In 2009, 36-year-old THLight founder and CEO, CJ Chi, assembled a group whose members were age 35 on average. There were twenty-year olds with courage and momentum, thirty-year olds with persistence and perfectionism, and forty-year olds with steadiness and personal connections. Using the background support of 17INDA has enabled THLight to reach a period of stability in the time period of less than four years since it was established.

Unwilling to be Ordinary and Taking Back Creative Control

CJ Chi was a former employee at Asus, where his basic natural personality inspired him to create new things. As long as there was an opportunity to create, he would seize upon it. He had a hand in the creation of a few well-known innovations, such as the PS2, and Skype phone, and afterwards, he established the digital home electronics division at Asus.

However, even though he had a high position and salary, CJ Chi ultimately decided to resign because he realized that in a large organization implementing new things is tiring and difficult. “Large organizations are most suitable for making products that are low-risk and yield high profits. They take other people’s original ideas and copy them, and only this kind of work gets approved.”

He believes that if you really have ideas, and you really believe that they are correct, then don’t waste time in work situations where “employees do not express their opinions in meetings, but instead applaud the adoption of proposals and then go back to the smoking area to complain.” Instead, you need to see a show of hands in order to find a team, find a direction, find capital, and find a way to implement your ideas.

Photo: 36-year-old THLight founder and CEO, CJ Chi, assembled a group whose members were age 35 on average.

Therefore, CJ Chi rejected the role of being a technology upstart in a situation where, once again, everyone would have expressed admiration for ideas in meetings without giving any other input. He instead decided to take back ownership and control of creating new things, and he found a more suitable arena for himself at THLight.

In 2009, CJ Chi set out along the road of starting an enterprise, and THLight came into being.

Returning to the Essence of Technology Begins with the User’s Experience

During the first year that THLight was established, the focus was entirely on software. The company relied on writing APPs for businesses, and it accumulated a number of clients and experience. THLight did work for well-known companies, such as Luxgen, 85°C, Taipei International Convention Center, and FTV. During the second year, THLight used the money and the experience that it had gained during the first year, and it began transforming itself into a company that integrates software and hardware.

THLight made its greatest mark with a robot floor sweeper that they created in collaboration with Asus and AGAit. In this case, AGAiT wanted to directly challenge the leading brand, iRobot. Instead of just having suction, the robot floor sweeper also had obstacle avoidance and line detection in order to find a way to win favor with consumers by drawing from the user’s experience.

The two companies joined forces for the collaboration, and they began with firmware and software. The integration of software and hardware enabled the robot floor sweeper to have additional functions besides just sweeping the floor. For example, it could also be remotely controlled using a cell phone, and after adding a photographic camera lens and a microphone, it could be synched together with Asus cloud storage.

This allowed the robot floor sweeper to change form and become a remote controlled security product for home monitoring. The robot floor sweeper made a name for THLight. “The greatest value lies in software and service. Pay attention to the user’s experience, and then create hardware that is a media to reach their experience,” says THLight Product Manager, Spencer Shih.

In addition to this, THLight has also created a voice-activated and vibrating communication board for people with motor neuron disease. This communication board was created to be an improvement over traditional communication tools, whose weaknesses included being time consuming to use and requiring extremely high levels of concentration. THLight’s product allows people with motor neuron disease to use micro-switches that are integrated together with a tablet computer.

It also has additional functions, such as blocks for selecting characters, automatic character-recognition, frequently-used character cards, and emergency warning. This facilitates smoother communication between people with motor neuron diseases and the outside world.

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Spencer Shih says, “We wanted to make it simple and provide an affordable device to allow this group of people to have faster and more convenient communication with the outside world.” In the small conference room at THLight, “How to make it special, better, and fun?” is written on the whiteboard, perfectly echoing this sentiment.

From smart household electrical appliances, interactive fluorescent light sticks for concerts, and cell phone-controlled tattoo machines, to communication boards for people with motor neuron disease and navigation systems for blind people, the Excel files on the company’s computers provide a record of the employees’ original ideas.

They think of doing many things, but their ideas are also clear. Simply put, they think of their own original methods in order to make smart products using mobile technology. Spencer Shih explains that because currently the smartest and most powerful devices are smartphones, THLight is continuing to proceed in this direction. The employees at THLight address the concept of the micro-internet of things and strive to integrate smartphones with various aspects of everyday life.

In this time of economic hardship, many companies seek to find a standard business model for creating products to quickly make money. However, THLight has believed from the beginning that if there is a genuine technological background and a strong foundation in research and development, then they will be able to find ways to satisfy consumers better than other companies. Beginning last year, THLight gradually stopped accepting cases from other clients and has instead shifted focus towards working on its own projects and products in order to establish its own brand name.

“We firmly believe in originality, believe in the value of innovation, and believe in the value of technology,” says CJ Chi. THLight is an extraordinary garage and an extremely experimental company. Ideas are jotted down on glass doors and whiteboards as the employees continue to look for new opportunities. “As long as we can satisfy people’s needs, we can develop a business model to continuously bring new products into circulation.” Therefore, THLight returns to the essence of technology, and begins from research and development to create innovative products.

Serving Blind People: Beginning from Just One Street

When talking about future plans, THLight is small company that is fermenting plans to make the world a better place, beginning from just one street.

THLight is constantly thinking about ways to serve blind people. There is a perception that there is no way for GPS to precisely locate fixed positions; furthermore, for the past 90 years, the guiding rod has been the only reliable tool to allow blind people to navigate with peace of mind. In light of this, THLight has decided to research and develop an auxiliary GPS device.

THLight actually began to construct this navigation system for blind people three years ago. However, due to technological obstacles, the implementation of the system was limited to school campuses and specially designated areas. “However the technology is now in place because Apple’s ibeacon can accurately define the precise location of a cell phone.”

Accordingly, THLight has started a plan called “Beacon the World” to serve as a completely reliable navigation system for blind people. “I feel that this is the right thing to do; furthermore, it is easy, we just have to apply ourselves and do it.” CJ Chi has unlimited hopes for this plan.

Of course, this plan is not as easy as CJ Chi says; furthermore, it is perhaps twice as difficult to implement it in Taiwan. However, just like how he says you have to see a “show of hands,” the employees at THLight will apply themselves to the fullest to find a way to implement the project. He believes that THLight’s strength is that it is limited to just one street. Therefore, at first, it will just be implemented on one street. In the future, they can possibly expand it to cover one neighborhood, then one city, and finally to cover the entire world.

Moreover, if they can cover a city, it will prove the feasibility of this business model. “Google Map’s success also started from one street. Perhaps Taiwan can produce a company that surpasses Google Map,” says CJ Chi with a sparkle in his eye. THLight is currently a very small company, but the people at this company have their own vision. There are plenty of opportunities to walk towards higher ground and change the world.