Portsmouth-based Yost Labs Inc. has raised $1 million and expects sales to double this year for its motion-capturing sensors that are so fast they reduce the lag time that causes motion sickness in virtual reality. Leaders envision creating a virtual reality technology hub bringing jobs to southern Ohio.
This southern Ohio company’s real-time motion-capturing sensors soon will show up in multiple video game systems as virtual reality products start to explode in the consumer electronics market. The sensors are already being used to help pilot military drones and have applications for robotics, physical therapy devices and self-driving cars.
Fast-growing Yost Labs Inc. envisions its technology not only making it a major employer in its home city Portsmouth, but an epicenter attracting new companies and jobs to Appalachian Ohio.
“People are surprised that we’re in southern Ohio,” CEO Greg Merril said. “Part of our mission is for people not to be surprised.”
Yost Labs, formerly YEI Technology, expects to double revenue this year over last year – when it turned profitable – after four consecutive years averaging 40 percent growth. It does not release actual sales figures.
The company in March raised $1 million in a round led by Athens-based TechGrowth Ohio, which is the southeast region’s investment organization for Ohio Third Frontier funds, and East Central Ohio Tech Angel Fund, a Columbus-based investor group focusing on southern and southeast Ohio.
“I would expect the company to double or triple in size every year for the next five to seven years,” said Mark Butterworth, East Central’s managing director. “We invest No. 1 to make money and No. 2, to create permanent, sustainable jobs in the region.”
Invented by Paul Yost, a professor at Portsmouth-based Shawnee State University, the sensors are close to eliminating the lag time between moving and seeing the motion in a virtual reality headset. That lag time causes motion sickness for some users.
“The Yost Labs sensors know exactly where they’re pointed, how fast they’re accelerating, faster than anyone has ever been able to do before,” Merril said.
The U.S. Navy bought a few test units for the sensors, then made them the standard in its drone program, he said. Yost Labs also is a supplier to major video game manufacturers that will embed the sensors in their own brand’s motion-capture suits and devices. Yost won’t be selling in the consumer market directly.
“You have other companies selling for you,” Butterworth said. “You don’t have to fund and manage a large direct sales force.”
The company has 12 employees and expects to hire about six, mainly for sales and marketing, with its Series A proceeds.
Six months ago Yost Labs recruited Merril, who has founded three virtual reality companies, most recently a concussion diagnosis tool that the Wall Street Journalnamed a startup of the year in 2014.
“I’ve been an innovator in virtual reality since the 1990s,” he said. “I said I don’t want to sit on the sidelines as this revolution is happening.”
Yost, the company’s chief technology officer, also leads a digital simulation and gaming engineering program at Shawnee State that’s ranked No. 20 for video game design by Princeton Review. Merril said Yost’s commitment to stay in the region is part of what attracted him.
“I’m motivated by accelerating and building on that technology that’s starting to hatch in Portsmouth,” Merril said. “I could imagine other business that could leverage this technology will start to spring up in that area. … It’s not just a lot of jobs, it’s a lot of skilled and professional jobs as well.”
Originally from Columbus Business First | April 7, 2016
