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Second in a series of occasional articles
WHILE IN the hospital for three weeks last fall, first fighting for his life and later fighting to squelch the phantom pains of a newly amputated finger, Matt Hitt had a lot of time to think.
He thought about his family, he thought about the frailty of health and he thought about the future of a tiny Columbia startup he helped found and develop, Sonum Technologies Inc. He'd always considered the company a promising business opportunity, but now he also looked at it as something else: a way to help people like himself.
"It gave me all the more reason to get this technology out there and prove you don't need hands for anything," said Hitt, who underwent reconstructive surgery on his right hand after being slammed by a rare and terrifying illness most commonly known as the flesh-eating disease.
Four operations later, he'd lost a finger, had muscle and skin from his thigh grafted onto his arm and had to relearn how to write, type and grasp objects.
"The ability to speak to my computer would have made me feel a hell of a lot better about my rehab," said Hitt, a 49-year-old Towson accountant.
Sonum has developed an artificial intelligence that its staff believes could replace the mouse and keyboard of computers. The technology, they say, could drive computers in a way no one has yet been able to do -- by using normal speech.
It has applications for the health care industry, operating systems suppliers, homeland defense and automated telephone interaction, they say. But convincing the marketplace, numbed by tech busts and unrealized promises, is a daunting project.
For that, Hitt knew changes would have to be made and a plan -- a solid, clear business plan -- put in place.
Such a plan would attract big investment money, allowing him to step back from his role as chief executive officer and spend more time with his wife and six children, a priority now more than ever before.
Turning the ideas behind Sonum into a business had been tried once before, a generation ago. But it failed in part because the technology's creator had too much control, too little corporate expertise and a plan that didn't take other developments into account.
Hitt is not about to let it happen again. He put thousands of dollars of his own money into the startup and is banking on a big return.
"The goal is to make money," he has said. "That's what this is all about: making money."
Hospitalized
For a few weeks late last year, it was uncertain whether he would survive to do it.
On Sept. 27, one of his young sons -- recovering from a bout with strep throat -- crawled into his parents' bed, snuggled up and left the virus behind, which Hitt unknowingly picked up through a paper cut on the middle finger of his right hand.
It quickly morphed into necrotizing fasciitis. The condition destroys muscle, fat and skin tissue and causes death in 20 percent of the 500 to 1,500 people who acquire it each year in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
By Sept. 28, Hitt was in the hospital.
"All of a sudden it just dawned on us that this is a very, very serious situation," said Chief Technology Officer W. Randolph "Randy" Ford, who created the company from ideas written in his doctoral thesis 24 years ago. "We were all very concerned."
WHILE IN the hospital for three weeks last fall, first fighting for his life and later fighting to squelch the phantom pains of a newly amputated finger, Matt Hitt had a lot of time to think.
He thought about his family, he thought about the frailty of health and he thought about the future of a tiny Columbia startup he helped found and develop, Sonum Technologies Inc. He'd always considered the company a promising business opportunity, but now he also looked at it as something else: a way to help people like himself.
"It gave me all the more reason to get this technology out there and prove you don't need hands for anything," said Hitt, who underwent reconstructive surgery on his right hand after being slammed by a rare and terrifying illness most commonly known as the flesh-eating disease.
Four operations later, he'd lost a finger, had muscle and skin from his thigh grafted onto his arm and had to relearn how to write, type and grasp objects.
"The ability to speak to my computer would have made me feel a hell of a lot better about my rehab," said Hitt, a 49-year-old Towson accountant.
Sonum has developed an artificial intelligence that its staff believes could replace the mouse and keyboard of computers. The technology, they say, could drive computers in a way no one has yet been able to do -- by using normal speech.
It has applications for the health care industry, operating systems suppliers, homeland defense and automated telephone interaction, they say. But convincing the marketplace, numbed by tech busts and unrealized promises, is a daunting project.
For that, Hitt knew changes would have to be made and a plan -- a solid, clear business plan -- put in place.
Such a plan would attract big investment money, allowing him to step back from his role as chief executive officer and spend more time with his wife and six children, a priority now more than ever before.
Turning the ideas behind Sonum into a business had been tried once before, a generation ago. But it failed in part because the technology's creator had too much control, too little corporate expertise and a plan that didn't take other developments into account.
Hitt is not about to let it happen again. He put thousands of dollars of his own money into the startup and is banking on a big return.
"The goal is to make money," he has said. "That's what this is all about: making money."
On Sept. 27, one of his young sons -- recovering from a bout with strep throat -- crawled into his parents' bed, snuggled up and left the virus behind, which Hitt unknowingly picked up through a paper cut on the middle finger of his right hand.
It quickly morphed into necrotizing fasciitis. The condition destroys muscle, fat and skin tissue and causes death in 20 percent of the 500 to 1,500 people who acquire it each year in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
By Sept. 28, Hitt was in the hospital.
"All of a sudden it just dawned on us that this is a very, very serious situation," said Chief Technology Officer W. Randolph "Randy" Ford, who created the company from ideas written in his doctoral thesis 24 years ago. "We were all very concerned."
