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February 17, 1995 - Image 84

Resource type:
Text
Publication:
The Detroit Jewish News, 1995-02-17

Disclaimer: Computer generated plain text may have errors. Read more about this.

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After 16 years as an engineer
with the IDF intelligence corps,
he went to work at Scitex in 1985.
When the project he was head-
ing within Scitex spun off into its
own company — Cubital — Mr.
Pomerantz became its president.
He served for six years, leav-
ing when "the company grew to
such a size that I was not the
right person to adequately man-
age it."
The idea for Aliroo came to Mr.
Pomerantz while he was at Cu-
bital.
"I came to the idea that civi-
lization needs a secure way to
send faxes, because I, as the pres-
ident of a company, needed a se-
cure way to send faxes," he said.
"Not being able to find any, I had
to invent one."
Fax security is not something
that a businessman tends to con-
template until disaster strikes —
a fax is misdialed and sent
to the wrong place, or
is read in the mail
room by the wrong
person.
For Mr.
Pomerantz,
the problem
crystallized when
he realized he wasn't
able to send a fax to his own
office.
"One cold, sunny day in the
winter of 1991, I was walking in
Tokyo and I realized I had to send
a fax to the Cubital office. It had
to do with letting go an employ-
ee. I couldn't send it because I
didn't know who would see it at
the other end."
That evening, Mr. Pomerantz
came up with the outline of a
product that would be inexpen-
sive, universal, usable in any lan-
guage and with any kind of
graphics.
When he returned to Israel, he
took out a personal patent on the
idea.
Two years went by while the
concept for Aliroo stayed in the
patent office and in Mr. Pomer-
antz's drawer. He opened that
drawer when he left Cubital in
1993, and found that the concept
was still viable.
"Faxes had become even more
established as the main channel
of correspondence. And there had
been more and more stories
emerging about privacy being in-
terfered with. The idea was like
good wine: aging for two years
only did it good," he said.
Mr. Pomerantz raised an ini-
tial investment of $500,000 from
three sources: a group of Jewish
investors in Minneapolis that in-
vests in Israeli start-ups, a simi-
lar partnership from Toronto, and
a private investment by an Israeli
family.
Then he went shopping for a
vice president of research and de-
velopment. He found his man in
Emanuel Menczer, 37, a retired
IDF pilot with a computer science
background.

Mr. Menczer previously
worked as R&D manager of Efi,
an Israeli-founded company
based in California, and had re-
cently returned to Israel with his
family.
Two months after the Comdex
show, Mr. Pomerantz and Mr.
Menczer are still energized by
their reception — their product
was singled out for media cover-
age and 40 distributors from 25
countries showed an interest.
"The show gave us the oppor-
tunity to show ourselves to the
world," says Mr. Pomerantz,
pointing to snapshots of the
crowds that surrounded their
booth.
Among those interested was
Norman Geppert, 60, president

of the Communications Technol-
ogy company in London. Mr. Gep-
pert flew to Israel in January to
discuss the possibility of handling
distribution in Britain.
Mr. Geppert, who pioneer-
ed the electronic ticker-tape
technology used by major stock
markets, said he was at the
Comdex show for unrelated rea-
sons when the Aliroo booth
caught his eye.
"This intrigued me. It was
clever, it was easy to work, and
it was the only thing that inter-
ested me at the exhibition," Mr.
Geppert said.
Mr. Geppert said he is in the
process of surveying potential
customers in Britain, including
major banks and airlines, before
deciding if he will sign with the
company. The potential is huge,
he says, if the product is mar-
keted properly.
"In this day and age of insider
trading, movement of papers and
information, this is one of the
most exciting products I have
ever seen," he said.
"I mean, imagine a lawyer's of-
fice acting for a large company
that is going public. Information
must be faxed between the
lawyer, the client and the regu-
latory agency. You've got many
areas in which this information
could be let out and somebody
could be prosecuted for providing
inside information."
He adds jokingly, "Maybe
Princess Di and the rest of the
royal family will want to use it to
keep their correspondence se-
cret." El

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