Founded by Tim Scalan, the firm got the Capital I T prize for innovation, in Paris, thanks to Octave, a revolutionary writing system on mobiles, on PDA Palm Pilot type.
Launched in July 1999, in the CICA, in Sophia Antipolis, E-acute skyrocketted in the world of the start-ups of the French Riviera. In November 1999, with Octave, a revolutionary writing system alloted to small mobiles (phone, Personal Digital Assistant, etc...) it won the Capital I.T. prize for innovation, in Paris. What is enough to draw attention. However, if the company is new, its founder, Tim Scalan, has nothing to do with a beginner. He has already founded some start-ups. His last firm, Papyrus, was already working on this issue of virtual writing. But with E-acute, today, a huge market is openning to him.
Activities : perfecting a new writing system on small mobiles. 'Try to write a message on your mobile phone', Tim Scalan explains. Nothing less economic. So, the founder of E-acute has totally rethought the issue.
Product : it is called Octave. He took out a patent on this new writing system, at the INPI and he expects to sell licences. The whole is presented in the shape of a small star with eight branches, each one corresponding to three or four letters. With a pen, you have to write a word. What is new is that the system was made better to write. One : the letters are distributed according to a process that refers to memory. Thus, the branch that is materialized by a 0, brigs together the letters 'o', 'g', and 'q'. Two : the letters that are the more often used come up at first. No need to press four times on the number 7 to get the letter 's', as on a mobile. Three : here is the greatest point, the system is accompanied with smartness coupled with a dictionnary, and in a way it plays sccrabble. For instance, for a word of six letters, if you have gone by six successive branches, it searches the right combination, thus, that one corresponding to the word, and it offers you a solution. 'After one or two hours of training, it is possible to use Octave' Tim Scalan considers.
Market : mobiles of third generation and any machine that needs to enter texts (PDA, Web TV, consoles of games, etc...). It is also possible to think of replacing the phone keys with this system, thus, this may allow to get more space to make screens bigger. However, the whole difficulty of the E-acute plan is that it has to manage to asset itself as a standard system of writing on small mobiles.
Historical account : in 1978, Tim Scalan (bachelor's degree in Phisics) invented the first electronic game of bridge for Fidelity Electronic, an American firm. This is what led him in Sophia Antipolis in 1981, where he settled. After founding a firm (Nice Ideas) that made electronic games, he worked for seven years at Digital's, a firm that he left to found Papyrus (in 1992) and to develop a product of cursive writing recognition. The company was taken over. Tim Scalan held on and perfected Octave in December 1998. E-acute is officially created in March 1999 and set up in the CICA of Sophia Antipoils in July 1999.
Team : Tim Scalan is in charge of the 'business' part and David Bucckle works the soft. An I.T. engineer joined the duo. The firm subcontracts a lot to firms from Sophia Antipolis : RTS Network built its website, Techtonic is in charge of its marketing, etc.
Financing : 3.3 million francs during the first round of table, in September 1999. The firm that, from SARL (Limited Company) became a SAS (a Simplified-Stock Company) in Dcember 1999, participated to the summit of Sophia Antipoils and it hopes it will close a second round of table at 25 million francs, in the first quarter of the year 2000.
Why Sophia? In 1981, while i was in the USA for Fidelity Electronic, i was offerd to open a subsidiary of soft in France. I said i was okay if i could choose. I chose Sphia and i stayed there.
Contact : Techtonic Agency : +33 (0)4 92 94 21 60 3
Website : /www.e-acute.fr">www.e-acute.fr. There, we especially find examples on the principle and on the running of Octave.