By Samantha Swindler / Managing Editor
Meet the man who wants to bring “Silicon Holler” to Corbin, Ky.
John Surmont, co-founder and CEO of Sofcoast Inc., isn’t your typical technology geek. He started life drifting through towns with his homeless mother. His IT experience comes from 10 years on active duty with the Navy SEALs.
Things are now coming full circle for Surmont, who is returning to Corbin to locate part of his information technology start-up company in the town where his adopted family “saved his life.”
After graduating from Corbin High School in 1990, Surmont started classes at University of Kentucky, but ultimately left school when his academics weren’t up to par. He moved back home and, after some “tough love” advice from his adopted father, joined the U.S. Navy.
He entered the force as a cook — the only position immediately available at the time — but his interest and talent at understanding technology did not go unnoticed when he was assigned to the elite SEALs force in 1993.
During his time in the military, Surmont was deployed four times — three of those to the Middle East — where he saw first-hand how better use of technology and communications could save lives.
Surmont worked on small, unmanned aerial systems, remote surveillance systems and unattended ground sensing systems for the military — essentially, robots that would provide information about foreign surroundings without putting soldiers at risk.
While on active duty, Surmont attended night school and earned a bachelor of science in information technology from National University. In 2006, after he had left active duty, he started his own company and was providing tech consulting services to the Department of Defense in San Diego, Calif. Now, he’s ready to take his technology to a broader market with Sofcoast Inc. The headquarters will remain in San Diego, with an offshore software development team and an operation in Corbin.
The Corbin office, set to open Oct. 1 above Whitaker Bank on Main Street, will house four employees and be the headquarters of the company’s Kentucky division. Members of the Corbin team include Bob Terrell Sr., director and executive in residence and former world-wide general sales and marketing manager for Ford Motor Company; William Woolery, senior advisor and executive in residence; Cecil Moses, senior advisor and retired member of the FBI’s Senior Executive Service; Barbara Woolery, director of operations; and LeAnn Jones, marketing analyst.
THE PRODUCTS
Like many things in the IT industry, the philosophy is simple. It’s the details that get complicated.
“The core philosophy of this company is that data can and should be portable, relevant and easy to share, period,” Surmont said.
In a nutshell, Sofcoast has developed prototypes of both software and hardware that help share and link information. An example is the prototype “Weie-See,” a digital camera, voice recorder and location tracking device that immediately uploads photos and other information to a password-secured Web site. Built as part of a government request, it can also be used to automatically take surveillance photos every three seconds, all while recording a GPS location. The device can be used by both a family taking photos at the beach, or law enforcement working at a crime scene.
“We’ve taken consumer, off-the-shelf parts and put it together inside this little box,” Surmont said of the prototype. “We’ve eliminated the steps between the time you take the picture and the time you want to see it.”
The software that shares the information, “Weie-Do,” can be integrated with existing smart phones for a wider, commercial use.
“Globalization may have been a bad news story and caused us to push jobs away and move jobs offshore, but globalization can actually help us solve that problem,” Surmont said. “We can build software for a fraction of the cost offshore and bring it onshore and enable and equip law enforcement agencies with capabilities that, for all practical purposes, have been out of their reach.”
Surmont gave the example of a missing child in a wooded area. Using a mounting bracket designed to fit on a small plane, a Weie-See camera could provide instant information on the last known location of the child to a police officer’s $99 Blackberry phone.
“I immediately saw the potential” for law enforcement, said Cecil Moses, who spent 30 years working for the FBI. “There are 18,000 agencies across the country that make up our law enforcement structure in the U.S ... and all those agencies are potential customers of this technology.”
Moses is another Sofcoast member returning to his roots in Whitley County, where he graduated from Pleasant View High School in 1957. Moses joined the ranks of the FBI immediately after high school as a fingerprint clerk in Cleveland, Ohio. The bureau paid for his education at Kent State University, and he worked his way up the ranks, retiring as a member of the senior executive service.
“I’ve come to realize that, even more as I was away, there’s a tremendous brain drain from the area,” he said. “There’s some really talented people in those hills. ... they would have to move to other areas — some would go to Atlanta, some to Cleveland, some would go to Detroit. I have relatives in all those areas who moved away as soon as they graduated high school because there was nothing for them to seek out in the area.”
And it’s Surmont’s personal connection to Corbin that brought Sofcoast here.
COMING HOME
John was, at times, the son of three Corbin families — the Barnetts, the Mackeys and, lastly, the Surmonts, who officially adopted him.
“The first five years of my life, I was homeless,” he said. “By blood, I come from Danville. I was adopted at a young age, not young enough, I still remember ... I can remember stealing food for my mother and I to survive. I can remember hitchhiking across the desert. I can remember sleeping in cars for survival. I can remember eating food, like ground beef and tomato sauce, off of a hot plate skillet on the bathroom floor of a Greyhound bus stop. I can remember that the only clothes I wore were what the Salvation Army gave me. I can remember that the only Christmas presents I got were what the Salvation Army gave me. I don’t walk by a Salvation Army guy without giving him something and saying ‘thank you.’”
At 5 years old, Surmont’s grandmother finally contacted authorities, and he was taken from his mother and put into the foster care system.
“I was in 14 foster homes from the age of 5 to the age of 8,” he said. “The last family is the family that I call my mother and father, they are the Surmonts. They gave me a home, they saved my life. I will not forget people who saved my life. And if it had just been one family here, well, maybe, but there’s three families in this town that I call mom and dad. I won’t turn my back on them. If I can possibly help this area, I will.”
SILICON HOLLER
U.S. Congressman Hal Rogers may have been the one to popularize the term “Silicon Holler,” expressing his hope to bring the high-tech industry to southeastern Kentucky, but he’s not the only one with that vision.
“This is a knowledge economy, and we’re global,” Surmont said. “There’s a strong political desire to bring high-tech, high-growth opportunities to the region.”
Locating 40 percent of Sofcoast Inc. in Corbin doesn’t immediately have an impact on the local job market — not when 40 percent initially means four members of the management team. But Surmont hopes it’s the beginning of a different mindset for southeastern Kentucky — a mindset that thinks beyond manufacturing jobs.
“We’re creating a crossroads ... from a labor-based economy to a knowledge-based economy,” Surmont said, “and we’re providing the crossroads because I chose this area, I’m from here. We’re planting the bridge in Corbin that will connect us to California as well as to offshore software development.
“My fundamental goal here is to provide opportunities to our children to stay if they want, or to come home if they desire. And that really begins with a choice ... Somebody along the way that has left needs to just make a choice to come back.”
Surmont said the tools are already here to make Corbin an IT hub — a rich environment, quality schools and sincere people. It just needs a little boost.
“Why would somebody move to Redmond, Washington? To be close to Microsoft. Why would somebody move to Cupertino, California? To be close to Apple,” Surmont said. “Over time, we will have others that show up because we showed up. ... There’s value to this area that isn’t obvious — it’s in the people, the infrastructure and the diversity of the environment.”
Samantha Swindler can be reached at sswindler@thetimestribune.com
