Following our Series B fundraise back in March, hiring our new CEO, and setting up a US office – we’ve had an impressively busy year. The moment we started drafting this 2021 reflection, was the moment we realised just how much we’re going to appreciate the rest over the festive break! Despite the ongoing pandemic, we continue to support hybrid working and have grown the team by a massive 73%.

Update from Scott Pomerantz, CEO, FocalPoint:

“When we think about hiring the best talent in the technology arena; sixteen colleagues joining us over the course of a year is quite something! We’re working on a number of customer accounts which deserve the best GNSS expertise and we continue to deliver on that front thanks to a vigorous hiring campaign this year.

“Key to our success is introducing our world-changing technology to customers in Silicon Valley and beyond and I’m delighted to announce Chris Lane has joined us as Business Development Manager”.

Chris’ GNSS experience began 20 years ago with AGPS pioneer Global Locate, where he was involved early on in evangelizing the benefits of AGPS to device and semiconductor manufacturers as well as service providers. After Being acquired by Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO) in 2008, Chris worked in the GNSS business unit and later the larger Broadcom sales organization.

“While the early days of AGPS were marked by very fast paced innovation, the fundamental drawback of satellite positioning still remains almost 20 years after…Supercorrelation is the technology breakthrough needed to accelerate the usability of GNSS in urban settings and into new potential applications. I’m extremely excited to be a part of the team at FPP and to engage with customers on this groundbreaking technology!” – Chris Lane, Business Development Manager, FocalPoint.

Technology and IP updates

We’ve refocused the business on technology transfer and IP licensing, and filed 2 new patent families recently, with 4 more in draft with our lawyers. We also had our core Supercorrelation patents granted in South Korea last month.

Customers will be able to integrate our patented technologies into their next generation GNSS chips – and so dramatically improve the accuracy and reliability of all location-aware devices that contain them.

Supercorrelation was hailed as a pivotal piece of tech at this year’s ION GNSS+ Conference. Dr Frank van Diggelen from Google and our President Dr Ramsey Faragher both gave talks about our recent collaboration that demonstrates the benefits of combining Supercorrelation technology with Google’s 3D Map Aiding system.

In August we set out to compare ground truth accuracy in some of London’s notorious GPS black-spots, aka urban canyons, against our technology. We kitted out a Smart Mobility Living Lab (SMLL) connected automated vehicle (CAV) with various cameras, GNSS sensors and a dashboard full of smartphones and travelled a x mile route through London. As you can imagine, we collected a tonne of data, so stay tuned – once we’ve crunched through it all, we’ll share our findings in the New Year.

Product Manager, Jez supervising the smartphone dash. You’d be surprised at the range of positioning inaccuracies across this 50cm space.

Team updates

Another special acknowledgment to the team for their patience and understanding during another year of continued uncertainty with regards to Covid-19. Virtual hiring and socially distanced onboarding isn’t something we thought we’d need to endure for this long but we’ve made it work.

We’ve grown the team significantly over the past 12 months whilst also doubling our female headcount thanks to our drive towards greater inclusion and diversity in the company.

Congratulations again to our Higher Software Engineer, Rose Grey, who in June was awarded the first ever W.G.P. Lamb Award by the Royal Institute of Navigation for a major contribution to a more navigable world by a younger person.

Few of the Bristol team

Plans for 2022

We will continue to accelerate our expansion within our UK tech teams and across the US, so if you, or any of your contacts are looking for a new career opportunity – please take a look at our open roles.

You’ll see from our careers page we are committed to attracting engineers passionate about location based technology and the possibilities our game-changing solutions can bring. If you’re able to share our hiring posts with your networks, you can do so by sharing/retweeting on LinkedIn and Twitter – thanks in advance for your support, it means a lot.

Next year, our Cambridge headquarters will be relocating to a brand new, bespoke office space which is 2 years in the making! We’ll share more information with you in the New Year. Our people team will continue to develop our employee programme of wellness workshops, business book club, working-from-home IT budgets and involvement in STEM initiatives across the company.

See you in 2022! Have a very Happy Christmas and New Year.