Visit from Matthew Tolentino

Matthew Tolentino is the CEO of Namatad, and the co-creator of their product, Firefly. He's also a professor at the University of Washington Tacoma campus. His research at the university consists of high-band radio frequency emitters and sensors for providing location data. He talked about how many iterations he and his team had developed as they were building Firefly and how it was hard to discover the correct algorithm for translocating deployed sensors. The Firefly platform was created to help firefighters answer mayday calls safely and quickly. Until Mr. Tolentino addressed this problem with Firefly, firefighters around Tacoma had fallen prey to the confusion that's inherent to mayday calls.

I was impressed by how adamant he was about the mayday call issue. His mission statement was a very clear declaration of the problem. I don't have the complete mission statement, but the company page of the Namatad website gives a snippet of it: "Committed to creating technology that saves lives and protects property." After he explained his company and Firefly in class, I asked him if he's received any other problems or offers to research and design anything. He said that in general, yes. They've received a lot of offers from firefighting houses outside of Tacoma, and that the government was interested in their work. He was reluctant to take that offer though because he knew that shifting his work from the firefighters around Tacoma to the government would damage relationships between his company and the locals. I was inspired to see that having the trust of his clients helped make his business successful. After all, there's more of a guarantee of business with his current clients than with the government, which may have competition that scoops up the ideas he already has in place.

If I build a business locally in Olympia around tech-based board games, I hope I can establish a trusting relationship with the locals, like Olympic Cards and Comics.