UnaliWear, Luminary Micro, & Intrinsity

Jean Anne Booth

Austin, Texas
Accelerator
Founder & CEO, UnaliWear
Founder, Luminary Micro (Acquired by Texas Instruments)
Founder, Intrinsity (Acquired by Apple)

UnaliWear extends independence with dignity for vulnerable people through a wrist worn medical alert watch with 24/7 automatic fall detection and more.

I’m an electrical engineer, with 30 years of experience in semiconductors. I spent ten years at a major semiconductor company before leaving to join my first startup. That startup failed within the first year, but the team became the founding members of Intrinsity, a semiconductor company harnessing a unique stacked gate methodology to excel in compute-intensive fields like audio, vision, and graphics. Apple later acquired Intensity, recognizing the potential of our technology for their graphics unit. By that time, I had left to start another semiconductor company, Luminary Micro, that created a common software platform for microcontrollers. Luminary Micro was acquired in 2009 by Texas Instruments, and I went there following the transaction before retiring. I came out of retirement in 2013 to start UnaliWear, a medical alert company that provides automatic fall detection and more through a wrist worn watch.

Startup acquisitions play an important role in the overall economy and U.S. competitiveness. The exit to Texas Instruments helped broadly disseminate our technology and was a good outcome for the U.S and our capabilities. Prior to starting Luminary Micro, people were worried the U.S. and Europe were going to lose the edge in semiconductors to China and Taiwan, and the microcontroller marketplace was super fragmented. Every semiconductor company was doing something different, which presented a barrier from an engineering perspective because any change in hardware (semiconductors) necessitated a change in software as well. We created the first common software base and it really forced the industry to transition. The change we drove as a startup enabled choice between semiconductor suppliers based on price and features without the technical barrier. And it helped shift the lead in microcontrollers back toward the U.S.

Most startup exits are through acquisitions and they are absolutely necessary because exits are the way that we fund what comes next. The normal lifecycle of companies and entrepreneurs is to start something, hope you at least hit a single, get some money, and plow that capital and knowledge into your next business or into someone else’s business as an angel investor. That’s my story. If I hadn’t sold the earlier companies, UnaliWear wouldn’t exist, and the thousands of Americans we give dignity, independence, and safety to would be without our technology. Limiting acquisitions without understanding their role could inadvertently hinder the flow of capital and stunt the progress of groundbreaking technologies.

In the acquisition process it’s critical to have competition for companies. A competitive process is what enables founders to negotiate deal terms and close at reasonable valuations. For example, with my semiconductor companies there were only so many potential corporate buyers. If you take any of them away, then you have a less competitive process or you’re left with private equity buyers that have other motivations besides innovation. So, if policymakers or enforcement agencies limit who can acquire or what they can acquire, then you’ll see worse outcomes for startups, less capital going to funding innovation, and fewer entrepreneurs able to plow money from their exit into the next thing.

One final thought related to startup capital formation and exits. With my semiconductor companies, we were able to attract VC investment, and we raised over $100 Million between the two semiconductor companies. UnaliWear, by comparison, is in what I call “SilverTech,” where VCs aren’t very interested—perhaps because there’s never been a big exit for a silvertech startup yet. I hope to prove them wrong one day, but in the meantime, we need investors, so I’ve ended up raising over $20 million from angel investors—usually one $25,000 check at a time. I’ll let you do the math. I often think about other pathways to access capital, including going public, another common startup exit. But going public is so expensive and burdensome thanks to regulatory requirements, it’s not really feasible for us because we don’t have the millions in the bank needed to afford going public.