OQO has brought to market a fully functional Windows-based computer that can fit in your pocket. Leveraging experience from Apple and IBM allowed Jory and and co-founder, Jonathan Betts-LaCroix, to build a device with the aesthetics and capabilities to be used in Antartica or by any traveling executive.
Interview conducted by Nathan C. Kaiser on Tuesday, December 13, 2005 in San Francisco, CA.
OQO was founded in 2000 and our product is a Windows XP computer that is small enough to fit in your pocket but is running a complete version of Windows XP Professional, just like any personal notebook computer.
I think it was a combination of the need for a general purpose operating system for Windows XP for both individuals and enterprise customers. RIM?s Blackberry demonstrated that there is a growing need for this type of mobility.
Obviously, launching any new consumer electronic device, especially one with all of the capabilities of the OQO, it seems to me that that might be a daunting task. How did you first approach that?
Well the founding team was really a group that had done product and industrial design at Apple Computer and had also worked in electrical engineering and software development at IBM. Bringing those two capabilities together was the first critical component. A number of had met at MIT prior to working at Apple and IBM so there was kind of core team that came from those organizations.
So you were looking to bring the experiences and capabilities of a team that knew how to develop this new consumer product.
Yes, yes. There is no other organization that has pulled together the team and the capabilities that we have. A lot of computer brands are primarily marketing organizations focused on selling products that are designed and built by Asian ODMs. Those ODMs are primarily just repackaging reference designs for other manufacturers. So no one really has taken on the responsibility or has kind of the intact capability to innovate on the platform itself.
And that would seem to me to be a key differentiator in your approach. Obviously you?ve done the design, the integration, the development and are you then now outsourcing the manufacturing as well?
Yes. So we do all of the design here in San Francisco and all of the software/hardware electrical engineering and then the manufacturing is undertaken by FlexTronics which is the largest contract manufacturer in the world.
I?m really interested in learning how you?re looking to market this product. Obviously you have a consumer approach and you?re also really going after the enterprise market. What do you see as the key target initially and why?
Well I think that the enterprise market is really wher we?re focusing our efforts right now. I think corporations and government entities have a really well defined need for mobility. We see again and again where they?ve built up a lot of infrastructure around deploying Windows, supporting Windows, they have Windows applications, they have security requirements that can only be met by Windows. And in that environment other mobile alternatives whether it?s a Blackberry or some other form of handheld simply can?t meet the software and hardware requirements that they have. That?s where we?re seeing a lot of our deployments and have seen a remarkable amount of inbound demand from customers contacting us. At the same time we are supporting and focusing simultaneously on individual consumers, many of whom are early adopters in these same organizations.
In the enterprise market you have the ability to make a much larger sale via one contact versus having to have an individual contact for each consumer sale that you have. That provides some degree of scale as you?re looking to get that critical mass built in the marketplace.
Absolutely. When thousands of individuals contact us that?s thousands of sales; when thousands of companies contact us that?s hundreds of thousands of sales or more.
Really if it?s running full Windows where no one else has the capability. And a device that you can still fit in your pocket. So…
And that?s really going after all the associated applications that really only work on Windows say versus the Blackberry or the Palm operating systems?
Yeah. And so you get all your data, all your applications with you all the time. Even functions you might think were being met on alternative platform like a SmartPhone, such as browsing, it is just not the same as having the complete browser with all the plug-ins and a high resolution screen. You know if you want the full experience of having a computer and need all access to all your data, need to be able to get into your corporate VPN and or you have a particular application that is only available on Windows, which we see time and time again, then you?re going to need an OQO.
With a small device such as the OQO it seems to me that design is a key issue. SmartPhones and PDAs are useful but they have extremely small screens and the UI is often pretty difficult to use.
Well when you say design what are you focusing on?
Actually the user design, how easy it is for the user to interact with the product and understand and utilize information that?s being displayed.
