Adam Kinsey is the founder of Verigo, a technology that uses smart sensors to track and monitor fresh produce during its journey from farm to truck to warehouse to store to table. New technology like RFID chips has gotten dramatically cheaper, making the business model viable. A former engineer at Texas Instruments, Adam saw a new communications platform there that he knew could be adapted for fresh produce supply chains. A year later, no one else had adapted the technology, so Adam jumped in. “It was boldness or stupidity,” he says, that motivated him to enter a market he knew nothing about. This episode was originally released on October 16, 2019.

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01
Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade and podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida. The museum is named after James Robert Cade, who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We'll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them, we'll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Richard Miles: 0:36
Can the internet get me some fresh strawberries? Apparently, yes. If you can track them and integrate the information into global supply chains here to tell me how that works is Adam Kinsey. The founder of Verigo a company that does just that. Welcome Radio Cade, Adam.

Adam Kinsey: 0:49
Thank you, Richard. Thanks for having me.

Richard Miles: 0:51
So Adam, most of our listeners probably know or have heard about the internet of things, but in case we've got some late adopters out there among our listeners. Tell me in general, what is the internet of things? And you can describe for me what Verigo's technology is.

Adam Kinsey: 1:07
The internet of things is a buzzword that spawned probably 15, 20 years ago. Now it's the idea that we have complex systems in the world, whether it's a building and that building has an HVAC system and a water system and all of the systems in that building historically, you'd have to have a technician go and look at each system one by one to manage that building IOT says, let's put sensors on each of those sub systems. Let's put wireless communications on them and let that building talk to you. IOT and related to buildings would be a smart building system, but it also can be applied to things that are in motion. So our specific areas, perishable supply chain, when you're shipping thousands of truckload, shipping containers, aircraft loaded with pallets of cargo, same type of problems of important, valuable products that are in motion, and you need to be able to manage them in that supply chain. And so IOT in the supply chain is let's put smart sensors and communications on each of those packages for each of those shipments and let them collect intelligence about themselves and talk to you while they're in motion. So you can effectively manage the entire supply chain and all the products in it.

Richard Miles: 2:16
And so what has made that easier right, is a couple of breakthroughs in technology. And it used to be early computer age days, but the idea of putting some sort of physical sensor on a machine part right away was probably overwhelmed by cost considerations and ability of that sensor to talk to other sensors and so on what has happened that has made the ability for things to talk to other things cheaper, faster, more reliable.

Adam Kinsey: 2:41
What has caused the internet of things, quote, unquote, to grow so rapidly has been the development of new technologies like RFID, come on the scene that now makes it possible to make something smart for something on the order of pennies