Date: Jun 20, 2013 Source: bizjournals (
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In 1999, Daniel and Deborah Theobald started Vecna Technologies Inc. with a $5,000 deposit from their bank account and a short list of principles.
The couple, both graduates of the engineering program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wanted to build amazing products for the health-care industry. They wanted to run an ethical business, taking the best aspects of for-profit and nonprofit business and academia, to make the world a better place. And they wanted to remain independent.
Daniel says they've stayed true to those goals over the past 14 years, in large part due to grants from the Small Business Administration's Small Business Innovation Research program. Starting with Vecna's first $75,000 grant in 2001, it has received 18 Phase 1 grants and 17 Phase 2 SBIR grants. That has allowed it to develop and market products ranging from search-and-rescue robots to a self check-in kiosk at Veteran's Administration hospitals, without ever having to accept traditional venture capital funding.
"Vecna had some unique goals," Daniel said. "Our commitment to make the world a better place, our commitment to independence … all this would have been much harder if we had to bring in outside investors."
In 2011, the SBA gave Vecna its Tibbetts Award, which recognizes companies that excel using SBIR grants. Before that milestone was reached, Daniel, 42, and wife Deborah, 39, say the company went through a lot of changes. They founded the company in Maryland, where Deborah was doing research for a master's degree in aerospace engineering at the University of Maryland.
In the beginning, it was essentially a consulting firm, but as they developed software for health-care uses, they made a point of keeping all rights to the products. Daniel also pursued his interest in robotics, developing the Bear search-and-rescue robot, which can pick up a person weighing up to 500 pounds.
Meanwhile, the company started applying for SBIR grants, a potential source of research funding Daniel had heard about at MIT. They were rejected a couple times in the beginning.
"It was a learning experience for us," he said. "We were focused on the research side of it. We realized we were building some really advanced tools, but we needed to meet the market need first."
The first grant was awarded through the National Institutes of Health for an automated system to help identify outbreaks of infection. That system was launched a few years later as QC Pathfinder, Vecna's first product on the market. In the meantime, the company was working on a project for Madigan Army Medical Center outside Tacoma, Wash., which ended up as Vecna's biggest project ever: a self-service check-in kiosk like those in airports, to be used by patients.
The deceptively simple idea allows patients to register via the Web. Vecna went on to develop the same product for the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System. A study found that the device paid for itself within six months by simply allowing patients to correct their own billing addresses, Daniel said.
When the VA decided it wanted similar systems in all its hospitals, it initially chose Vecna's competitor, NCR Corp. But at Deborah's insistence, Vecna contested the contract and won out in 2008, launching a period of explosive growth. By then headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., the company had about 100 employees when it received the contract; two years later, it had grown to 250 workers.
Meanwhile, the company's robotics innovation continues to grow. Geoffrey Main, seabasing program manager for the Office of Naval Research, has worked with Vecna since he chose it for a Phase 1 SBIR grant in 2010 to develop a robot for use in the closed, tight environment of a ship. Vecna was chosen for the Phase 2 portion of the grant, with a critical demonstration due this summer.
"They did an excellent job of integrating a number of technologies for shipboard use," Main said. "They integrated the physical capacity to move and manipulate things with the perceptive ability, using its sensors to perceive the environment."
Today, with locations in Greenbelt, Md., Cambridge and a kiosk manufacturing site in Woburn, Mass., Daniel said the company has stayed true to its goal of helping improve the world. Four years ago, Vecna started a nonprofit organization which is working to improve health care in rural Africa.
Daniel holds up Vecna's management system as a model, such as its policy of paying employees to spend four hours a week on community service.
"When you create that type of team experience, people are more willing to pitch in on projects when you need it," he said.
