Lawee's job is to buy start-ups that fit with Google's mission statement to "Organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." He was in town to speak at the CEO Summit: Better by Design, hosted by New Zealand Trade and Enterprise.

Lawee says he agreed to speak because he is a fan of Icebreaker clothing and he had met with its CEO, Jeremy Moon -- who also heads the Better by Design committee -- and who then invited him to the conference.

Lawee says that he gets leads for potential acquisitions from Google's own executives. "The product managers know their business domain pretty well, and we learn about things and work with the product managers to understand what their roadmaps are and see if something they're doing could be accelerated by an acquisition."

In four years of leading acquisitions Lawee has looked at 1000 companies. After being vetted by Google, his recommendations have resulted in 120 acquisitions. Of those, two-thirds can be counted as a success (that is they met financial or technology targets).

Lawee says that over 800 start-ups in Silicon Valley are financed every year but seven out of ten will fail. The companies acquired by Google don't necessarily have to move there, but "software development is definitely easier when you're co-located."