Founders: John Evers, 41; Adam Robertson, 34; Tim Wessman, 24
Date launched: January 2006
Startup capital: $80,000 in personal savings, plus $20,000 in prize money from business-plan contests
School: Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah
Product or service: DC50, a wireless handheld device that collects measurements from high-precision surveying instruments.

Tim Wessman (left), who has taught surveying at Brigham Young, CEO Adam Robertson, whose career included stints in manufacturing and product development at Hewlett-Packard and Agilent Technologies and John Evers, a land surveyor, designed the DC50 during three years of field work, upgrading it to improve its speed and usability.

By last summer Precision (www.pssllc.com) had introduced a beta-tested prototype for its first product. The DC50 is a modified Hewlett-Packard calculator, encased in a sturdy shell, that runs custom land-surveying software. Many land surveyors rely on programmable, handheld calculators to gather data used in creating maps and deeds, but the gadgets function slowly and crash often, according to Precision. By relying on software that pares down the tasks to the basic ones, the DC50 - the only non-Windows based product of its kind - promises to speed data collection and to increase productivity by as much as 40 percent. Robertson projects sales of $2.3 million for 2007.

Angels and VCs are calling, but Robertson says he's in no rush to bring in outside capital, preferring to bootstrap the business. The team already has another new product in the pipeline. --David Whitford