Ismaili Muslims in the News: Carnegie Mellon Alumni Start Mobile Security Company

In April 2008, MS Software Engineering graduate students Bertand Damiba, Rom Lemarchand, Fernando Guayasamin and Sarah Laiwala were teamed together in the Innovation and Entrepreneurship course at Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley. The class, taught by Professor Stuart Evans, introduced the students to local VCs, entrepreneurs and angel investors who served as guest speakers for this elective course in the master’s software program. As part of the curriculum, students created a software product and business plan which then was critiqued and judged by the guest speakers. Damiba and his classmates’ team, or “VoiceMobile”, as they called themselves, decided to use their expertise in the mobile and speech spaces, and combined the two to center their company around voice authentication on mobile devices and remote management of these mobile devices. VoiceMobile won the semester-culminating business plan competition, and the four grad students walked away with sound advice and bragging rights.

Shortly after graduation in August 2008, Professor Evans approached the four alumni and suggested they consider taking their business plan and starting a company. Laiwala explains, “Right after that class ended, we made efforts in that direction in terms of laying out a high-level architecture, but we were also tired from two years of part-time grad school and full-time working and needed a couple months off. After a couple months just to re-energize ourselves, in January 2009, we picked up the pace – Professor Evans proposed participating in the McGinnis Venture Competition in 2009. So, we found two additional founders to help us move quickly, Sunil Palacherla and Nadeem Laiwala, and make this start-up a reality. From January to March, we worked on our VoiceLock prototype, and we still can’t believe we were able to get something coded and working on the BlackBerry Bold AND Curve in just two months. VoiceLock is a voice biometric product that voice authenticates mobile devices and sensitive applications like VPN and banking applications.”

http://www.cmu.edu/silicon-valley/news-events/2009/securimobile.html