Tech startup Landmark relocating to Hawai'i
By John Duchemin
Advertiser Staff Writer
Landmark Technologies, a startup maker of wireless Internet equipment, has received $1.5 million in venture funding from Hawai'i investors and is proceeding with plans to move its operations to Honolulu.
The company, now based in the San Francisco Bay area, plans to set up a research-and-development center in urban Honolulu, move key employees from California, and hire about six to eight engineers and software developers for its Hawai'i operations, said Tareq Hoque, Landmark's chief executive officer.
The deal was made in the waning hours of 2002 to take advantage of tax credits under Act 221, which can be applied against 2002 taxes.
It included a $375,000 investment from the state government's venture funding arm, the Hawai'i Strategic Development Corp., and private investors including Digital Island founder Ron Higgins, Hawaii National Bank chairman Warren Luke, and former Bank of Hawaii chairman Lawrence Johnson.
"The main reason we made this investment was we think (Landmark) has a spectacular technology that could have a potentially big impact on the Hawai'i community," said Bill Richardson, managing partner at venture fund HMS Hawaii, which manages funds for the state's HSDC and made the Landmark investment.
Landmark is producing a commercial version of "PacketHop," a wireless network technology developed with government financing at the Stanford Research Institute.
PacketHop would replace the expensive and complex infrastructure of traditional wireless networks — which are actually heavily wired, behind the scenes — with a "mesh network," a group of two-way wireless boxes that transmit and receive digital information.
The goal is to be cheaper to install, more mobile and more robust than traditional wireless networks, Hoque said.
Landmark Technologies has no cash flow or customers, but its technology was developed using $50 million from the military and other government sources.
Landmark founder Ike Nassi, the company's current chairman, was formerly senior vice president at Apple in charge of Macintosh operating system software development.
Hoque until mid-2001 was president of the Honolulu-based Adtech division of network test equipment maker Spirent Communications, and oversaw the growth of Adtech to a 300-employee, $150-million-per-year company in 2000. He has since served as chairman of the Hawaii Technology Trade Association.
