IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - September 2018 - 55

software runs very efficiently on the
device, enabling it to observe the video
stream at 100 frames/s, which is fast
enough to give real-time feedback to the
user. Exploiting this video stream also
helps achieve a high recognition accuracy, as combining several images gives a
more confident and accurate result than
using any one of the frames individually. Last year, we upgraded our OCR
technique to a convolutional neural network-based approach, which runs 30%
faster and improved accuracy by 40%.
Wilson: Why did you decide to go
the SDK route and not make a consumer-facing product?
Kinigadner: This was a tough decision. When we started winning awards
and gaining a lot of publicity, everyone
around us wanted to hear a big story and
started extrapolating all the things we
could do. In hindsight, it was a blessing
that, with limited resources, we had to
ask the question, are we going to be the
best OCR tech company for mobile
devices, or do we want to be the best
utility meter-reading app?
But it wasn't plain sailing, and we
learned the hard way that you must show
use cases that illustrate how something
can be useful for your potential customers. You can't expect them to do the hard
work of imagining the potential of your

Notes from the Editor

In my experience, engineers
tend to underestimate
themselves from a business
perspective, but their logical
approach can actually make
them great founders.
generic solution. Sales were easier when
we simplified our messaging to: "We are
the market leader in mobile OCR tech
for utility meter reading, license plate
identification, and passport scanning."
Wilson: What was the hardest experience you've had so far?
Kinigadner: After two years of startup developer culture, our revenues were
not growing in line with our expenses,
and I was forced to reorient the company into a sales-driven organization. This
included introducing procedures and
formal job descriptions and giving the
sales team more influence on the
12-month product road map, which is
now the axis around which everything is
organized. No one had left the company
during the first two years, and suddenly
my colleagues-friends-were resigning emotionally, so this was very tough
for everyone, including me personally.
But it was absolutely necessary for the

survival of the company, and since then
our revenue has grown every quarter.
Wilson: What does the company
look like now?
Kinigadner: We are a team of 30
based in Vienna, [Austria], with sevendigit revenue, and we serve 100 enterprise
customers in more than 50 countries. It
may come as a surprise to some engineers
when I say that we have as many staff
working on sales and marketing as we do
on software development.
Wilson: What advice would you
give to engineers considering becoming entrepreneurs?
Kinigadner: I would encourage them
to follow their dreams. In my experience,
engineers tend to underestimate themselves from a business perspective, but
their logical approach can actually make
them great founders. Business degrees
and investors often encourage entrepreneurs to chase the biggest market opportunities to get rich quick. In contrast,
engineers love solving challenging problems, and doing so often makes a more
useful contribution to the world.

About the Author
Tom Wilson (tomwilson@ieee.org) is
the chief technology officer at Concured, Montreal, Canada.

(continued from page 3)

ENERGY AND SECURITY

LooKING ForWArD

The article "From Broadband to Infrastructure" presents an evaluation of
the Internet.

In "Supercapacitors Outperform Conventional Batteries," a supercapacitor-based
power converter is presented for CE systems that is better than conventional battery-based energy sources. I envision that
supercapacitor and chemical hybrid
energy storage can be effective for new
CE systems, including smart cars.

I hope this issue dedicated to the smart
car is useful for a wider set of CE communities to advance their knowledge on
smart products. With the help of the
editorial board and authors around the
globe, I would like to see these themes
covered further as well as other emerging hot topics in future issues of IEEE
Consumer Electronics Magazine.

THE ART OF STORAGE

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Selected digital storage devices presented at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show are presented.

Entrepreneur Lukas Kinigadner engages in a discussion in "Entrepreneurs in
Consumer Electronics."

which will be enjoyable reading for the
CE community.

CoLuMNS
BITS VERSUS ELECTRONS

september 2018

IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - September 2018