Orono high-tech startup heads out of the gate

ORONO - American business lore is rife with the "garage startup"story - with companies such as Google, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoftand others going on to success after literally starting in a garage.

Now a local startup that focuses on the high-tech analysis of thesafety of horse racing tracks is starting on the same storied path,moving out of the garage and into office space on Summer Street.

Michael "Mick" Peterson's venture has two components,Biologically Applied Engineering LLC and the nonprofit RacingSurfaces Testing Laboratory. Peterson, a University of Maineprofessor, and former Colorado State University colleague WayneMcIlwraith researched thoroughbred and harness racing horses, tracksand horse injuries over the last 14 years. They invented a mobilerobotic hoof tester that uses ground-penetrating radar to scannatural and artificial tracks for possible defects and troublespots.

And now the plan is to use the technology, data and expertise asthe foundation of a commercial enterprise aimed at the $25 billionhorse racing industry, said Peterson.

The nonprofit lab doing the research and analysis came first, andthe LLC was formed about a year ago, Peterson said. Between the laband the LLC, they now handle everything done at the track, from thebuilding of equipment to testing on-site, to teaching other peopleto use the technology. The lab's role is the analysis of samples anddata collected through the LLC. The end product is a report on atrack's surface, backed up by hard data.

Biologically Applied Engineering consists of Peterson and threepart-time employees. Peterson said he expects the startup to beprofitable this year. The lab employs two full-time employees andfive part-timers. Both the lab and the LLC draw heavily on the localpopulation of University of Maine students and graduates for a tech-savvy work force.

The new offices should be open in the next two weeks, saidPeterson.

The eventual goal, said Peterson, is for the company to focus onselling services and information. The design for the tester is allopen-source - anyone can download plans off the Internet and buildone. In fact, a Swedish group just did that, and improved on thedesign. Peterson's incorporating the improvement in the next versionof the technology.

But the lab and LLC have a robust database of track conditions,readings and other data, as well as the expertise. The concept wouldbe to take in data collected at tracks around the world, analyze itand produce reports.

This past week, Biologically Applied Engineering signed a one-year contract to provide ongoing track monitoring and relatedservices to the California Horse Racing Board. The company is in itssecond year of a similar two-year contract with Churchill Downs Inc.

There are several business conditions that would lend to thesuccess of the venture, said Peterson. First, the industry isfragmented. There's multiple racing jurisdictions across thecountry, and globe. There's no one group that imposes trackstandards - there's no National Football League or Major LeagueBaseball for horse racing. So there's an opportunity for someonelike Peterson to fill that void, providing professional servicesbased on research and consistency, he said.

And while it's fragmented, the various groups, and players in thegroups, all stand to benefit from track standards that ensure thehealth and safety of the horses racing on them, said Peterson. Sothere's a business case that appeals to the groups' best interests,as well.

And there's a barrier to entry, blocking competition from doingthe same sort of work, said Peterson. That barrier is essentiallythe technology itself, and the exhaustive database that Peterson'sgroup has put together.

To put together the technology that makes the venture work,Peterson has reached out to other small businesses around Maine.

"We have this little cluster of folks who can just get thingsdone," said Peterson. "And every dollar I've brought in is fromoutside the state - it's all multiplier dollars."

He has printed circuit board assembly work done in Ellsworth.Rainwise Inc. of Bar Harbor has supplied the weather stations forvarious tracks, providing up-to-date data that can be correlatedwith track conditions. Newport's dbtelligence LLC built thedatabase. R.M. Beaumont Corp. of Topsham provided design engineeringservices, and worked with Alexander Welding and Machine ofGreenfield to build the technology.

"You can find technology from virtually every sector in thisstate," said Curtis Meadow, founder of dbtelligence.

Ryan Beaumont of R.M. Beaumont, is a Cape Elizabeth native, andgot his master's degree in mechanical engineering from UMaine in2007, having started his own company in 2006. He had Peterson as aprofessor. When Peterson was looking for engineering support for thetrack testing device, he started working with Beaumont.

Today, Beaumont has three people working for him as contractors,and he may hire his first actual employee this summer. The work withPeterson has been instrumental, he said, and has led to other workon coastal energy projects, as well. Beaumont recently returned fromCalifornia, where he was doing service work on one of BiologicallyApplied Engineering's testers.

Peterson said ideally, he will have companies such as R.M.Beaumont doing service work, and will keep spreading out-of-stateracing money among small, highly skilled firms in Maine. Thecontracts are part of the jigsaw puzzle of work that keep such smallcompanies afloat in a largely rural state such as Maine, he said.

"It's a hard model to support with state policies, but I thinkit's more sustainable," said Peterson.

mwickenheiser@bangordailynews.com

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