Innovation: Tan Le

Le: The challenge of making the device successful is even greater than developing the technology

It may be just another gadget but there’s a chance that Tan Le’s headset that allows you to communicate telepathically will change ... everything.

Imagine controlling your environment with your mind. Initially, you could navigate your way around your computer with your thoughts – mediated via a sleek wireless headset. Ultimately, bio-devices in your environment would take cues from your thoughts and moods, adjusting the temperature of your house or the TV channel you’re watching. That’s a taste of the future Le believes she started when she shipped her first batches of EPOC headsets to consumers late last year.

Le is aiming for world domination with the headset, which uses 14 sensors to translate brain waves and facial expressions into actions. So far she’s moved 3500 units. Every young entrepreneur has grandiose dreams but what distinguishes Le is that she has a record of risk taking and overachievement.

Now 33, Tan Le came from Vietnam by boat as a four-year-old refugee with her mother, sister and a bottle of poison in case they were captured by pirates. Finishing school at 16, she graduated with degrees in commerce and law four years later. At the age of 23 she quit her job at leading law firm Freehills to reinvent herself as a tech entrepreneur.

The 1998 Young Australian of the Year is now president of Emotiv Systems, which is headquartered in San Francisco with a research and development team in Sydney. It’s the second company for co-founders Le and Nam Do (they sold their first, a mobile commerce business, in 2003).

They were joined in the venture by scientist-entrepreneurs Allan Snyder (a Marconi Fellow and fibre optics pioneer who had become interested in how magnetic fields can stimulate the brain) and Neil Weste (who had sold his own IT business to Cisco for $500 million in 2001). Start-up capital of $500,000 was provided by the four founders. In 2006, they raised $US15.3 million ($16.5 million) from investors in Australia and the United States.

Emotiv has been incubating its device for seven years. Every stage has seen almost insurmountable challenges, from speeding up the complex algorithms that translate brain signals (initially, a 10-second brain wave took six computers two days to process) to coming up with a mass-market headset design that will fit all head shapes. Nevertheless, the challenge of making the device successful is even greater than developing the technology, Le says.

Emotiv is building capacity and support infrastructure as production scales up. Its Philippines factory has the capacity to make 100,000 units a month and Le says the product will be released to retailers and e-tailers later this year. She predicts revenue will break the $US50 million mark in 2010-11.

The company has also sold more than 1000 licences to developers working on various specialised applications, from games to neuromarketing to therapies for the disabled.

Intel, the US Defence Department and Procter & Gamble are among the big names working with the technology. “You don’t get true visibility until you get ‘real’ consumers,” Le says.

BRW

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