It sounds like a classic tech origin story: two men in a garage working with sensitive laser equipment, trying to create something that will not only save lives and improve the world, but justify them both having thrown in their well-paid jobs.

“It was a tiny garage, single car, and I still had an old mattress in there,” Federico Collarte says with a laugh and a slight look of disgust. “And a bicycle, and there was literally no power point, so I had to run an extension cord from the light fitting.” Added to which, it was Sydney in mid-winter without heating, and Collarte’s business partner sniffled and coughed for four months straight.