PointShot lands seed round, new investor expected
By Michael Hammond, Ottawa Business Journal Staff
Tue, May 13, 2003 7:00 AM EST

Startup wireless company PointShot Wireless announced that it has closed its seed financing round and is set to bring another investor on board.

The seed round's amount is not being disclosed yet because the company is close to landing further funding with another venture capital firm.

"We're closing with a VC right now," PointShot's president and chief executive Shawn Griffin says. Griffin says the firm will disclose its level of funding once the new backer is officially signed on.

PointShot's seed round comes about seven months after the firm officially opened for business last October. PointShot is developing wireless technology that will allow wireless fidelity networks (WiFi) to be accessed on trains and remote areas.

Griffin, also the chairman of the Ottawa Wireless Cluster, describes his company's technology as the underpinnings for "mobile hot spots." Hot spots refer to the remote data terminals that allow for wireless devices to interchange data with a fixed network more quickly than current methods. The company's technology operates using the 802.11 standard. The number refers to a wireless industry standard that allows for data to be transmitted over short distances at a rate of 54 megabytes per second.

WiFi is beginning to emerge as an alternative for wired versions of local area networks (LANs). In PointShot's case, the company is working with three customers that are testing its products. The company is aiming at rolling out its product in North America initially with the seed round.

"When we started this company, we tried to (find) a vertical where there weren't a lot of players," he says. "There's been a tremendous amount of interest."

Griffin says he says the North American market is "very healthy" and leading the rest of the world in the adoption of the wireless standard. Griffin says he wants to capitalize on the rail traffic in the Windsor-Quebec City corridor initially and take a crack at the rail-friendly European and Asian markets with a subsequent round of funding.

Griffin says he expects to have PointShot's first round of funding nailed down in the fall if the company's products are a hit with the North American market.

"Another round of investment in the fall will depend on what we will need in Europe," Griffin says. "It's the ultimate market."

Besides Venture Coaches, PointShot's seed round also included some undisclosed local angel investors. Jaswinder Kaur, a partner with Venture Coaches, says PointShot's "high-quality" applications were the big draw.

"There are high-growth opportunities here," she says. Griffin's former voice-recognition technology startup, SpeechFront, was sold to Nuance Communications for US$10.5 million in November 2000.