Tuesday, March 15, 2011

WirelessESP mobile app targets teen speeding

By James M. Connolly

Looking to do his part in reducing the number of teen traffic fatalities, a Lunenberg college senior is ready to bring out his startup’s second teen driver safety product – an alert system for Android-based phones.

“There are 18 million teen drivers in the U.S. today, and statistically they are taking part in their most dangerous activity,” said Jon Fischer, president of WirelessESP. Fischer, a senior majoring in business at Champlain College in Vermont, launched his company as a teen. He plans to release his newest product, Speedbump, at the CTIA Wireless show in Orlando next week. Speedbump is a GPS-driven Android app, eventually to be ported to other platforms, that sends parents an alert when the car in which their teen is either a driver or a passenger exceeds the speed limit for the given highway or secondary road where it is traveling.

The five-year-old company originally offered a hardware-based device called Speed Demon, released in 2006, that provided basic alert functionality. It sold for $199 plus a $15 per month service fee, and resulted in about 30 sales. The new Speedbump costs $9.99 per month.

WirelessESP faces competition from companies such as Illume Software Inc. of Newton, which offers its iZUP product to stop drivers — particularly teen drivers — from talking or texting on a cellphone while driving, and other products that provide continuous monitoring of a teen driver.

According to Fischer, several features set Speedbump apart. One is the ability to adjust for the lower speed limits of secondary roads versus highways, which is key because a car traveling at less than highway speed may be going too fast for a secondary road. In addition, the app works whether the teen is a driver or a passenger, and it works by sampling GPS data rather than continually collecting that data, reducing the impact on battery life.

More important to Fischer, however, is the fact that Speedbump only communicates with the parent’s phone with an alert when the vehicle exceeds the speed limit and when the teen “checks in” with the push of a button at their destination. To Fischer, removing constant parental monitoring of the teen’s location is a privacy matter. “There have been competitors that do constant monitoring, and I didn’t agree with it from a privacy standpoint. As long as the teen is driving safely there’s no need to track their location.” Alert system, he maintains, is meant to open up a dialogue about safe driving. He noted that in 2009 there were 4,000 teen traffic fatalities in the U.S.

Fischer’s father, Dick, who serves as director of business development, has been involved in several startups, including SineWave Technologies Inc. and Skymate Inc., and had a 14-year career with Wang Laboratories Inc.

The Fischers have set a goal of 5,000 unit sales this year and are starting to look for $1 million to $1.5 million angel or venture capital funds, that would be used to hire support staff and bring development inhouse.

Jon Fischer, who plans to work for the company fulltime after graduation this spring, Has won several business plan competitions with his concept, most recently the Peak Pitch, in which 30 entrepreneurs pitched VCs while riding chairlifts at Sugarbush resort in Vermont.