Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: John Horn, CEO of Ingenu (Part 1)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to you as well as to your company.

John Horn: I’m the CEO of Ingenu. We are a major player globally in the Internet of Things. When you look at the Internet of Things, all of the things need to be connected in order for there to be an Internet of Things. If there is no connectivity, there is no data path. There is no solution. A group of pioneers in this industry on the human side realized that the technology that exists for human communication was not good enough for machines.

What makes these devices that we hold on our hands wonderful is the fact that we want the newest, latest, and greatest. In the machine world, what companies need and solutions want is stability – long-term stability of network, long-term stability of technology, and long-term stability of the product itself. Founders of Ingenu created a technology called RPMA which stands for Random Phase Multiple Access. It takes the physical principles of cellular and turns them 180 degrees. It takes the weakness of cellular and makes them the strength of RPMA. >>>

Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: Greenwave Systems CEO Martin Manniche (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Tell us a little bit about the specifics of Greenwave. Where are you doing this company from? Where are you based? What are the specifics of the company?

Martin Manniche: We started the company up front. We saw that there was a need for us to innovate in a different way and build this big managed services platform. We like to say that we are headquartered in one location, but we really see ourselves as a company with diversity and focused on being a global company. As I said, we are US-headquartered out of Irvine, California. We are European-headquartered at Copenhagen.

We are, today, around 250 employees worldwide. We have, over the last three years, doubled revenues year over year. We are very profitable. We have seen massive growth within the last three years. The company is seven years old but the first four years was hard. We grew but we didn’t grow the pace we’ve done over the last three years. >>>

Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: Greenwave Systems CEO Martin Manniche (Part 4)

Martin Manniche: I also think that the most intuitive way of controlling things is not with having a Swiss Army knife of applications. How many of you don’t have a smartphone with way too many applications where 85% of them are most likely never used? The most intuitive way of controlling things is using your voice for control. I am very confident that voice control will be the driving force that will allow fast adoption of everything. Smart home or home security is not new. It’s been there for many years but it has not really grown. It’s been very stable with slow growth.

If we want massive growth, find a way that is intuitive. The most intuitive and easiest way where people are not taking out their phones or a remote control is using your voice as a way to control. I believe voice control is a game changer in the industry. I hope that a lot of companies will start new >>>

Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: Greenwave Systems CEO Martin Manniche (Part 3)

Martin Manniche: Another example is how we are using our platform for smart grid. We are using it for optimization on the power network in, what we call, the communications hub that takes data from the electrical meter and gas meter. In the past, you had readings everyday. Now you can have readings every hour. If you can have readings instantly, you can do that. This way, the consumer always understands his energy consumption. They can take actions based on their energy consumption.

We help the energy manufacturers to get readings on how the network is used up at the home. We also bring consumer value of giving visibility. On top of that, they can optimize their use pattern. Let’s go to a different example in the retail space. We offer the world’s first connected light bulbs that use IP foundation on an LED light bulb. What does that mean? That means that we put a little chipset into an LED light bulb. When people come to the home and there’s no activity, the lights shut off. >>>

Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: Greenwave Systems CEO Martin Manniche (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What would be the most comfortable for us to understand what you do is if you step us through a customer use case.

Martin Manniche: I can go into a few customer use cases. One is how are we bringing value to a bigger telco? So an operator who is offering consumers home TV services or broadband services are what we call triple-player services. They have been doing triple-player services for a long period of time. What we are doing is we are making the network router in the home—what’s also called the customer premise equipment—and make that smart.

That means that if you’re looking at your phone and services coming to that device, normally when you have a traditional router, you get one release when you get the device. Maybe without your knowing it, there’s a service release going to that product. The only thing that this device does is enabling broadband, voice, and maybe being a connection broker to your TV system in the home. We are changing that. >>>

Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: Greenwave Systems CEO Martin Manniche (Part 1)

IoT is moving right along, here is a comprehensive discussion on some use cases and solutions from Greenwave Systems that are real and active.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to Greenwave.

Martin Manniche: I’m the Chairman and CEO of Greenwave Systems. We’re a managed services platform company. We are located and headquartered in Irvine, California. We see ourselves as a global company. We have an Asian headquarters in Singapore. We have the European headquarters in Denmark and Scandinavia. We have branch offices in Korea, San Jose, and India.

More and more people in the telco space or people who build managed services platforms or have a managed network are looking to have a  horizontal-built platform. This is a platform where everyone can participate and build services one top of the platform without understanding anything else and how they are interfacing with an API and be able to build a user experience on top of that. >>>

Bootstrapping an IoT Company from North Carolina: Bob Witter, CEO of Device Solutions (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: This is very risky business though – trying to act venture capitalist in startups and building their products against sweat equity. That’s, business-wise, quite a risky move.

Bob Witter: It’s a lot of fun. We have never had any investment dollars, so the risk is our own. We’ve taken a different approach than, perhaps, a lot of big businesses take today. When our Board of Directors sits around the table, our interest is in keeping people employed before profit. Certainly, we need to, at least, break even to make that happen, and we’ve been fortunate enough to do that over the years. In 2009, we had a little trouble. We asked our employees to go to a four-day work week and take a 20% cut in pay. Myself and my founder went without salary for six months in 2009.

Sramana Mitra: That’s during the recession.
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Bootstrapping an IoT Company from North Carolina: Bob Witter, CEO of Device Solutions (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What does it mean when you say they distribute? Do they distribute your component or do they distribute the fully-integrated solution of these gas cylinders that have self-monitoring and  self-updating capacity?

Bob Witter: When we started, we were only a device provider. We helped them find the resources to build out the solution and that was the backend. They already had some sensor devices that they were using. We helped them find some sources to build their own. At that point in time, we were just supplying devices.

Today, we have moved to a model where we provide the whole ecosystem. We are in discussions with them so they don’t have to worry about things like subscription activations and support. We are giving them the opportunity to make us the scapegoat if something goes wrong. We are trying to go back and talk to some of our customers who, in the past, thought of us as an equipment provider, and pull them into the family for the whole ecosystem. >>>