A conversation with Biospectal CEO Eliott Jones, A.B. ’88
Eliott Jones, A.B. ’88, is a seasoned innovator and serial entrepreneur. In his current role as CEO of Biospectal, he is running a company on a mission to tackle the global hypertension epidemic by using software algorithms to turn a user’s smartphone camera into a blood pressure monitor. Having forged his career in Silicon Valley at companies like Yahoo and Young & Rubicam, Jones also serves as president and creative director of Inflektiv, a strategy and design consultancy centered on digital products. He has mentored entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs through San Francisco’s SAP.io Foundry and the Thought into Action Entrepreneurship Institute at Colgate University. Jones recently visited Harvard to share entrepreneurial insights with students.
Why did you decide to study visual arts and design at Harvard?
I came to Harvard like a lot of students, not knowing exactly what I wanted to do. I originally planned to be a government concentrator, but I had always been a creative kid. The year I showed up to Harvard was the year the Macintosh computer came out. As soon as I saw one a student on my floor brought to school, I was captivated by this world where creativity and technology came together, and I wanted to be in that world. It just blew my mind to see what potential the Mac offered and the power it gave “everyman” as a tool for creative expression. After freshman year, I spent time reflecting on what I wanted to spend my life doing, I decided it would be a waste not to pursue my passion for creative expression and invention, especially in the new age of technology enabled creativity.
From there, how did you get involved in entrepreneurship?
For me, the pathway to becoming an entrepreneur was also an expression of creative instinct and creative drive – ultimately, the essence of making of a company is essentially an act of creation. In the early 90s I had been working in interactive multimedia, and immediately began working on web consulting when the World Wide Web came out; I was fascinated by the opportunity to be expressive and creative in a way that could connect with people around the world. That led me to Silicon Valley, where I started working in user experience design, long before we called it that. For me, it was a natural shift. The work I did at the creative interface between the user and the technology ended up blending the visual and functional experience with the daily life of the user. Eventually, I started creating the products themselves instead of just the user’s interactions with the surface of the products, and then ultimately started applying creative problem solving and ideation to the business model around that, which leads right up to designing the company.
Being in Silicon Valley during the birth of the World Wide Web, how did that experience influence your entrepreneurial journey?
It was a super-exciting time and a very fast evolution. I spent several years at Intuit, and there I learned about how technological change and its adoption into consumer life can impact business. The social context matters a lot in whether or not there is a certain flashpoint with a technological transformation. Sometimes it is a combination of factors, like when wifi and wireless broadband combined with portable device access through the cloud, that you put in as fuel and this explosion happens. Any one of those factors on its own might not look very interesting, but identifying them and imagining what could happen when they converge is key.
How has that mindset—focusing on disruption—helped you as an entrepreneur?
I say that I’m sometimes masochistically always interested in the next new thing, but for me, the act of invention is the reason I get out of bed every day. I’m fascinated by these inflection points. Having sensed them in the past, I’m always excited to see such potential change happening on the horizon. When you anticipate a change in technology, you have to re-evaluate the current context and figure out how that is going to be a spark that ignites these three or four other components into something brand new. I like to think it’s one expression of the optimist’s view of how we can make a positive change the world.
For example, the company I am running right now is blending mobile technology and medical sensing. Everywhere in the world, people have smartphones. We’ve been able to take software algorithms that allow you to put your finger on the phone’s camera and record blood pressure. We’ve virtualized the blood pressure cuff and put it on a phone so the results can be instantaneously sent around the world. Anyone with an Android or iPhone can light up their phone as a medical sensing device. This is the kind of flashpoint that you see. Mobile devices, which have become incredibly powerful computers, can do new things they weren’t invented for.
I don’t know if there’s a predictable process for analyzing the future and knowing when that is going to happen. Imagination is a hard thing to codify. It sounds basic, but I suspend disbelief a lot about what exists in the world and what the constraints of the world are, and imagine what could be. Always question the current context and its assumptions. I didn’t expect the Web to be as huge as it is, but you could see that something very different was happening. I try to get that same sense when I see a new technology now. Some things, like autonomous vehicles, will cause a massive shift, but there are other, less obvious things, like using your phone as a medical sensing device.
What are some of the biggest challenges of entrepreneurship?
In building a company, I think the biggest challenge is not having the great idea, but knowing the right time to bring that idea into the marketplace. You can have an idea for an incredible product and run out of money long before the world is ready for it. There have been companies with incredible solutions to real problems, but the market, the financial infrastructure, and the supporting technical systems just weren’t ready to use them.
How do you overcome that challenge?
You can’t just put your idea in a box for four years and wait for the market to be ready. You have to look at different possible inflection points for these new technologies. You choose the aspect of the technology that has the demand in the marketplace, but you have to be aware enough to know that is the one that is ready now.
In new technology and innovation, what consumers tell you they want often isn’t what they really want. You have to get in and really understand what people need, and it isn’t what they tell you, because what they respond to emotionally isn’t what they tell you logically. You can create a market—you can create that space—but you really have to understand that there is a need people will respond to it when they see it. That is a pretty risky thing to do. That’s the masochistic life of innovating, and the risk with every startup. Not everything makes it. You have to have a willingness to fail. The venture capitalists certainly know that, and it’s instrinsic to the Silicon Valley structure.
What’s your best advice for entrepreneurs?
Be omnivorous. In your professional career and in your personal life, you never know where the things that you learn today will be useful tomorrow. Be omnivorous, gregarious, and engage in many directions that are new. Always be reading and learning about technology, and pursuing different subjects. I didn’t start out in the medical world, and my background is not in medicine, but I’m running a company that produces a medical product. This is where medicine comes together with my world, with my background in creativity and innovation, so why not? I would never have expected that when I was younger.
My advice is always to challenge yourself to explore disciplines and research and areas of knowledge that are in the most diverse direction possible, because you never know where they will connect in the end. People who have broad and “eccentric” knowledge of the world and technology are the ones who will be ready for that flash point when it happens.