In one sense the need for mobile Windows is so strong that I think a lot of customers would put up with a lot of bad design. And in the Windows marketplace a lot of customers do put up with a lot of bad design. So that said we?re really passionate about designing our products to an extremely high level of refinement both in terms of the look and feel but also the durability.
How useful was your work at Apple Product Design in helping you come up with the product design that worked with the OQO?
The thing that was really good about Apple was it brings some of the highest quality products to market and with an uncompromising drive to meet the needs of the user in a way that is very elegant and effective. In other ways we really had to go beyond that because we were looking to combine not just the refined look and feel and industrial design of an Apple product. The integration with the electrical engineering and low-level software that was required to miniaturize the PC and make this product possible is something that didn?t exist just in Apple or just in IBM or any one place.
How much money you do you need in order to develop, create, manufacture and market a new consumer device?
Well so far we?ve raised just shy of $40 million and that should be all the money we need to raise. The initial four years of the company was really focused on being an engineering play. We were hunkered down basically doing a ground up redesign of the PC platform in order to be able to shrink it down like we did.
Where you would need a lot more money than we needed would be if you were doing a pure consumer play. That?s where I think the marketing dollar requirements just get extremely high. So because we?re creating a new category and because we?ve had such great coverage in the press and because the need is so great in this enterprise we haven?t needed to spend a great deal of money on marketing. We?ve spent an extremely small amount of money on marketing and have relied on press and grass roots efforts.
How does your business change as you transition from being focused on the engineering to a marketing and sales organization?
Well so far it?s mostly been a matter of growing the business. The team we have here, while more on the engineering side came out of larger organizations, so while they have the passion and drive for an early start up they also embrace the changes that happen as we scale the organization. So on that side there?s not a lot of change. When we first showed our first prototype we had no people in operations. Now we?re really focused on growing our sales and marketing organization to the same level of completeness and capability that we have in the rest of the organization.
What are all the different experiences and insights that you?re bringing to OQO that have really helped you in running this business?
All of my experience taught me to build an exceptional team. Whether it?s in engineering or finance or operations or sales or marketing you have to be really obsessive about hiring the best people and making sure they have the tools they need to get the job done. I feel it is very important to work in a very collaborative fashion that doesn?t segment the business by function but rather has everyone kind of pulling together.
And can you talk a little bit about when you talk about exceptional people how would you define that? What is the criteria that allows you to identify someone who is of that caliber?
Sometimes that ends up being defined by someone having an incredible resume: they went to the best schools, they worked at the biggest and most well-known companies. We have a pattern at OQO where we either hire people who had done incredible things or were just self-made in some way and didn?t necessarily have a resume but were nonetheless some of the most talented, smartest people that we were able to find. Some of that has to do with kind of looking for talent not just in what someone has done but whether someone?s done the exact thing that you?re looking for but being open to finding people who have achieved anywhere.
Well I think that by the time we did the switch around Windows 2000 the Windows operating system was becoming much more palatable. I think that made a big difference and there were a lot of things that the Windows operating system had going for it at that point in terms of all peripherals being supported, every kind of web page plug-in would just automatically install. You didn?t need to kind of be quite so scrappy a user in order to get the tools you needed to get the job done. That said I do love Apple products and wish Apple the best.
That?s a good question. Some of the most interesting applications for me are often the fun ones that push envelope. Recently Green Peace used a unit for the first unassisted South Pole crossing during the summer. They used an OQO with an external antenna connected to the built wi-fi radio to transmit video over wi-fi to an orbiting aircraft.
That was pretty good and was both in an extreme environment and kind of a cool wireless thing.
I can imagine any number of interesting stories you?ve heard from the pharmaceutical industry, the medical industry?
We recently donated some OQOs to the Palo Alto Medical Foundation and they used them as part of a medical relief project after Hurricane Katrina. They set up a cellular data link and converted to a local wi-fi network and the doctors and technicians were able to use the OQO to get information on drug interactions and to find information on patient records. That was a good example of how this kind of product can make a difference.
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