Luminus Devices Founder and Chief Technology Officer Alexei Erchak (Part 8)

SM: Have you started working on solutions for the lighting industry?

AE: We have. It was always our plan to get into lighting, but we are doing it faster now. We did not get the revenue in projection we were hoping for in display and the idea of using a single light source is very applicable to many lighting applications. Commercial, theatrical and medical are just a few possible applications coming out of the woodwork.

SM: At what point do you start generating enough revenue as to no longer need venture capital?

AE: We fully expect this most recent round to be our last round. We should turn the corner in late 2009.

SM: What kind of revenue levels are you estimating?

AE: Mid tens of millions.

SM: Your investors have been around for a while and have put in a lot of money. At some point they are going to need to exit.

AE: Absolutely. We have actually shown reasonable revenue growth. When we first started shipping product we did a few million, then about $10 million the next year. We are probably going to do multiples of tens of millions until we turn the corner. Investors like to see that.

SM: Do you hire a lot of physicists or material scientists out of MIT?

AE: We have a lot of folks from MIT but we do hire from all over. It was too much of an MIT club at the beginning. We try to avoid having too much MIT influence. We still have ongong collaborations with MIT, so it is good to have that close relationship. It is a great location for recruiting talented people.

SM: How many people do you have in the company ?

AE: We have about 140 right now. I do not expect us to grow much beyond that. Most of the headcount is going into operations for manufacturing. Most heavy duty operations activity will be done at our contract manufacturers.

SM: Who is your CEO?

AE: The second person I hired is the CEO, Udi Meirav. Back when we were looking at the cell phone opportunity, I hired him to evaluate that opportunity as a consultant. I really liked the analysis he did and felt he was efficient in producing it. I was able to have good strategic discussions with him as to what could be done with the company. I felt he would be a very good fit as CEO and I offered him that position.

SM: Did he have a background in technology ?

AE: He went to MIT in the 1980s and did semiconductors in physics. He took a different path and did business versus engineering. He had a couple of stints at wireless startups and then landed at Luminus.

SM: Is there anything else I should have asked you and didn’t?

AE: What I think is most interesting is first the evolution of our business, but also the fact that when you look back to the original starting of the company, it is very different from what we are now. If we had just taken our initial marketing reports and thrown them out, it would have let us morph the company into something greater much sooner. Our LEDs look nothing like a normal LED. You can’t even look at them, they are too bright. We had absolutely no right as a startup being in an LED world. The rest of the industry looks at us not so much as competition but with curiosity about the new applications we are opening up.

SM: This has been a great story, I wish you all the best.

This segment is part 8 in the series : Luminus Devices Founder and Chief Technology Officer Alexei Erchak
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