FocalPoint’s new CEO and CXO supercorrelate path to success

Scott Pomerantz says it was a straightforward decision for to accept the offer to become the new chief executive officer of Cambridge-founded FocalPoint Positioning.

US-based GPS expert Scott was approached for the role by Dr Ramsey Faragher, a Queens’ College bye-fellow, and founder-CEO of FocalPoint, who now transitions into the roles of president and CTO.

Ramsey said: “When I established FocalPoint, one of my goals was to grow the business and IP portfolio to a point where we could attract one of the industry’s great CEOs to help us to complete our vision of powering the positioning of all GNSS receivers worldwide.

“I am thrilled to have succeeded in that goal and it means I can resume my CTO role full-time and leave Scott to do the things he does best: scale companies at pace and achieve multiple commercial successes.”

Scott has more than 30 years of experience in positioning and semiconductors. His company Global Locate won the race to bring GPS to the mass consumer smartphone market, supplying the first GPS chips to companies including Apple and Samsung. He joins at a time of intense growth for FocalPoint following a £6m Series B led by Molten Ventures (previously Draper Esprit) in March this year.

Recently, Scott and Jim were in the UK for a series of meetings with colleagues and investors to plot the next stage of the company’s growth. The Cambridge Independent spoke with Scott via video call about how his appointment came about back in September: “Ramsey reached out to me and asked if I wanted to be his new CEO.

“As soon as I put the phone down I asked my contacts what they knew about this UK start-up, and I just knew from their tone and enthusiastic approval that I needed to get involved immediately.”

One of the first things Scott did was hire Jim LaMance as CXO (chief experience officer).

GPS industry veteran Jim LaMance is the second executive hire for FocalPoint in the past quarter. His track record includes the development of a GPS navigation system for the NASA X-34 rocket plane at Constell. As director, GPS algorithm development at Global Locate (acquired by Broadcom) he introduced the high-sensitivity track-less GPS receiver. As CTO at Locata, he pioneered a ground-based positioning system before supporting the integration of the technology with some of the world’s largest industrial OEMs.

“My role as chief experience officer is to engage with the customer to find out what their challenges are and how FocalPoint can help,” Jim explained. “Whether it’s IP or source code or software, we help them find how FocalPoint technology best fits into their architecture. Then we support integration, testing, verification, engineering and life cycle support. I look after the whole customer focused side of the business.”

FocalPoint is now forging ahead with technology that can enhance the positioning accuracy of anything from mobiles, wearables and watches to cars. Its core product, Supercorrelation, is a chipset-level software upgrade for mobiles, wearables and vehicles. It revolutionises their positioning ability in complex urban environments and even indoors by boosting the sensitivity, accuracy and integrity of the GPS receiver.

Scott’s vision is to span multiple markets with FocalPoint’s growing IP business, and supercharging every location-dependent device globally, while Ramsey maintains and develops the technology.

“Ramsey has been brilliant and his projection has been driving this huge trajectory,” Scott says. “He’s responsible for driving our ground-breaking IP, the core technology, and works tenaciously alongside Jim to ensure our customers have everything they need to provide a better service to their users.

“That’s important because we’re planning a second wave of expansion in the number of people we have in all areas to support the huge commercial success of our customers. These areas include engineering, testing and trialling and seamless deployment of this IP.”

The appointments of Scott and Jim follow the company’s first major licensing deal with one of the biggest names in the GPS business, Camborne-based u-blox, and a £6m Series B raise earlier this year. Meanwhile, the first office outside the UK is now open.

“FocalPoint Positioning Inc is based in Delaware with its headquarters in New Jersey,” Scott says. “Jim and I are expanding the US foothold to both northern and southern California because that’s where many of our customers are based. There are a lot of carriers and network operators, plus big players in the semiconductor and handset industry out West – and in South Korea.”

The patented methods inside FocalPoint’s technology enable GPS receivers to detect and reject false signals – including real signals that are reflected off buildings and malicious signals from spoofers.

“Supercorrelation capabilities can be added to existing chipsets and in some cases can even be updated over-the-air as a firmware update. This allows FocalPoint faster access to the market than technologies that require new GNSS chipsets.

Applications include high accuracy positioning for smartphones, wearables, autonomous vehicles and drones, as well as cyber-security and resilience – protecting location-dependent devices and businesses from malicious spoofer attacks.

If that sounds like a wide brief, it is.

“Any device that is location-aware and moves is our focus,” says Scott. “Primarily it’s in three areas – handsets, wearables and watches, and cars.

“And by the way, there’s 1.7bn units a year and growing being sold into those sectors, so that’s 1.7bn possible devices which could benefit from FocalPoint’s IP, software and services. Of those, around 87 per cent are cellphones.

“Our policy is to build a very large and successful IP business, and I have every intention of taking it forward.

“I wouldn’t have joined the FocalPoint rocketship if this wasn’t an enormous opportunity.”

Ramsey told the Cambridge Independent: “Scott is incredibly well connected in the GPS and mobile sectors, and has already made an impact. Jim also brings unparalleled technical experience and customer relationships from his years at Global Locate, Broadcom and Locata.

“Scott and Jim’s arrival marks the beginning of our international growth strategy and their welcome addition to the executive team frees me up to return my focus to where the bulk of the company’s value lies – a growing patent portfolio.”