Darrel Sheinman: My global position? Way out in front

Darrel Sheinman, founder of Pole Star, talks about Purple Finder, his company's satellite tracking system

Technology has turned the world into a virtual village, bringing the ability to track down people and items in the remotest of places. Leading the way is PurpleFinder, a Web-based tracking system currently used by the ground crew and sailors in the Clipper 2000 round-the-world yacht race. The technology enables the support crews to determine the exact position of a yacht and communicate with its crew.

Technology has turned the world into a virtual village, bringing the ability to track down people and items in the remotest of places. Leading the way is PurpleFinder, a Web-based tracking system currently used by the ground crew and sailors in the Clipper 2000 round-the-world yacht race. The technology enables the support crews to determine the exact position of a yacht and communicate with its crew.

The technology grew initially from the desire to track not people but telephone boxes. Darrel Sheinman, who founded Pole Star Space Applications in 1997 to develop the technology, was at that time the director of Credit Suisse First Boston's hedge fund.

"One of my brokers was running a shoestring business sending red telephone boxes to California, and he would often go out and meet the cargo," he explains. "I thought there must be a cheaper way for the average Joe to be able to track down things, so I started to explore the idea of doing it via the Web."

In just under three years, Sheinman, a 35-year-old former Liffe local trader, has built a system that is now the market leader in the marine industry. He seeded the venture himself and persuaded City friends to invest, raising £1m, which he has spent cautiously. "Things always take longer than you think. My philosophy has always been that you raise money when you don't need it; if you raise it when you need it, you look desperate."

Last month, he also closed a £4m investment deal with Mitsubishi, giving Pole Star a fresh injection of cash as well as access to the Japanese giant's network, marketing and distribution resources.

Three years ago, Sheinman began to bring his brainwave to life after sending out questionnaires to shipping companies to see whether such a tracking system appealed.

"The timing was impeccable," he remembers. "All the large shipping companies were looking to build a system like this one and because a lot of ships already had transceivers, we didn't have to sell the hardware, which removed capital outlay. It was great for our cash flow and for getting a customer base very quickly.

"The tracking environment had previously been very bespoke, based on local intranets; there was no one doing it on the mass market as a cheaper offering. It wasn't a trivial thing to transfer technology based on an office network to the Web: it was a full code rewrite. We started without that legacy."

The system was designed to run on a PC with internet access. The tracked asset is fitted with a transmitter, which picks up satellite signals and is programmed to transmit automatic position reports back to PurpleFinder's internet server in London, which can then be accessed by the user via a password on screen.

Sheinman recruited as his programmer, Peter Potts, a computer science PhD who had formerly developed prototypes for the Eurofighter aircraft. He took the system Potts built and showed it to Maersk-Sealand. The shipping company then asked for a refined version of the system, including features such as calculation of estimated times of arrival and scheduling.

The upgraded PurpleFinder proved a hit, and merchant shipping customers still provide Pole Star with much of its revenue. Now, though, the Notting Hill-based company has broken into e-route management for land-based customers, such as Shell and BP, and is looking towards markets such as air transportation.

Sheinman points to the technolgy's numerous potential applications. "The trains are in chaos at the moment. Let's say you commute on the 6.30am every morning. With our system, you could make a request to any train company that, half an hour before you catch your train, an e-mail is sent to you telling you whether it's on time or not.

"I think every commuter in the country would want that, and it would be a great way for the rail companies to get some of the tarnish off their image."

He sees the car industry as another key market. "The problem for the car industry is a lack of visibility in the supply chain. If they can increase visibility, then instead of making you wait 45 days for your new car, you wait 10 days, and that increases sales."

Pole Star already supplies "panic buttons" to dozens of workers in the Middle East who have to drive in the desert, and is researching the possibility of putting PurpleFinder into hand-held devices, which could spawn a whole host of uses. Sheinman is still cautious. "We're after the right product. It's so dynamic, we are sitting back and waiting for the best product to come out before we act. At that stage, we are in a brilliant position to offer a service."