Inside a faceless grey industrial park flanking the power lines along Boundary Road, down a narrow, starkly lit hallway, lies the corporate headquarters of Light-Based Technologies Inc. In the place of a receptionist is a vacant desk, on its surface a random piece of electronic equipment trailing wires from either end.
After a couple of minutes, a smartly dressed young woman rushes out from the back, gulping down the last of a mid-morning snack. With a laugh and a bright smile, Jeanette Jackson extends a hand and welcomes me to her company.
Jackson is not your typical CEO. With a background that includes time on the sales floor at Future Shop, a stint in the cruise-ship industry, multiple gigs waiting tables and serving drinks and two years as a nanny in Switzerland, she wasn’t exactly charting a course for the corner suite. However, in building a team around commercializing an invention of her father’s, the feisty 31-year-old has exhibited uncanny business smarts that some believe just might push this startup into the big leagues. Light-Based Technologies is building a suite of products around a technology for controlling LED lights, targeting manufacturers that will include its electronic chips in their lighting products. Its competitive advantage, according to Jackson, is that Light-Based Technologies’ products are cheaper and better than what’s being produced by anyone else.
At least one industry expert agrees. Richard MacKellar was CEO of Brightside Technologies Inc., a Vancouver company that was developing digital-imaging technology when it was bought by Dolby Laboratories Inc. in 2007. Today he’s managing director of Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital, which has invested between $1 million and $2 million in Light-Based Technologies. “Jeanette has put together a team that has found an area in the solid-state-lighting-control space that is clearly not being done by anybody else yet,” says MacKellar. “That leads to good possibilities for building great intellectual property, and I think it’s also led to some very large players being quite surprised at how effective their solution is.”
Ushering me into the company’s spartan conference room, Jackson describes the path that led her to co-founding the company with her father. When she enrolled in SFU’s business program in 2003, her career goals included “something in marketing, human relations, global account management . . . something that involved travelling and teaching people.”
If anything, business school taught her that climbing the corporate ladder wasn’t for her, so when she graduated in 2004 Jackson began casting about for something more in the entrepreneurial vein. She hit on the idea of developing an invention her father had come up with while working in the sign business, and Light-Based Technologies was born. The company survived on financing from family and friends until 2008, when Chrysalix stepped in with first-round venture financing.
Today the pace is frenetic as Light-Based Technologies moves from research to commercialization, ramping up for its first major product launch. Jackson describes putting in long hours not only leading the team, but growing it. This week she’s interviewing for two positions in intellectual property, which will bring the staff level up to 15. She expects that number to reach 40 by 2013, split evenly between R&D and sales and marketing.
Somehow she finds time for an active personal life, which at the moment includes playing tennis, volleyball and baseball and working out at least four times a week. “And I have a three-year-old!” exclaims the single mother. Jackson credits mobile technology as her coping mechanism. “I’m always on,” she says. “Unfortunately, the first thing I look at when I wake up is my BlackBerry, and the last thing I look at before I go to sleep is my BlackBerry. It’s a bit of a bad habit, but it allows me the flexibility to pick my daughter up, go to the gym, then go home and get her situated and then do any final tweaks for the day.”
As for long-term goals, Jackson’s aspirations know no bounds: “director of a few companies, hopefully having a handful or less of other companies that maybe I’ve started.” She’s also very passionate about green technology, adding that she wouldn’t mind running a company in that area.
And Jackson hasn’t ruled out a career in public service either. “I like politics,” she says. “You never know what the future could be there.”
