Military Careers, Second Careers - Army Times

Launch your business

One thing Ace Sarich learned during his military career was that operations were a lot easier when troops and locals could speak each others’ languages.

Sarich — a Naval Academy graduate, former SEAL and past Naval Academy engineering instructor — had retired from the military and was working in the Washington, D.C., area for a marine services company, Marine Acoustics Inc., in 1997. That’s when an official from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency suggested that Sarich, a registered professional engineer, look into phrase-translation technology.

Sarich’s experiences during the Vietnam War were all he needed to know there was a market for the idea.

“If I’d just had a machine I could talk to and say, ‘Where’s the village chief?’ — that would’ve been great,” Sarich recalled.

His team at Marine Acoustics accepted the challenge to improve what the Naval Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory had begun. He directed the research, development and subsequent fielding of what would become his future company’s flagship product, Voxtec International’s Phraselator.

Users speak one of more than 100,000 pre-programmed English phrases into the Phraselator, and the device translates it to one of 40 other modern languages.

Start of a product

The Phraselator was born in January 2001, when Sarich’s team at Marine Acoustics won a DARPA Phase 2 Small Business Innovation Research grant to create a hand-held translator.

A year later, Sarich delivered the first shipment of 500 Phraselators to troops arriving in Afghanistan.

Another former SEAL and Naval Academy grad, Voxtec International president and chief executive officer John T. Hall, brought a business background to the Phraselator effort.

He’d worked briefly on Wall Street and done e-business consulting during the late-1990s dot-com boom.

He met Sarich through a mutual acquaintance in 2003 and eventually went to work for Marine Acoustics, taking over the business operations of what was then Marine Acoustics’ Voxtec division and helping to “productize” the Phraselator.

“We wanted to be a full product,” Hall said.

That meant not just quality Phraselators but also training, packaging, user manuals, top-notch language content and customer care.

Acquiring Voxtec

Sarich and Hall knew a good business opportunity when they saw one.

But as of early 2005, Voxtec was still a division of Marine Acoustics. So with the parent company’s blessing, the pair said, they “spun out” the company in 2005.

The 18-month process involved royalties paid to Marine Acoustics for Phraselator sales as well as negotiations over the intellectual property involved in creating the device.

The team now has sold more than 8,000 translators and issued frequent software and hardware updates. Voxtec International launched its latest device, the hands-free Squid, in 2007.

The company’s keys to success: Market awareness, the ability to develop and deploy products quickly, and dedication to constantly improving its translators, language content and associated products and services.

“The main thing that differentiates us from other companies in our space is that we are very good at developing things out of the research and development phase and developing them as a product,” Hall said.

Constant improvement

Annapolis, Md.-based Voxtec employs about 28 people in administrative, manufacturing, sales, marketing and software engineering roles, and its products and services have matured since launching the Phraselator prototype.

Customers can create their own tailored language “modules,” so that if, say, a law enforcement agency needs its translators to know phrases specific to its operations, then with the help of a human translator, it can create language content shaped to that need.

The military, law enforcement agencies, medical centers, correctional facilities and emergency responders use Voxtec’s devices.

And the company still participates in DARPA initiatives.

Sarich indicated Voxtec is working on technology for limited two-way translation, so that a future product may be able to translate from English to another language — and back again.

Startup assistance for veterans

Consider the following resources to help start your small business:

• VetFran: Franchise businesses that participate in this International Franchise Association program offer discounts off their franchise fees, or other incentives, to vets who become local owners.

• Center for Veterans Enterprise: This Veterans Affairs Department program gives advice on business financing, marketing, market research and trends in federal acquisition.

• America’s Small Business Development Center Network: Local offices administer state-by-state programs. Florida, for example, operates a Veterans’ Business Outreach Center in Panama City. The SBDCs also offer entrepreneurship training that service members or vets can pay for with their GI Bill benefit.

• Patriot Express Pilot Loan Initiative: The Small Business Administration’s low-interest loan program, and its partnership with banks nationwide, helps expedite the process of financing your small business.

• Score — Counselors to America’s Small Businesses: This nonprofit organization has veterans available to advise other vets on becoming entrepreneurs.

Land a government contract

Annapolis, Md.-based Voxtec International’s founders received federal research and development grants — and eventually a soul-source government contract — through the Small Business Innovation Research program.

Companies with new ideas that may have government applications compete for Phase 1 grants.

“I’ve seen many, many very small companies win those Phase 1s,” Voxtec president and CEO John T. Hall said. Phase 1 pays for further research needed to publish a “whitepaper,” or in-depth explanatory document, on what it would take to turn the idea into a new product or service.

“If you do a good job and there’s strong interest, you’re awarded Phase 2,” Hall said. “Once you’re to Phase 3, it’s a soul-source contract.” That means if government agencies want to buy your product, they can go straight to you without taking bids from competitors.