Max Ferguson, founder and chief executive of high-flying software company Lumin PDF, based in Christchurch, has his roots on the West Coast as a member of the Ferguson farming family at Waipuna Station.
Lumin PDF is a cloud-based PDF editor and document management system that enables online editing of otherwise locked PDF documents.
From one employee last year, the company now has eight based in Christchurch, 52 in Vietnam, four in the Ukraine and five in the Philippines.
Over the past year, it increased by 20million users to 56million.
‘‘We are even in Antarctica,’’ Dr Ferguson said.
He was keen to enable developing countries to use it free of charge.
Educated at Totara Flat School and Christ’s College, he went on to study at the University of Canterbury before winning a Fulbright Scholarship to the Leland Stanford Junior University in the United States.
At Stanford, he studied the development of artificial intelligence, including collision avoidance for driverless cars. He returned to Canterbury last year.
The EY entrepreneur of the year was to be announced September 7 but that will probably be delayed due to Covid-19. — Greymouth Star
