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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Plain Speaking

Don’t call the Interphaser a translator. The product being developed by Russell K. Dollinger at Ingenuitor Inc. in Northridge is better described as a personal inter-communication device. The owner of the publishing company Booksmythe since 1987, Dollinger launched Ingenuitor in 2005 to tap what he and business partner Greg Smart, the company’s chief financial officer, see as a potentially billion dollar market of effective communication between people who don’t speak the same language. Booksmythe’s products of medical assistance books in Spanish, French and Russian have sold more than 70,000 copies. Dollinger envisions his product being used by medical personnel, police officers, paramedics, and border control guards. The device can even be adapted to serve business people working overseas who want to protect any proprietary information, Dollinger said. In its commercial form the Interphaser rests between two people each facing small touchscreens which when pressed with a stylus ask questions or give responses in the native languages of the users. So for instance, an English-speaking doctor can scroll down the screen looking for appropriate questions to ask a Spanish-speaking patient who sees the questions written in Spanish. The responses from the patient appear in English on the doctor’s side of the device. Unlike electronic translators on the market, the Interphaser asks specific and not open-ended questions, Dollinger said. “There are a very guided and orchestrated set of questions to get to a very specific answer,” Dollinger said. Smart, a former investment banker, said that the Interphaser will be marketed as a way for hospitals and municipalities to supplement their use of live translators that can cost thousands of dollars a month. “We don’t want to replace translators,” Smart said. “We want to get this device out there so that they don’t have to use as many translators.” Question: So the Interphaser is an electronic version of your book series? Answer: It starts as an electronic version of the book but it does way more things than the book can do. It’s a jumping off point. Q: Why did you decide to develop this product? A: There’s a huge need to communicate with people who don’t speak the same language. Language barriers are becoming more and more of a problem as the world shrinks. When they can’t communicate with each other there are enormous problems that result. Q: Why does it make good business sense to do this? A: There are a number of reasons. The book has 400 phrases. This will have 1,500 phrases. There’s no way you can put that in a book format and then it would only be one language. This is going to have 15, 20, 30 languages in it. Practically there are a lot of advantages to doing this. You can record what’s going on and you can’t do that with a book. You can have other phrases or in a different order. In a book they’re in a set order. You can videotape what’s going on. So from a paramedic’s point of view they have a record of consent. There are a lot of advantages to having an electronic version. Q: Advances in technology then make this possible? A: That’s right. I came up with this idea quite a long time ago. When I first came out with the ideas for the books people were blas & #233; about it. Early on I realized it was possible to put all these phrases on a CD-ROM. But the CD-ROM players weren’t up to it. So then I came out with the little (printed) version selling for $9.99 that sold like gangbusters. It was the right price at the right time. But I was so ahead of the market in most of the United States. Now gradually Spanish and language in general has become much more important it’s become much more of an issue. Meanwhile technology caught up and now translators are popular. Q: You’re in a money raising phase right now? A: That’s right. We’ve raised a significant amount of money, self-funded from friends and family and our own money, time and effort and sweat. We’ve been doing a Series A round. We’re always looking for more money. Q: Were there any challenges or missteps starting the publishing company that you knew not to make with Ingenuitor? A: One has to be very careful of bad translations. It really hurt me in the beginning. I used two L.A. Superior court translators and they came up with translations so bad I had to throw the whole print run out. It put us in a very, very bad financial situation. So we’re very careful now with translations. Q: Any issues or challenges you’re facing with Ingenuitor you didn’t face with the publishing company? A: There are always challenges between the two of us (himself and Smart) because of the differences in our age and background. One of the things in terms of the publishing as opposed to the electronic device business is that starting a big business versus a small business is not just a matter of scale. It’s a completely different game. With the publishing company I did business plans and I did all the normal stuff. And when I started I didn’t know anything about business at all. I was a scientist. With the electronic business I am going about it in a different way. Q: How’s that? A: In terms of the amount of risk we are taking; the kind of planning we are doing; the strategies we are taking. When I started out with Booksmythe I was very thinly capitalized. We had this first disaster with the translations that nearly killed us. Now we are not doing that. We are running it very thin but not approaching it that way. We are taking more risks but we’re more careful with the risks we take. One of the big changes I realized was I needed to have partners. I needed to build the business team first. We have mentors and advisors and I’m not trying to do it all myself. Q: Where do you see the company at this time next year? A: We’ll be close to having product on the market. I’m thinking it will be third quarter or fourth quarter. It will be selling for about $400, the same price as a PDA or a smart phone but with far more capabilities. Q: Even though it’s not on the market the Interphaser has already been recognized by the London school of Business in its Global Security Challenge. A: We’re being recognized as one of the most promising start ups. Q: Do you know what it was about your product that they liked? A: We didn’t talk to them about it personally but my guess is it’s the most basic thing to be able to communicate with somebody. SNAPSHOT: Russell K. Dollinger Title: Chief Executive Officer/President Born: 1948, San Mateo, CA Education: U.C. Davis (BS in Biology), UCLA (Ph.D. in Anatomy) Most Admired Person: Not one person but rather our large group of mentors who guide us with insight, concern, and kindness. Career Turning Point: My long term desire to have a company with a strong R & D; emphasis accelerated after reading the book “Unstoppable” by Cynthia Kersey. I realized that my “reason to be” was to create and invent. Ingenuitor allows that. Personal: Married with 2 grown children, a son and daughter

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