Today we’d like to introduce you to Steven Domenikos.
Steven, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I came to the States from the beautiful island of Kephallonia, located west of mainland Greece, in 1980 wanting to get a university education in higher technology. I had just finished high school and was excited about the prospect of traveling across the world and experiencing a different culture and new ideas. I always had the passion to create things that would improve people’s lives, so I fell in love with computers and automation. I chose computer engineering as my major, as from a very young age, I had an engineering inclination and experimented with all sorts of things. I was accepted at Northeastern University in Boston, where I attended and obtained my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in computer engineering. After I graduated, I ended up working for a major Department of Defense contractor through the early 90’s, and even though that was almost thirty years ago, I saw technologies that would still be considered far-fetched today. These experiences fueled my imagination and drove my desire to innovate, to create new and useful things that could improve people’s lives.
After several years of working in the DoD environment, motivated by the self-transcending effort to create something new and being an adventurer at heart, I felt that I was ready to start my own company. I was about 25 at that time, and was determined to create technologies and products that would benefit consumers. This was my first company through which I provided specialty engineering services to the DoD and its contractors. After a few years, I sold this company to a much larger firm. The learnings I gained and the success I experienced through this first company honed in my skills as an entrepreneur and bolstered my desires to keep innovating. I went on to found several more companies. In the mid-1990s, I founded EPiCON, Inc., a company that developed breakthrough application streaming technology which was acquired by Nortel Networks in 2000. I then went on to found TeleGea, a leading provider of Voice over IP (VoIP) management software for carriers, which was then acquired by Ensim Corp. in 2005. I then started my fourth company, IdentityTruth® Inc., which delivered powerful software solutions for safeguarding consumers’ privacy and identity. Its technology continues to serve as an important tool for major financial institutions, such as American Express, HSBC, and Citizens. IdentityTruth® was acquired by InvestCorp in 2011.
In 2012, shortly after selling IdentityTruth®, I yearned for something new and different. I wanted a challenge, something perhaps groundbreaking. I am a believer in continuous personal growth, so I took a year off to complete a mid-career program at Harvard University’s Advanced Leadership Institute, where I was also a 2012 Harvard University Fellow. Feeling newly inspired, I turned my attention to something that had been always with me, the intersection of biology and technology. As the father of three boys, watching them grow up was very inspirational. Paying attention to their needs, especially those of my eldest son, who was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome as a child, taught me to cope with defining challenges. When he was young, he was always fascinated with different surfaces and textures, and had an ultra-heightened sensitivity to touch. Observing him, a kernel of an idea took shape. What if we could in fact use technology to digitize the sense of touch? What if we could capture and replay a tactile sensation the same way we can record and replay video and audio? This would enable us to time-shift and place-shift events and experiences with an unparalleled degree of realism. Magic happens at the heart of inspiration and that is how Tactai was born.
By dealing with my son’s heightened approach to touch, I took the opportunity to delve deep into our human biology, learn about the nuances of haptic sensations, and appreciate the immense complexity of our skin, the main organ through which we experience the sense of touch. I found that my personal experience married with this new fascination paved the perfect path for the innovations that we are now developing at Tactai.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Of course, as any entrepreneur will tell you, it is never a consistently smooth road. I’m very passionate about what I do, and I have a lot to say about my experience as an entrepreneur and business owner. First and foremost, you must start something with passion. People care about the why, not the how. At Tactai, we strongly believe in the power of incorporating passion in people’s lives, because this informs their drives and their decisions.
Next, you must understand that failure is a given for any entrepreneur. There will always be bumps along the road. While trying to fund Tactai, I received many rejections. Most people thought that our technology was 20 years ahead of its time, but now, we are very close to incorporating it into every major smartphone brand. I even recall someone from a large venture firm in Boston telling me to “feel free to try” when he rejected the idea, which was quite odd and amusingly shallow at the same time.
An entrepreneur does not need permission to innovate, I was going to do it anyway. When you have passion for something and believe in the idea, a way forward eventually emerges, although you might have some stumbling blocks in the process. What is important, however, is what you learn from your failure so you can better inform your next set of actions. I don’t see failure as good or bad, I see it as an inevitable step for learning, as a crucial part of the journey of creativity for an entrepreneur.
I’ve learned to reframe every obstacle as a challenge. That mindset has allowed me to be an innovator again and again by creating a regimen of self-improvement. Understanding how to cope with challenges and transcend momentary setbacks requires acknowledging the challenge, having the ability to narrate hope and where you want to go, and acting with self-efficacy in order to get to the other side.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
I currently serve as the Chairman and CEO of Tactai Inc., a company that develops software and technologies that bring the sense of natural touch into the digital world. Tactai was formed in January 2016 with a team spanning across Boston, Montreal and Germany. We are pioneering the world’s first haptic software engine for touch screens, mobile, and AR/VR applications that enable users to touch, feel, and interact with virtual objects with life-like realism. This technology captures and replays a haptic experience, just as how current capabilities allow us to capture the audio and video taken at a concert.
We are working to incorporate the human sense of touch into all our digital interactions, because if you cannot live without touch in the real world, why should you go without it in the digital one? At Tactai, we believe that for a virtual experience to be truly immersive and compelling, you have to interact in the virtual world just as how you would in the real one. Thus, the sense of touch is crucially the next step in the evolution of the internet.
Tactai Touch™ is a touch-based naturally immersive interface technology. The first of its kind, it is an embedded haptic software that enables users to interact with their hands and fingers with touch screens, smartphones, or in VR/AR. Tactai Touch™ allows users to reach out and touch a virtual object, allowing the sensation of feeling it as if it were real.
Our core patent-pending Dynamic Tactile Wave™ technology creates multi-modal experiences by fully engaging the user’s senses and bringing touch, sound, and light together.
The practical applications of our Tactile technology extend across a wide range of applications such as e-commerce, defense training, film, architecture, education, and even in accommodating the disabled. Ultimately, Tactai is about improving the human condition, and unless we improve the whole experience of human life, we’re not accomplishing anything.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.tactai.com
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