HI. TECH
Landmark Ventures' deal is only the latest high-tech hope for Hawai'i

By John Duchemin
Advertiser Staff Writer

High Tech Hawai'i has lately endured a six-month cycle of pessimism and infighting, during which the main topic of conversation was the legislative fight over changes to the Act 221 high-tech tax credits, and not much else seemed to be happening.

This cycle has repeated itself for years. Something good will happen, and the fledgling technology industry will seem to momentarily gain traction — and then it's back to the doldrums, where the problems are more evident than the solutions. And then, along comes a little puff of good news, and the winds are back in the sails, and again we float toward the distant vision of a high-tech island.

The trend goes all the way back to Verifone, the locally founded inventor of bar code scanning equipment that eventually merged into Hewlett Packard. It continued with Digital Island, then Pihana, HotU, WorldPoint, and Adtech. Each received money from venture investors, hired lots of local people — in Adtech's case, several hundred — and inspired further hope that Hawai'i had finally built a "critical mass" of high-tech — a self-sufficient sub-economy that would swell into prosperity without much prodding.

All of these companies soon passed their primes, and in some cases crashed precipitously, but their rapid ascents — not to mention the millions of dollars floating in their bank accounts — encouraged other entrepreneurs. Maybe the next hot Hawai'i company would establish a firmer footing in the global marketplace and become the legitimate growth engine high-tech Hawai'i desperately needs if it wants to be more than a dream.

Now comes the latest puff in the sails: The multimillion-dollar fundraising success of Landmark Ventures, which has attracted California investors including one of the nation's biggest venture capital firms.

Landmark, which makes wireless network hardware based on technology developed for the military in Silicon Valley, promises to hire dozens of new workers and expand from its 12-employee operation on Nu'uanu Avenue to a bigger office. It's backed by local and Mainland venture investors. Landmark's chief executive, Tareq Hoque, is a veteran of Adtech, its technology comes by way of the Stanford Research Institute, and its founder, Ike Nassi, is a veteran of Apple.

That's a fine starting point for a potential company, and Landmark is sure to inspire high-tech advocates, who lately have been battered by the constant bickering over Act 221 and continued cutbacks in the telecommunications sector.

But a note of caution is certainly in order. Landmark doesn't yet have a product that it can actually sell. It's at the early stages of development. The technology, which is cheaper and easier to deploy than traditional wireless network backbones, is certainly cutting edge, but it's competing not only with established wireless firms, but with other new wireless technologies.

No one knows if Landmark's technology will become an accepted standard or if users will end up buying the finished product, or even if Landmark can advance the technology to the final stages of development before running out of money.

So is Landmark, in its current stage, good for Hawai'i? Unquestionably, and the state would be better off to have 20 similar companies.

But is Landmark the final answer to Hawai'i's high-tech prayers?

Not until it has a couple decades of phenomenal growth and worldwide success. Until then, it's only the latest reason to hope that the doldrums can finally be left behind.

I don't usually plug events, but a panel discussion at 5:30 tonight at the Shriner's Hospital Auditorium promises to be good on several levels. Peter Englert, chancellor of the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, and Dick Cox, associate director of the UH Office of Technology Transfer, pair off against two certified skeptics: James Plummer, president of Palo Alto research firm QED, and Carl Hewitt, a Windward O'ahu resident and emeritus professor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The topic is the future of biotechnology research in Hawai'i. The organizers, an ad hoc group called "@ The Future Zone," warmly welcome audience participation. Shriner's is at1310 Punahou St.; $5 at the door pays for food.

Reach John Duchemin at jdunemin@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8062.