SurveyLab gets covered this week in an article pointing to their No.8 thinking.

Company founder Leon Toorenburg couldn’t find a device to fit the job so he built his own.

That job was trying to survey sites for radio masts in Kenya using a combination of a camera, a global positioning system locator and notepads.

A couple of years later ike was born. Ike stands for “It Knows Everything” and is a camera, GPS locator, compass and handheld computer rolled into one.

Chief executive Andy Nicoll said: “The concept is taking a picture to put on a map with a GPS location, and being able to do it from up to a kilometre away.”

He said ike was the only device in the world that could do this. Other GPS devices with cameras tell you where the camera is. “There is nothing else that does what this does.”

Technorati : No.8, Surveylab

Interesting piece in BusinessWeek on What Not To Do.

NZ Herald interviews Jenny on life as a VC and our focus at N0. 8 ventures. Some highlights:

No 8’s investments, by their nature, offer potentially high returns but carry relatively high risk.

“The role of the venture capitalist is to aggressively manage down that risk,” says Morel.

That’s done through the rigorous pre-investment due diligence and by being “a very active mentor for the companies’ management”.

Morel’s work in assisting the development of the kind of technology-based companies the Government hopes will increasingly power the economy in years to come earned her a gong in the last New Year’s honours.

At the time, she was surprised her work with No 8 had been recognised so quickly.

“We think we’re building some great companies but we haven’t got them through to an exit which gives returns to our investors. Some of the companies we’ve been in for a long time I think are going to do well but their returns aren’t realised yet.”

Among the companies she thinks will pay off are telco billing systems supplier Argent Networks, early-stage cancer therapeutics company Proacta, industrial scale composting company VCU Technology and 3D graphics outfit Right Hemisphere.

Technorati : No 8 Ventures, Venture Capital