As the community celebrates 10 years of the Innevation Center, the University of Nevada, Reno is spotlighting the people and ideas that have shaped its vibrant community.

Below, Innevation Center resident Sean Montgomery answers questions about innovation, entrepreneurship and the impact the Center has had on him. 

My background is in neuroscience, studying how large coalitions of neurons in the brain synchronize with one another to encode and retrieve memories. Since finishing my Ph.D., I’ve led many teams developing and manufacturing products ranging from consumer devices to interactive environments. In 2016, I founded Connected Future Labs as an agile R&D engineering company to bring the latest sensing and data science technologies out of the research lab and into the real world. Over the years, we’ve helped companies ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies build game-changing products in health & wellness, interactive entertainment, education, automotive, and more. Recognizing a need from our consulting work, we’ve also begun developing our own product lines, including EmotiBit, a scientifically validated wearable sensor module for capturing high-quality emotional, physiological, and movement data. Looking forward, we’re continuing to pursue deep-tech applications combining sensing and data science, including how we can use the latest advances in wearable technology and AI to help with the early detection of cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s disease. 

I first visited the Innevation Center when we were considering moving the Connected Future Labs headquarters from New York City to Reno, and immediately thought it was a perfect fit space to grow our Western nexus. With a mix of University connections, entrepreneurs in the tech scene and a makerspace with an amazing array of equipment for hardware development, the Innevation Center has been a great fit for our company’s growing headquarters.

"When I first visited the Innevation Center, it was clearly one of the central hubs of the tech scene in Reno."

With a buzz of energy and connections with other companies, entrepreneurs and the university, the Innevation Center helps feed the interconnections that unlock opportunities. The fully built-out makerspace enables the hardware engineering at Connected Future Labs. And being centrally located in midtown Reno puts us at the center of tech and cultural events, with lots of great lunch and after-work social options.

One of our most memorable milestones at the Innevation Center was successfully launching our EmotiBit wearable biometric sensing product line on Kickstarter. As one of the top 2% of all-time Kickstarter campaigns, it represented the hard work and dedication of numerous people at the company and has served as a great launch-off point for the company’s product and biometric sensing ecosystem development. 

One of the proudest company accomplishments from our time at the Innevation Center has been topping $1M in sales of our EmotiBit biometric sensing platform. Along with synergies in our consulting work, the continued growth in product sales has enabled growth of our team and capabilities to tackle ever more interesting challenges.

The Innevation Center has served as a gateway for academic-industry partnerships at Connected Future Labs. Upon meeting the then director of the Innevation Center, Grace Chao, in the co-working space, she initiated introductions to several professors at the University of Nevada, Reno including co-directors of the Neuroscience Institute, James Kenyon and Michael Webster. Those early introductions have in part led to innumerable opportunities, including involvement in the neuroscience seminar series, an academic appointment as a research affiliate, and several research and classroom collaborations spanning neuroscience, sports medicine, computer science, electrical and biomedical engineering, journalism and marketing, and new-media art.

A collaboration that has grown out of Connected Future Labs’ presence at the Innevation Center is working with the Sierra Accelerator for Growth and Entrepreneurship (SAGE) project coordinator, Logan Jones. Meeting Logan in the co-working space at the Innevation Center began as a mountain biking accomplice, but quickly evolved as he encouraged our company to consider applying for Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) funding to pursue new R&D directions at the company. Connecting the dots to tech-transfer possibilities, Logan also introduced us to another person in the building, Ray Siripirom, who works as a University senior licensing associate to find companies interested and able to turn university intellectual property into business opportunities. Looking forward, these connections are central in shaping the new R&D directions at Connected Future Labs. 

My company regularly utilizes the makerspace at the Innevation Center to develop our hardware solutions. Ranging from the often same-day 3D printing service to the PCB assembly tools, laser cutting and various mechanical tools, the makerspace enables our business to create rapid prototypes for product development.

The biggest impact on our company has been the connections we’ve made through the Innevation Center. Whether formal introductions or casual conversations in the co-working space or networking mixers, in my experience, it’s often a chance connection or discussion that can take business into the most exciting new directions.

Earlier this summer, my team and I were collaborating in our space and somebody in the co-working space knocked to introduce himself. Danny Nikolai had seen our work and workspace and thought we might be interested to know that he’s starting a new hardware meetup in Reno, with the first meeting to be held next month. I can’t say yet what opportunities will come from the new hardware meetup in town, but with the Innevation Center, we were among the first to learn about the new outlet.

As I look forward over the next decade, I expect to see the Reno innovation ecosystem growing rapidly. This city has a lot of strengths, including a 20K+ person university rife with opportunities for collaboration, tech transfer and talent. The startup community is cohesive and supportive, a tech landscape that’s expanding thanks to the hard work of founders and organizations like EDAWN feeding the ecosystem. Reno balances a livable city with little traffic, lots of cultural events and outstanding opportunities to get out into nature, while being only a 3.5-hour drive to the tech capital of the world in San Francisco. As we continue to capitalize on these strengths and build innovation energy, I expect the ecosystem will accelerate into new growth and opportunity.

Sometimes people ask me whether it’s more important to work hard or work smart, and my answer is “yes.” Work hard and work smart, not because you’re trying to grow your company, but because you want to grow yourself. To grow your understanding and world view that lets you see patterns, sharpen your critical thinking skills to ask good questions, and amass domain-specific knowledge that lets you apply your critical thinking. To me, building a company is a lot like learning to play an instrument. In the beginning, every note is hard to hit, but if you stay present and put in the time, eventually you can learn to play scales. And if you keep with it and hopefully have some fun, at some point the notes are just there for you to play, freeing up your mind to focus on tone and phrasing and all the nuances that turn otherwise mechanical minutia into a powerful form of expression.