Impetus

**Impetus Technologies** was founded by Jake Satomi to unify his various technology-related ventures under one name and brand. Its present-day interests and activities are mostly small-scale but cutting-edge niches of the technology sector, but also feature some long-term support contracts and local partnerships.

## Recruiting

Jake's mindset with regard to recruitment and hiring is somewhat unique. He's of the opinion that a person's raw talent is more important than their past mistakes or experience. People who want to learn and work to their fullest potential have a chance, even if they've had contact with the law or are lacking a checklist of degree, experience or years on the job. If they show raw talent, their training can be seen as an investment, and they'll be paired up with a mentor. Most graduates nowadays need retraining anyway, so it makes some things easier.

This has had a number of effects on business as a whole, some good and some bad. First, governments and some customers are especially picky about the individuals that are allowed to touch their project. There's a lot of auditing paperwork, but Impetus has no shortage of monitoring systems. Second, the company is often referred to as "controversial" or "known for hiring criminals and dropouts" by supposedly unbiased journalists. The company's product standards are high and strict, and its past scandal-free, but the court of public opinion is a fickle thing. Third, there's a loyalty that's hard to find elsewhere from the individuals who had a hard time finding work outside of Impetus. Even with the strict security and constant surveillance, most find the dynamic work and challenge rewarding.

## History

Jake's professional engineering activities started as the *Applied Technology* division of his family's *Satomi Healthcare* brand. He developed (and improved) medical systems such as electronic medical records, MRI machines, EKGs, pacemakers and cochlear implants.

These devices were developed in-house to give the brand a cost advantage, smaller regulatory burden, and supervision over more of the supply chain. Integrating the technological aspects of a regimen into the overall experience granted several other benefits to both patients and practitioners, and gave the firm several competitive advantages.

There were a small number of devices, however, that were built to meet more specific goals. For example, hearing aids or implants could be designed with automatic peak suppression, recording facilities, and even built-in radio.

But the custom medical device market was somewhat limiting, so Jake expanded into full-blown custom design, integration and fabrication under a venture named *Convergent Consulting*. His target market was people looking for design of advanced hardware with specific requirements, small batches of fabrication and, when needed, adaptation for large-scale production.

After a year or so, Jake's experimental threat detection system, dubbed ARGUS, became mature enough to function as originally intended, so he started working on optimizing and incorporating it into existing security systems. This product was soon marketed as Helios, software designed to identify and report suspicious behavior, potential accident sites, or even people in need of medical attention using existing cameras and other systems. It doesn't make much sense for a hardware design firm to start selling this kind of solution, so a sister company named *Ultravisor Systems* was founded.

As time passes, the separation of medical, hardware and software ventures starts to complicate things. As a result, based on the lawyers' advice, the responsibilities and intellectual property spread of each company was merged into a new organization, *Impetus Technologies*. The paperwork became much simpler, and now there's a single name to tie together all of Jake’s developments.