Space:
Funding R&D on a buck a day
By Shelia Watson
Contributing Writer
Adam Foulke could be called a “seasoned entrepreneur.” As one of the founders of Lowcountry Marine Contractors, which provided transportation and logistics services to the shipping lines that call on the Port of Charleston, he learned several valuable lessons in starting and growing a business.
One of those lessons was recognizing a great opportunity and taking steps to take advantage of it.
That was more or less what happened when, in the course of operating LMC, he and his partner, Robert Veit, saw a greater need for supply chain security than for transportation and logistics.
“We were really up against a pretty fierce competition here in Charleston in the port services arena,” Foulke said. “That caused us to take stock of our options and look for other avenues for business.”
Foulke and his partner turned their attention toward the burgeoning security industry and formed InterDetect Corp., which he said “will be positioned as a provider of innovative solutions that will enhance supply chain and infrastructure security without impeding operational efficiencies.”
The company is still in the development stage and trying to gain traction in the security market. There are significant opportunities for the company with the recent passage of the SAFE Port Act, which requires the Department of Homeland Security to develop recommendations for screening and scanning prototypes.
Foulke has been in contact with the chairman of DHS’s Economic Security, Infrastructure Protection and Cybersecurity Subcommittee in hopes of securing some of the funding that will be triggered from DHS recommendations for development and implementation.
The prototype InterDetect has developed would be used as part of an overall airfreight and maritime shipping security program. The system would be placed in air cargo distribution centers and on shipping port container cranes to detect and jam or override the radio frequency signals emitted by an unauthorized cell phone in air cargo packages and shipping containers.
InterDetect plans to market the technology to commercial air cargo operators, container terminal operators and federal agencies, including DHS and the Transportation Security Administration. Revenue will be generated initially through sales of proprietary hardware and software as well as system management and training fees or user fees assessed per scan, Foulke said.
The company will continue to investigate capabilities to augment the system’s radio frequency detection function, including thermal detection to address the threat of suicide bombers and illegal human traffic in shipping containers.
At this point, however, the company is still in the research and development stage, which is typically a long way from a return on the investment of resources.
“That’s why we’re really glad to be in the ThinkTEC incubator space,” he said. “When we were operating LMC, we had an office that cost about $1,000 a month. As we were winding down the port service business, we had no need to keep that office, but we still needed a place to operate as a professional business.”
The ThinkTEC incubator’s $1-per-day rent is an economic incentive for a company that is trying to pour everything it has into its R&D work, Foulke said.
“Right now we’re trying to raise money for our next stage,” he said. “We’re conserving everywhere we can and focusing on the goal. Not having to worry about an office is an enormous help.”
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