F-Origin, which closed a $5 million third round of capital a few months ago, sees eBook readers such as Amazon’s Kindle as a natural market for its touchscreen technology, which provides tactile user feedback.
But the company already has orders from a mobile phone company, a firm making touchscreen picture frames, and a point-of-service kiosk product maker. CEO Joe Carsanaro is a serial entrepreneur who previously founded venture-backed Bloodhound Software. “I started Bloodhound in my closet in France,” Carsanaro tells TechJournal South. “I got it going and on my first trip back to the United States I came to give a pitch at a venture conference, and got two term sheets.” RTP-based Bloodhound sells software for claims overpayment protection services for health care payers. F-Origin evolved from another of Carsanaro’s previous gigs. As general manager of a Motorola phone business, he was asked to start a group to develop innovative products in the messaging space. A company that wanted to sell its touchscreen phones to Motorola approached the new group. “I didn’t like the phone per se, but liked the technology,” Carsanaro says. When the company failed, he joined several other investors to buy its software and licensing rights to its patents. They include patents on motion (gesture) control of devices, haptics (touch feedback) and innovative touchscreens. The 10-employee company wants a chunk of the estimated $2.6 billion touchscreen market.
Carsanaro says F-Origin’s HaptiTouch products not only provide pressure-sensing touch feedback, they also have good light and low power consumption, he says. “They have the ability to drive the user interface via a finger, a stylus, or a pen,” he says. That means that medical professionals could use a device equipped with the technology while wearing gloves. Its touchpads can be programmed to provide different responses depending on touch force, and the touch sensitive area can be any shape. HaptiTouch supports devices of all kinds, and displays ranging from small mobile phones to screens as large as 15 inches. Its customizable API can be implemented with multiple operating systems. In a previous interview, Carsanaro noted that while portable devices are becoming very sophisticated, that means users have to navigate a bewildering plethora of multi-function buttons. “The result is function fatigue syndrome,” he says.
The company introduced its first product in the third quarter of 2007 and expects to ramp up sales in the third and fourth quarters this year. Carsanaro says the company will likely increase its staff up to 15 to 17 in a year.
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