years for the insurance to come through. The injury prevented me passing flying medicals, so I drove a truck for a while. My leg is still a bit smashed up, and I have the scars to this day. Once my National Health money came through I returned to NZ, in 1994, and studied mechanical engineering in the Waikato – that’s what got me into computers. I had never even switched one on until I was 30, but I found I had a gift for programming and it interested me. So, in 1999 when a lot of people were asking me to build programmes for them, I started a computer programming business in my front room in Ponsonby. At the same time I met Merryn and she gave up her join me in the business – her parents thought she was nuts. We started Straker Translations, specialising in multi-lingual content and won some big contracts with Tourism NZ and Tourism Queensland, Australian Mining Companies, British banks and the European Commission. It was pretty successful and lead to a lot of travel – I must have been on 20 around the world trips in the last 10 years, plus several short ones doing business in the USA, Britain, Asia and the freezing skifields of Canada.
A couple of years ago we could see an opportunity to revolutionise the translation industry – having people doing the translations, but with computer programming making it easier and faster, so we could become the fastest translator in the world. We started this at the beginning of last year and it has been hugely successful for us. We have a processing centre in Albany, one in Southern Ireland and recently decided to open a satellite office in Manly. I chose Manly because it’s close to home and means I can respond to fire calls during the day. Three years ago I became a volunteer at Manly Fire Brigade, partly as a foil to desk work and because it’s a great social environment. A lot of my army friends are only leaving the forces now, retiring at around 40, and we keep in touch via Facebook. It made me think how different life is for us; we have got the company which is growing fast and have hired staff at the rate of one or two a month for the last six months in Europe and here, which has been exciting. This year we will generate $4 to 5 million of export revenue. What we are really in the business of, is shipping ideas that help people, from an office that could be based anywhere in the world. Our focus has been to build a New Zealand company – despite an opportunity to build a call centre in Thailand or elsewhere in Asia, but we wanted to keep it based here so we can employ locals. The exciting thing now is to see an opportunity to build a very significant company. We have been a NZ High Tech Award winner and were finalists in the Auckland Business Awards in the High Tech category this year.
At the same time as working hard on our business, Merryn and I are juggling caring for a young family. We have lived in Arkles Bay for eight years and have three children with the eldest seven and the youngest two, including one who has special needs. Merryn works full time in the business too; we’ve worked together for 13 years, and it has its moments, but it works. We moved to the Coast because we work so much and wanted to live by the beach so we can make the most of any time off that we have. We gradually moved the business closer to the Coast, from Ponsonby to central Auckland, then Albany and now Manly. We will have five marketing staff in the Manly headquarters – but have 18 in our Albany office that includes programmers, call centre staff and linguists, as well as four in our office in Ireland. The translation and technology industry that we are part of is huge – worth around $40 billion worldwide. We are leading the world in our sector of this technology and there’s been a lot of international interest – we have had three takeover offers in the past year. However my dream is one day to have a company that employs anything from 100 to 1000 New Zealanders and right now I can see the potential for that to become a reality.
If I hadn’t had that car accident, my career, and life, would have taken a completely different path. But although all the plans I’d had for my future went out the window just like that after the accident, it also gave me the cash buffer to do different things. Recently I’ve been thinking about getting back into flying and that means starting again from scratch to get a pilot’s licence. The plan I’ve been hatching is to fly around the world with my Dad, who is aged 72. I haven’t told him about it yet, but I am pretty sure he would be keen; he still flies from Ardmore whenever he can. There would be enough danger and thrills involved in a trip like that to make it interesting. It will take at least a year to plan it properly and you need a lot of time so you can pick suitable weather, so I guess we won’t be going until 2014 or later. When you work really hard you have to have aims, and the older you get the more urgent it becomes to get them done. When I get ideas I tend to carry them out so this is definitely going to happen.
