Blake Kirby - inthinc
inthinc designs and manufactures breakthrough technology that dramatically improves car and truck driver behavior in an effort to save lives, prevent accidents and safeguard property. At the company’s helm is Blake Kirby, inthinc’s president. We recently caught up with him to discuss this rapidly growing company, its exciting journey and where they are going from here.
Silicon Slopes: inthinc seems to be a very dynamic company that touches several types of industries from contract manufacturing to working with NASCAR to developing products to help improve driving safety. How did you get to where you are now?
Blake Kirby: Earlier this year, inthinc was launched from the merger of two entities, Inovar and IWI. Our Inovar division manufactures a broad array of technologies across several industries including military, aerospace, medical, and automotive, among others. IWI, brought a design specialty that enables us to provide a refinement of features to our products that establish a result of reducing driving accidents.
Our business model brings to the table world-class design, manufacturing and supply chain solutions. The experience we have gained with technologies that we touch have enabled us to take that and apply it to a solution that helps dramatically improve driver safety. We have consolidated a number of different technologies into an effective recipe to reduce accidents. This has been dramatically illustrated in regards to what we have learned with NASCAR.
Silicon Slopes: What is your history with NASCAR and what role does inthinc play with NASCAR today?
Blake Kirby: We have had a relationship with NASCAR for the past seven years. It started shortly following Dale Earnhardt’s tragic fatal crash. NASCAR tried to determine the actual cause; however, despite bringing on some of the world's leading crash experts, they could only come up with a "best guess" possibility as to what went wrong. Comprehensive crash data from Earnhardt's car was non-existent.
One of our products, the inthinc Witness Incident Data Recorder has been used in all NASCAR racing series since 2002 to help improve car and driver safety. The product records the forces felt by the driver during a crash. After an accident, or at the conclusion of a race, the recorded data is immediately accessed and analyzed.
The data collected has been critical in the development of new safety equipment, track improvements and in the development of the Car of Tomorrow. Prior to implementing the Indecent Data Recorder, NASCAR lost four drivers to fatal accidents in less than nine months. In contrast, there has not been a single fatality in the past seven years.
This year, NASCAR has been pilot testing a proprietary GPS-based lap-counter and positioning system that leverages technology from our groundbreaking waySmart and tiwi driver behavior monitoring and mentoring systems. NASCAR continues to turn to inthinc for additional solutions with respect to timing and scoring.
Silicon Slopes: Driving safety seems to be a primary focus for inthinc. How do your hardware and software solutions work to improve the way drivers behave?
Blake Kirby: The key here is we’ve identified the top causes for accidents. For example, in a commercial environment, we improve driving safety with a three-pronged approach. First, real-time alerts in the vehicle to the driver when there is a safety violation such as speeding, aggressive driving, etc. Second, if they do violate one of these items, and do not take corrective action, it is recorded to the fleet manager’s Web portal where they can see all their driver’s scores and reports. The third prong is for excessive violations, it provides immediate notice to the supervisor.
This is very effective in helping to change driver behavior. We leverage communication technology, satellite, cellular, Wi-Fi, accelerometers in the vehicle and an easy to use Web portal that enables fleet managers to see how their fleets are operating.
Silicon Slopes: Are there any particular industries or markets that these solutions are particularly well suited for?
Blake Kirby: We have about 20,000 units installed in North America in primarily oil and gas field services, mining, hazmat and heavy construction with the waySmart solution. We have an upcoming solution that will be targeted for lighter fleets such as service fleets, municipalities, utilities, light delivery, over the road, and so on.
Silicon Slopes: You appear to be growing rapidly having recently expanded you presence here in Utah. Have you taken or do you have plans to take your products to a global market?
Blake Kirby: We have products in vehicles on the north slope of Alaska and Canada, Russia and Europe and in 2009 we will be deployed on pretty much every continent. The device communicates across the Iridium satellite network, which is the largest and most contiguous satellite network that exists in the world. In fact, we are the largest commercial customer in the world for data transmission through the Iridium network, which gives us a global reach.
Silicon Slopes: What is tiwi and how is it being adopted by the market place? What sales channels are you using get this product out there?
Blake Kirby: The tiwi device is a product that leverages the technology from our commercial and NASCAR applications and packages it up as a unique mentoring system for teen drivers. The initial channel that we are launching it into is large insurance carriers.
Silicon Slopes: Obviously, safety is a hard thing to quantify, but how are customers of inthinc seeing ROI and how is it measured?
Blake Kirby: Actually, there is significant ROI that is very measurable with respect to driver behavior and crash reduction. By changing driver behavior we are able to show an impact on fuel economy, maintenance, equipment damage, injuries, fatalities, and lost revenues. We can show a one-year ROI just on hard costs alone, which for a large fleet can be in the millions of dollars. On top of that, we can show how we significantly reduce the probability of a catastrophic event which includes the loss of human life or a major incident that can bring lasting damage to a company’s brand.
Silicon Slopes: Shifting gears (so to speak), where does the contract manufacturing division shine and what are its competitive advantages in that fierce market?
Blake Kirby: We recently expanded into a new, 65,000 square foot state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Logan, Utah. This facility is second-to-none in the intermountain region.
The first advantage comes from having our own captive manufacturing facility for production of our own proprietary solutions. It enables the development, prototyping and time to market to significantly improve. For third-parties, we have the capabilities of large EMS companies, but we are small enough that we can provide specific solutions to a mid-sized OEM company’s needs.
The way I like to explain it is we have the same menu that much larger contract manufacturers have, but they require you to eat much larger portions than you want to be able to have access to their services. We, on the other hand, can be much more flexible in our portion sizes.
Silicon Slopes: What kind of technology advancements do you see in your industry in the next five years? 10 years?
Blake Kirby: I see more integration. For instance, in driver safety, there are a lot of products that try to achieve the goal of reducing crashes in different ways—those applications will continue to be consolidated. Moore’s Law and cost reductions will continue to make our solution more approachable for smaller fleets. I also see that there will be more legislation that will require companies with fleet vehicles to ensure that their drivers are monitored to prove they meet certain standards.
