Annapolis firm provides world travelers with info. on health,

Three years ago this month, Paul Stiles, a young entrepreneur with a background in Naval intelligence, founded a small company based on the premise that travelers needed information about countries they were visiting. His research showed him that, during the previous 10 years, the domestic travel industry had matured and was growing at about the same pace as the gross domestic product. International travel, however, had grown at more than twice that rate, and travel to third-world countries had grown almost four times that rate.

Stiles knew that from the health standpoint, travelers to third- world countries risked a lot more than getting hit with Montezuma's revenge. Antibacterial-resistant tuberculosis, hepatitis A and B, dysentery, and other rarer, scarier and easily transmittable diseases were a real threat.

Stiles had the kernel of an idea, but he needed other experts to help him get up and run with it. Knowing that health was a major issue, he teamed up with Fran Lessans and Peter Savage, founders and owners of Passport Health. Fran and Peter founded Passport Health a number of years earlier to advise and immunize international travelers. Passport Health was a company whose idea had definitely come, and the firm now had franchise offices helping travelers all over the country. So, with their help and advice, and some financial backing from some private investors, Stiles founded iJET and set up shop in a small office in Annapolis.

Stiles knew that he needed intelligence and information technology expertise if iJET was to become successful. So, one month later, he hired Bruce McIndoe. Bruce had spent almost 20 years as the head of his own Washington-based company that developed intelligence collection and processing systems for various national intelligence organizations. He had sold his company a few years earlier, and was now running another successful technology company. In addition to his technological expertise, McIndoe brought to the table a vast amount of experience gained while starting and running his own successful company.

Together Stiles and McIndoe created a vision for iJET to provide international travelers with much more than health protection. Passport Health was doing a fine job of that. They wanted iJET to be a company that would provide real-time intelligence for foreign travelers for health, political, criminal, cultural, and even weather issues. They realized that the information was out there, but that it wasn't coordinated and packaged in a way that the average consumer could understand. Sure, a traveler could buy a guidebook, but even a current guidebook could have information that was as much as a year old, and situations affecting travelers were changing at a breakneck pace. Travelers going to hot spots could call the U.S. Embassy in those countries, or they could go on the Internet, but getting information off the Internet can be like trying to take a sip from a fire hydrant.

Bruce McIndoe took a hard look at the possibilities and challenges facing a company like iJET. Before iJET could ever get online, McIndoe realized that a complex Web-based system had to be developed and tested again and again. This was new, ground-breaking technology, and its development wouldn't come without a price. iJET had to raise capital, and lots of it.

McIndoe went to work. He laid out a finely tuned business plan, established expert advisory boards, and began to look for investors. A key hire was an old friend, Marty Pfinsgraff, who was then president of capital markets for Prudential Securities.

We were in a tough market environment, recalls McIndoe. Our biggest challenge was to differentiate ourselves from all the other dot-coms out there competing for venture capital.

It was a difficult task, but iJET's business plan impressed investors enough that McIndoe was able to raise the necessary capital to begin development. With the capital in hand, McIndoe went to work, building his team and the system. The task was huge.

We were sailing in uncharted waters, says Marty Pfinsgraff, now the company's chief operating officer. Other information providers were providing information by topic. We needed to provide it by country or city.

McIndoe and his team built the all-proprietary software in nine months, and in April 2001 iJET was online and looking for business.

What iJET's management had put together was impressive. The key to iJET's unique service revolved around its state-of-the-art operations center in Annapolis. Here, a highly skilled team of intelligence analysts, many of them with military and government intelligence backgrounds, staff banks of monitors 24 hours a day.

We monitor over 6,000 sources in real time, explains Pfinsgraff.

As with any intensive intelligence gathering, iJET gets its information from a number of sources: the Web, print media, TV and radio, and human intelligence. This information is then filtered and put into a database to be carefully examined by the analysts, who each have an average of 18 years of experience and cover 17 different languages. The information is then prioritized. A team of editors then writes up the information for their traveler alerts in simple, user-friendly terms, while still honoring the accuracy of the reports. Pertinent information is then relayed to travelers by e- mail or through special international satellite phones that iJET rents out to its customers.

We had focused on the travel industry, recalls Pfinsgraff. Unfortunately, we couldn't have come on the scene at a worse time. Airlines were cutting commissions, and travel agents were focused on just trying to stay in business. They felt they didn't need our advice.

iJET faced a problem. Their target market was simply not responding. Then came 9/11.

These events were a double blow to us, explains Pfinsgraff. We had only a handful of business clients and now travelers were canceling their trips.

At this point, iJET management made an important decision. They had invaluable real-time information for people traveling in what had become overnight a much more unstable world. They made the decision to open up iJET's Web site and database free of charge to all users.

In the first three days, we had a 70-fold increase in the use of our system, says McIndoe.

We felt that under the circumstances, this was the right thing for us to do, explains Pfinsgraff. But at the end of the day, it was one of the best things we ever did.

When iJET finally once again made the system available only to subscribers, they began receiving calls from companies all over the country telling them they had to have iJET's services. Now, iJET focuses on the business market providing services for companies who are sending their employees and executives all over the world. They have a number of corporate clients, including the prestigious World Bank. iJET can now supply corporations with all the information they need on a real-time basis.

If there's a political upheaval in South America, soccer fans rioting in Moscow, a cyclone threatening Southeast Asia, we can notify the security directors of our clients and even travelers on the way, says Pfinsgraff.

While there is an increasing demand for iJET's services, the economic environment after 9/11 has become very tense. As a result, iJET, which now monitors 182 countries, had to cut back on staff.

This was incredibly hard to do, remembers Pfinsgraff. We had to let some very qualified people go.

However, iJET's capabilities and opportunities keep growing, and the company is ready for the challenge.

McIndoe smiles. What is really great about all this, he says, making a sweeping gesture over the operation center, is that we are really helping people with a unique service.

Neil R. G. Young, CLU, ChFC, is president of Young & Company, a financial planning firm in Lutherville. If you have any comments or questions, you can send him an e-mail at neil@yco.com or call at 410-494- 7766. The Web site is www.yco.com.

Copyright 2002 Dolan Media Newswires
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