About Us
"In specific, we seek to address problems in the areas of food, water, shelter, energy, and finance."
01 / Our Story
In 1995, a group of Silicon Valley engineers with backgrounds encompassing hardware design, RF engineering, operating systems design, information security, language and compiler design, database internals, distributed computing, artificial intelligence and human factors, came together to try to answer a deceptively simple question:
02 / What Do We Do Next?
With experience in the Valley dating back to the early 1980's, there was no lack of opportunities, but therein lay the problem: A job must be more than simply trading expertise for money, and in our collective estimation, no points are awarded for solving materially the same problem twice. What was needed was an interesting problem, but one grounded in the reality of our fellow humans; a problem that, if solved, would positively impact the lives of others. Further rumination revealed a shared truth: all involved were exceptionally good at solving problems presented to us, but generally miserable at recognizing problems in need of a solution. Clearly we weren't going to be a product company, we were going to be the people behind the curtain that solved problems for others.
With that in mind, we set out to find interesting problems. Machine analysis of remote sensing data from national assets turned up. Someone was trying to make object stores sexy. Another was trying to take microkernel architectures mainstream with a very expensive machine.
None of it really appealed. The necessary condition of being interesting was being satisfied, but these things failed the other condition of being grounded in the reality of our fellow humans. They were all, for want of a better term, First World problems, and the realization of this led us to our mission statement:
03 / Applying Advanced Technology To Problems of The Human Condition
In specific, we seek to address problems in the areas of food, water, shelter, energy, and finance. Today, our data fusion and artificial intelligence technologies back systems that minimize loss in water systems while maximizing revenue, maximize farmer ROI while minimizing inputs and avoiding the development of resistance while also allowing agronomists, plant pathologists, and chemists to track the emergence of pests and resistance, and provide alternative forms of finance for small to medium size businesses as well as the unbanked consumer. Technology from our sister companies provides low cost, cleaner burning, heating and cooking solutions to the developing world, performs research in sustainable agriculture, and provides easy to deploy self-contained energy production and communications nodes for disaster recovery.
