Touching Tomorrow...
AuthenTec imprints futuristic technology on security products
By Anne Straub
Brevard Technical Journal
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After the startup company Scott Moody was leading produced a flawed first product, Moody called a meeting.
"I asked everyone who didn't think the company would make it to raise their hand," Moody recalls. The company, AuthenTec, had gone through about $3.5 million and was probably $1 million in debt. Most employees expressed their doubt in the company's prognosis. But Moody put up a brave front, the staff rallied, and no one left the company.
It was all show, he now confesses. "Frankly, if I weren't CEO, my hand would have gone up," he says.
Moody refers to that moment as the company's first abyss. There have been more.
"You face the abyss every once in a while," said Moody, who started his career at electronics giant Harris Corp. before leaving to head the spin-off in 1998. "At a big company, you're under a lot of pressure. But Harris has a billion other products," he said. When your and your staff's livelihoods are riding on one product and you hit a snag, you enter a new league of pressure.
For AuthenTec, the product is a line of fingerprint sensors for use in security applications. At the time of the first abyss, obtaining additional financing was contingent on coming out with a product. The staff pulled through: After a month of mandatory seven-day workweeks, the reworked first sensor passed testing -- but not without a little drama. "We were writing code nanoseconds before those people walked through that door," Moody says.
The close call just added to the thrill of the game for Moody, who compares work with sport. "If I were bigger, taller or had any athletic ability at all, I would have been a professional athlete," he says. "This is my sport. I love it."
The metaphor is evident in the soccer trophies adorning a smattering of desks at the company's offices, overlooking the Indian River in Melbourne. Engraved "Kick Butt Award," they're tokens of recognition from Moody, a soccer fan.
It also shows up in the words he uses to motivate his staff, which numbers about 50. There are no victories, he tells them, only hurdles. Don't take too much time to celebrate clearing one, or you'll trip over the next.
The coaching strategy seems to have worked: AuthenTec is among the top three companies in fingerprint technology, says Rick Norton, executive director of the International Biometric Industry Association in Washington, D.C.
AuthenTec's patented technology, called TruePrint, reads beyond the surface layer of the skin to the live skin layer below. Fingerprint sensors that read the surface layer typically can't read 5 percent to 20 percent of the population because of dirty, callused or dry skin.
TruePrint creates a small signal between the finger and the semiconductor in the sensor, mimicking the ridges and valleys of the print. In a worst-case scenario, a user might have to press the finger on the sensor a second time, Moody says, but the sensor should always get a reading.
Products using the technology are being used to control access to buildings and to secure computers. Use in personal data assistants and high-end cell phones is in the advanced design stage. And further down the road, the technology likely will be used to control access to vehicles and ignition, and possibly for personalized seat and mirror settings.
Earlier this year, Electronics Products magazine chose the company's newest and smallest sensor as one of the 19 best products introduced in 2001. The sensor's small size allows fingerprint technology to be used in a variety of personal technological devices, the magazine said.
Moody's vision for the product is all-inclusive. "We want to be on everything - every cell phone, every car, every door," he says.
Norton, who served with Moody recently on a panel at a biometrics consortium, says the executive has what AuthenTec needs. "He doesn't advertise himself to be a techie, and I think AuthenTec is ready for that level of leadership," Norton says.
"He brings strong views and a strong leadership style. The industry needs people like that - who are able to establish a vision and make it happen," he says.
Moody calls himself an intense person, and concedes that people who don't love their job wouldn't be happy working for him. "I have high expectations of people," he says. "If you don't like what you're doing, it's probably not going to work out. It ain't an 8 to 5 job."
It certainly isn't for Moody, who thought he was a hard worker before he took on the start-up. He soon learned you never really get away from the job when you're at the reins. Even when you're not at work, the responsibility stays with you. "I worked for Harris for 18 years, and I knew my numbers really well, but I never knew exactly what Harris had in the bank account," he says. "Well, you know what? I do now."
Getting through the early years took a lot of encouragement from his wife, Katherine, or K, as Moody calls her. They married the weekend after Moody graduated from college.
Originally an economics major, Moody abandoned the major his freshman year after he continually checked the career placement center and found only one company looking for an economics major. The company was Frito-Lay, and it was looking for a sales representative.
"I worked nights in a grocery store," Moody says. "I knew what the Frito-Lay guy did - he talked to the manager and then stocked shelves." Deciding that wasn't for him, he settled on industrial engineering. "It was the easiest thing I could find with engineering in the title," he laughs. He put himself through college by alternating terms at college with work at cigarette manufacturer. Though he allows his grades weren't stellar - "I enjoyed college" he says - he redeemed himself by putting his all into the M.B.A. program he took through the University of Florida.
He enjoyed the challenges available at Harris, particularly the final one: Taking an idea developed by Harris engineers and spinning it off into a viable company.
AuthenTec doesn't release financial information. The company isn't profitable yet, but revenues are increasing, Moody says.
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