Start-up aims to create a revolution in entertainment
May 27th, 2008 by Lisa Singh
Back in 2001, Daniel Simpkins founded Hillcrest Labs with one mission: to create a revolution in entertainment. “People have been hungry for technologies that would let them interact with their televisions more than they can today,” says Simpkins. Today, his company stands on the cusp of reaching that goal; it has developed a sophisticated interactive television platform, HoME, which is a kin to an operating system for television. In the following Q&A, Simpkins shares the latest with this three-dimensional pointing technology, and how his company maintains its drive for innovation.
What prompted you to found Hillcrest in 2001?
Daniel Simpkins: I started a company called SALIX Technologies, a VoIP leader, in 1990 and ran if for a decade and sold it to a company called Tellabs in 2000 for $300 million. Then, I became a GM at Tellabs for a little over a year or a little and unfortunately the tech bubble was collapsing. I decided to leave.
I actually had a plan to write a book called “The 10 Laws of the Entrepreneur” about how to make a great start-up. But in talking to my Tellabs management team, as the bubble was collapsing, I saw a greater need to be filled; I didn’t think I could fill it with a book. As the bubble collapsed, it left many entrepreneurs without opportunities in a high tech world. I really wanted to create an opportunity for my former team at SALIX to stay in the technology world and to do something groundbreaking.
How long did it take you — from start to finish, after you sold your first venture — to found Hillcrest?
Daniel Simpkins: In a fun fact, we closed our venture on February 29, on leap day, in 2000. I started working on Hillcrest unofficially in March of 2001, just after I left Tellabs and the official start date was actually May 14 of 2001.
You were saying there were a lot of people leaving the industry, the situation is different now.
Daniel Simpkins: Much different and the market is much tighter; it is hard to find good tech talent. What I always find is if you create extraordinary opportunities and you bring together extraordinary people that it tends to be reasonably easy to keep them.
What are some extraordinary opportunities?
Daniel Simpkins: From the perspective of what Hillcrest does: Today Hillcrest has developed a very sophisticated interactive television platform, HoME™. Essentially it is a kin to an operating system for television. It is based on a technology called Freespace®, which is a three-dimensional pointing technology similar but different to what Nintendo uses and the Wii. What we said was if there were a billion televisions in the world and people have been hungry for technologies that would let them interact with their televisions more than they can today, then that is an extraordinary opportunity. If you could fill that need, then you have created an enormous value and that is what we set out to do.
If you think about it today, we use our cell phones which are multi application devices. We can do lots of things on our cell phones from looking at our contacts, playing games and taking photos and it is almost as if talking on them is secondary in some cases. Our PC’s are multi-application platforms. We can do e-mail, surf the web, type letters, do spreadsheets and track our genealogies if we want to do that. But the television didn’t have that capability and yet, ironically, television, especially with the advent of high definition television and digital television, is the best screen in our house and is essentially a single application platform.
When will that change? When will it become more than that?
Daniel Simpkins: I think you are going to see that change over the next five years. You are going to start to see products that are going to come to the market that will really address the needs in a profoundly different way than we have seen before. HoME is a really good example. By bringing a mouse to the television you change the dynamic for the consumer. An up, down, left and right remote control just doesn’t scale. If you think about it, it is almost like a mechanical operating system every time you need a new feature you need a new button. Even universal remote controls have virtualized those buttons, but what we have done is brought the pointing technology of Freespace to the living room and the results are that now you can create an enormous library of applications on television that are suited for the living room and do it in a way that no one has done before.
Innovation takes time and focus. What keeps you motivated?
Daniel Simpkins: That is a really good question. I think the way you have to look at it is that start ups today are marathons, they are not sprints. You have to have a goal and one of my 10 laws is the very first things an entrepreneur should do when they start a business is to establish goals. Goals are different from milestones. Goals are long term objectives. We set a goal, for example, to change the world of consumer electronics and we set that site long.
You initially have to assume that the technology is going to take a long time and you make sure you set the expectations of the timeframe the horizon properly with your team. For me, it is sometimes tough. My last company I ran for a decade until it was sold, it was successful financially before it was sold, but it was even more successful even after it sold. To me I look at each of these businesses as my child. The fact is we all want our children to grow up healthy and strong. You don’t just wake up one day and say my child is three and I’ve done a great job for the last three years and that’s all I need to do. You know that raising a child is an 18 year proposition and maybe a lifelong proposition, but certainly a minimum of 18 years. We don’t get tired of that sometimes we might get weary or we may be stressed at the process, but we always know that there is a reward if we stick with it.
You said that your goal had been to change the world in consumer electronics. How?
Daniel Simpkins: Certainly such as digital televisions and digital media players and DVRs — those are the principal devices that we initially said we wanted to impact.
What are some of the things you enjoy doing to take a break?
Daniel Simpkins: I enjoy nature. I was both a bio major and an electrical engineer in college. I have always really loved nature. I actually enjoy nature from two distinct angles. One is that I collect nature photography; my two favorite nature photographers are Christopher Burkett, who does color nature photography and has perfected a process called cebrechrome, in the days where there was still film. And I love Ansel Adams for black and white. I collect original photographs from both of them. I don’t have that many, but hope to continue to be able to find really good opportunities to buy their photographs. It turns out the other half is because I love nature I have a house on the eastern shore of Maryland and as frequently as I can I try to get there and enjoy the scenery and go cycling and do as much as I can on the water.
What is something most people don’t know about you personally?
Daniel Simpkins: Beyond photography, even fewer people know that I do woodworking as a hobby. I make furniture.
Back to the beginning of our interview. What is going to happen to the book “Ten laws of an Entrepreneur”? Is it ever going to be written?
Daniel Simpkins: Lots of people ask me that. I have actually turned it into a speech and I will be giving it to a group of entrepreneurs in Washington sometime this summer. I do it once every year or two and I have done it at a couple of universities. It is funny because one of my closest friends is an author, a fairly well known author, and I have actually mentioned a number of times that I would like to write this book and he goes don’t plan to make a whole lot of money at it, but when you get done with Hillcrest you will have definitely have enough material to really do a good job by writing that book after all. My friends are encouraging me to write the book and hopefully Hillcrest will be successful, which we believe very passionately it will be, after all that is done I am going to take a little break and sit down and try to write the book.
