Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: John Horn, CEO of Ingenu (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Switching gears a bit, what do you see as trends in your industry and how does that throw light on emerging challenges and open problems that you would encourage new entrepreneurs to look into with the expertise in your general area?

John Horn: We know that there will be hundreds of billions and ultimately trillions of devices in this Internet of Things world. That is a massive opportunity for entrepreneurs to create new solutions. I know solutions that have changed entire industries but will only deploy a few thousand devices. However, those few thousand devices will completely change an industry forever. Entrepreneurs don’t need to build a company to support millions or billions of devices to have a viable company.

There are niches all over the place in every industry out there using connected machines, analyzing, and distributing that data and being able to come up with a better solution because they have that data and information. That is the real opportunity here. Throughout my 14 years in this industry, we have helped probably a few hundred companies get started with one or two devices as a pilot to come up with a solution that now has tens of thousands devices out there.

What I would say is look for a need, a challenge, or problem where they need to get data and they can’t get it today because it’s too expensive or too complex to get it. The RPMA can give them that missing link where they can go create something that completely changes that particular need for that industry.

Sramana Mitra: Do you have any examples of such industries in mind that are particularly crying for solutions?

John Horn: Every industry on the plant, and I’m not exaggerating. I’ve seen it from farming, ranching, shipping, pharmaceuticals, building management, to tracking luggages. It’s endless. It’s absolutely endless. There’s no industry where I’d say, “This is where there’s a lot of opportunities. There’s not an industry where I’d say, “Here, there’s no opportunity.”

Sramana Mitra: Tell us a little bit about the company. Where are you located? Are you venture-funded or bootstrapped?

John Horn: We’re privately held and headquartered in San Diego, California. We have another major location in Scottsdale, Arizona. We also have remote employees that work for us all over the world. From a funding perspective, we are privately funded. We have a little bit of venture capital but the vast majority of it is from smaller private funds that are technology-driven. If you actually went to our website and looked at our Board of Directors, the who’s who of the cellular industry are all investors in the company.

Sramana Mitra: Thank you very much for your time.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: John Horn, CEO of Ingenu
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