SERIAL technology entrepreneur Gordon Povey is set to realise the plan to offer consumers a diary that writes itself which he conceived a decade ago after capitalising on recent advances in communications.
Mr Povey had the idea of allowing people to record what they had done using the information produced from gadgets like smartphones in 2006 only to find the infrastructure needed to encourage widespread adoption was not in place.
“The trouble was that not many people had a Symbian smartphone required to run the application, the data networks were patchy and could rack up expensive data charges. It was also quite heavy on the battery,” he recalled.
“Essentially the technology and infrastructure was not good enough, and there were not enough smartphone users.”
After spending the last few years watching mobile technology become ubiquitous, Mr Povey has launched an updated diary writing application which he believes will provide a valuable tool people could use to organise their lives.
The system creates a digital footprint by linking all the material posted by people on social media with things like payment and travel records held on their mobile phones.
The application, called Orla, was unveiled at the EIE’17 technology showcase event in Edinburgh this month.
It has already generated strong interest among potential investors.
This has left Mr Povey confident his Trisent venture will be able to secure £400,000 development funding by August.
He believes Orla could provide the foundation for what could become a very big business.
With 2.6 billion smartphone users around the world, the market for lifestyle apps is valued at $4.4 billion.
“The technical and commercial environments are now right and Scotland has never been a better place from which to try to build a company of an International scale,” said Mr Povey.
The company is also on the look-out for talented developers who may want to take part in what he reckons will be an exciting journey.
Glasgow-born Mr Povey funded the initial development work on Orla with a six figure investment, drawing on savings accumulated in a career which has spanned academia and business.
He sold the original Trisent business to Artilium for £1.7m in 2008 and bought back some of the intellectual property last year in the belief it could be used to develop a product with wide appeal.
Before relaunching Trisent, Mr Povey spent two years running Dukosi, which has developed battery management technology for the motor industry.
Mr Povey spent seven years lecturing at Edinburgh University in the 1990s after completing a doctorate in cellular communications.
He specialised in electric communications technology that could make more effective use of the spectrum that carries signals from one side of the world to the other.
Trisent was created in 2003 following a buy-out from Finland's Elektrobit, where Mr Povey worked on early mobile phone technology.
Sixty companies made pitches in front of potential investors from around the world at the EIE'17 event.
Members of the investor panels included Bob Keiller, who sold the PSN oil services business to Wood Group for $1bn in 2011 and now chairs Scottish Enterprise and Stuart Paterson of Scottish Equity Partners
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