Startup Spotlight: Jeeva
By: The Startup Grind Team
Tags: Internet of Things, Startup Spotlight, Technology, Startup Lessons, Startup

Scott Bright, CEO of Jeeva, is an accomplished technology executive with 30 years of entrepreneurial and growth-phase experience. He currently serves as an Adjunct Professor of Electrical Engineering at Seattle University.

Prior to joining Jeeva, Scott was co-founder and CEO of Synapse Product Development, overseeing a 10-year growth in positive EBITDA annual revenue to $60M and a staff of 250+ people with offices in Seattle, San Francisco, Orlando, and Hong Kong. He holds four U.S. patents, received his B.S. Electrical Engineering from Ohio University and M.B.A. from University of Washington, and is a Governance Fellow with the National Association of Corporate Directors.

Keep reading to see what he has to share about what challenges Jeeva is solving and how he and the team are tracking their progress.

— In a single sentence, what does Jeeva do?

Jeeva’s mission is to enable ubiquitous, secure, near-zero-power connectivity and bring the “Internet of Everything” to life.

— What makes your company different in this market?

Our patented passive backscatter system uses reflected RF signals to transmit data using three orders of magnitude (1000x) less energy than any existing radio technology. This breakthrough approach dramatically lowers the cost, size and power requirements for remote wireless sensor deployment. Using standard local networking protocols like LoRa, Zigbee, and Bluetooth, Jeeva’s network design can leverage commodified, low-cost receivers, obviating the need for new infrastructure. Our trusted hardware and cloud platform makes it easy to robustly provision and manage end-to-end systems from sensor to application.

— How did Jeeva come to be? What was the problem you found and the ‘aha’ moment?

Jeeva started as a research effort in a University of Washington lab where a new generation of engineering Ph.D.s went beyond conventional boundaries to eliminate battery life as a barrier to the Internet of Everything.

— What milestone are you most proud of so far?

Jeeva has 9 issued patents, and 15 additional patents pending.

— What are people most excited by?

Ubiquitous near-zero power wireless connectivity!

— What sets Jeeva apart in the market?

Jeeva has 9 issued patents, and 15 additional patents pending.

— Have you pursued funding and if so, what steps did you take?

Jeeva has raised $3M in venture funding and secured $1.8M in NRE revenue and SBIR grant funding.

— What KPIs are you tracking that you think will lead to revenue generation/growth?

As a broadly applicable technology platform, aligning design wins into a cohesive narrative that illustrates definitive “product-market fit” is our main goal at this stage. Every founder should understand the necessity of demonstrable traction and early proof of their “market hypothesis” before attempting to accelerate growth with VC funding.

— How do you build and develop talent?

We focus on building and maintaining our culture as one of our highest priorities. We value being part of a cohesive and collaborative team while also cherishing and respecting our diversity.

— What are the biggest challenges for the team?

Lately, operating under “social distancing” constraints, developing hardware as a distributed team has proven to be a significant and unexpected challenge. We’ve set up a depot in my garage for pick-up/drop-off and exchange of test equipment, tools and supplies. We use Slack, Jitsi and Liquid Planner to stay in touch and connected throughout the day. We’ve also shifted tasks to align with individuals’ accessibility rather than by traditional project boundaries.

— What’s been the biggest success for the team?

After nearly 7 years of R&D, we’re super excited to finally be nearing our first first commercial product (ASIC) release — anticipating prototypes from fabrication within a few months!

— What advice would you give to other founders?

Life is short, focus on doing something you love doing and the small things will sort themselves out.