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2001 January George Forester and Jerry Wilski agreed on a game plan. George would develop the mobile keyboard he had envisioned years before, and Jerry would design the learning materials, since the user would need to learn to touch type. Both would work to raise money and create a business plan.
2001 February We formed Clarinet Keyboard Corporation, started a business plan, and began fingering and letter frequency studies
2001 Spring This Business Plan was prepared for distribution to VCs and potential investors. Its preparation helped us grasp some of the business parameters we would face. It was never implemented. as we actually got product to market by our bootstraps, with lots of help from contractors, suppliers, friends and family.
2001 Summer The original company name turned out to be confusing to investors and potential suppliers - it wasn't cool - so we started a new name search based on the nine most common letters in English.
2001 Summer
2001 October When searching for a new name, we eventually created ekatetra which had a unique url, sounded techey, and our graphic designer, Eric Savage, came up with an excellent logo. One of our tests was to email VCs identical messages except for the company name, using the old name Clarinet Keyboard and the new name EkaTetra. EkaTetra got responses where Clarinet Keyboard got none.
EkaTetra comes from eka in Sanskrit meaning one, and tetra from Greek meaning four. One hand four fingers describes our primary product, a one hand keyboard using four fingers.
2001 December This draft Plan was prepared around PDAs so we could investigate some of the business elements which might be important to our success. Very little of the plan was used. We just went along seeking and finding solutions as we needed them. Many people gave us advice. From a few it was worth while.
2001 December
EkaTetra plan draft pdf (427 KB)