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Friday, January 30, 2009
The Mover
David Wu leads impaired vision software firm Ai Squared
By Brendan Lynch
The Murphy brothers' software-selling family tree
In their own words: Chris Dyl, CTO, Turbine Inc.
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David Wu brings the personal experiences of his family to bear on his role as CEO of assistive technology developer Ai Squared Inc.
Wu’s wife lost vision in one eye in a car accident, and his father suffered eye damage after an accident with a toy helicopter remote-controlled by a child. At the age of 107, Wu’s grandfather is healthy, but suffers from declining vision. Those close-to-home experiences helped attract Wu to the top job at Ai Squared.
“It’s your sight that people fear losing, and you tend to take it for granted,” he said.
Ai Squared makes display magnification software and other products to make computers accessible to visually impaired users. One of Wu’s goals as CEO is to increase awareness of his company’s products, so people with impaired vision know that assistive technology is available, he said. Wu also said the company has been using feedback — including from his family — to refine its products, focusing on the user interfaces.
Wu joined Ai Squared in December of last year. What might seem to be a hectic time to start a new job presented Wu with the chance to assess 2008 and plan for 2009, he said. Commuting from Concord, he was surprised to find a high concentration of Yankees fans hidden in plain sight among the Ai Squared staff in Manchester, Vt.
“When the Yankees signed (starting pitcher C.C.) Sabathia, I got to know who they were,” he said.
For the last two years, Wu worked for himself as a consultant while toying with the idea of launching a startup. Prior to that, he was the CEO of Space Data Corp. of Chandler, Ariz. — where, he noted, the temperature can hit 70 degrees in the winter — and he still sits on the company’s board of directors.
“I always enjoy the board meetings in Arizona,” he said, laughing.
Wu has a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science, both from MIT. He received his MBA from Harvard University in 1992, and sticks mostly to business these days, rather than engineering.
“I’m pretty obsolete on that side of it. It’s pretty scary,” he said.
Still, one of Wu’s proudest accomplishments is a machine vision inspection system for semiconductors he built as a graduate student at MIT. The system used optical character recognition technology, something Ai Squared uses, although with faster, more powerful systems.
“Lo and behold, I’m at Ai,” he said. “I was on a blazing fast 6 megahertz machine back then.”
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