Innovator of the Week – Where Are They Now?
Jack O’Toole
FreshAir
What’s new and exciting?
Things have been moving quickly at FreshAir. We have been working hard to commercialize the only technology which can monitor for and detect cigarette and marijuana smoke. We got our initial pilot program out and it was great. Having devices out in the wild allowed us to identify a variety of areas that we wanted to improve. We have worked intensely over the last several months to make those changes. Now we are getting ready to do a much larger second pilot program.
We have some new products in development and we are on a path to commercializing smoking sensors for vehicles.
During this time we have also grown our team by 50%. We have been fortunate to find exceptional scientists and engineers to help us.
What’s the most interesting thing you’ve learned in the last year?
Moving from a controlled environment into the real world is very challenging. A product may work perfectly in a controlled environment, but when a product goes out into the real world it will be subjected to situations and uses that you won’t even imagine. Developing an exceptional product requires intensely focused testing and development.
What’s the next year going to look like?
In the next year we will conduct our second, much larger, pilot program and move into large scale production. We will continue to develop new products and grow our team. A year from now we will have thousands of devices installed. We will continue to find new ways to protect people from unwanted exposure to toxic chemicals.
Check out FreshAir’s original Innovator of the Week profile here.