PSBJ Interview: Nathan Kundtz Wants To Change The World
Nathan Kundtz wants to bring a high-speed internet connection to anything that moves. Kundtz’s 4-year-old company, Kymeta, is a Bill Gates-backed spinout of Bellevue’s Intellectual Ventures.
The company creates a new way to find and lock onto signals from orbiting satellites – a feat that in the past was accomplished only with large, hard-to-move satellite dishes.
Kymeta’s technology could bring down the costs of satellite connectivity and make it so portable that a plane, boat or car could connect to the internet via a satellite.
The company raised $62 million in funding earlier this year from backers including Gates and secured partnerships with companies including industry veteran Intelsat – a big endorsement of the efficacy of the startup’s technology – Japan’s Sharp Corp., Panasonic Avionics Corp. and, most recently, Toyota.
What does Kymeta do? In a nutshell, we’re revolutionizing wireless communications. In high-capacity satellite communications, you need a dish and a dish in a mobile environment is a real problem. So we’re replacing that with a flat surface that points (at the satellites) electronically and can be produced at a consumer-level cost.
Will this technology help more people connect to the internet? Will it help connect the next billion people who come online? There’s a role our technology can play there. A number of people are exploring innovative architecture that all require high-capacity beam-scanning antennas. But I think it’s important to note when it comes to mobility, there are a lot of people in the first billion that don’t have the right connectivity, at any number of places around the world, so there are problems to be addressed across the entire spectrum.
Read the full article at the Puget Sound Business Journal
