September 24, 2004

Evergreen entrepreneur Jay Elliot offers real mobility

By Dan King
Staff Writer

It’s a long way from Año Nuevo to Silicon Valley. Perhaps not as the crow flies, but culturally, the two are worlds apart. Evergreen resident and entrepreneur Jay Elliot grew up on Año Nuevo near the coastal town of Pescadero, on a ranch his family had owned since 1839.

“It’s a very unique spot,” said Elliot, a fourth-generation Californian who is now founder and CEO of the software company Powerhouse Technologies Group, makers of the Migo. “As a child I was in the ocean all the time. I built my own surfboards. I was a big surfer and all that stuff.”

Elliot would emerge from that beach boy upbringing to obtain degrees from both San Jose State and U.C. Berkeley, and then garner experience in the health industry, the film industry and the technology industry. He left his job as a director of IBM’s Santa Teresa Software Lab in South San Jose when he chose not to move to New York. After serving a short stint at Intel in Santa Clara, he landed at Apple Computers in Cupertino in 1979.

“I met Steve Jobs at a restaurant in Los Gatos,” remembered Elliot. “We got to talking about computers and he told me about this little company I’d never heard of.”

Elliot played two roles at Apple: making the company function and launching the Macintosh—very impressive accomplishments by anyone’s standard. He then owned a television production company, San Francisco Studios, which took him to Los Angeles.

When he and his wife returned to the Bay Area and looked for a place to live, they chose the Evergreen Area because they felt it was an ideal place for them to raise their boys, particularly because of the strong Evergreen Elementary School district. They moved to the Meadowlands in 1999, and just a few months ago, moved to the Bell Aire Luxury Estates. Their boys, Jay and Federico, attend James F. Smith School.

Current adventure: Migo
His role as CEO of New Health Systems led to the creation of Migo—the alternative to lugging laptops around with you whenever you travel from home to school or home to office or between offices.

Elliot says his wife Liliana was instrumental in coming up with the name Migo. He didn’t want a techie-sounding name, but rather, sought more of a brand name.

A native of Bogotá, Colombia, Liliana came up with “Mio,” meaning “mine” in Spanish. But Mio was already taken, so they came up with “Migo” as part of amigo, meaning “friend” in Spanish.

Migo is an easy-to-use software product that is secure on a USB flash memory device allowing you to synchronize and carry your desktop, files, e-mail and information all on a lightweight, portable device. It is compatible with any Windows platform and any Outlook release.

“In our company we have a laptop pool,” Elliot explained. “Sometimes I need a laptop for demonstrations or whatever. So I just check it out. There is nothing on it except for the operating systems. All my data is on the Migo.”

“I like to consider ourselves the Microsoft of the micro devices,” Elliot said. “What makes this magic is our software that allows you to move around with your computer.”

The Migo device, which fits on your key ring, allows any personal computer to be used to look and feel like your home computer, displaying Outlook e-mail and files on another computer and leaving no trace when you disconnect. (See review in “Computer Connection,” below.)

Mobility is key
“It’s about mobility,” he said. “We want a society now where everything is mobile. It was very important that once you leave the computer, you leave no trace that you were there.”

Elliot said he got the idea for the Migo while working in the health care industry trying to develop a digital system to move information around for doctors and hospitals. While the system he developed used smart cards, once he saw a flash memory device, the marriage of his software and the key chain device came into being, and Migo was born.

The current plans for Migo include making it more platform and device independent. Elliot has example beta products of Migo in a wristwatch and in an iPod. His wristwatch Migo has 256 megabytes (MB) of storage and a USB connection tucked into the band.

He eventually plans to go wireless.

“The ultimate thing is in the cell phone. We have one in the office. Nokia has a phone they sell in the Far East, which has a 5 MB card in it. In fact I have it running on my iPod. It doesn’t matter what the device. As long as it has storage and a way to control information and has the space to do it. We take only about 1 MB for our software.”

Powerhouse Technologies Group is a public company. Elliot sees lots of potential for growth beyond its current 17-employee work force, because he says his company was the first to market. While there are other flash memory devices, they are all built by hardware companies.

He thinks there is also the possibility of merging with or being bought by another company.

“I think Microsoft could clearly love us. I think Microsoft might want to make us exclusive to them, not make it compatible with Linux or Apple. I see a lot of ways people could see us enhancing their business model. I’m not interested in merging or selling at the moment, but I will do what is right at the right time for the shareholders,” said Elliot.

• Migo’s Awards
  
  -“Best of 2004” World Class Awards, PC World Magazine
  
  - “Innovative Technology Award,” Xchange ’04 Xcellence Awards CMP United Business Media
  
  - “Ultimate Choice 2004 Award,” Laptop Magazine