The Frore Systems Blog caught up with the company’s VP of Marketing, Sue Ryan, to get her thoughts on AirJet, the market, customers and the future of the small and mighty solid-state active cooling chip.
FS: Looking at your background, while you have built a career in technical companies, you didn’t have a traditional computing background. So what brought you to Frore Systems?
Ryan: I asked myself the same question when Frore Systems first reached out to me. But the CEO at Frore is a visionary, and just like AirJet provides a new approach to heat removal, he wanted a new approach to marketing for Frore Systems. I was intrigued by the incredible market potential for AirJet, and the caliber of the team really gave me the confidence to take a bit of a leap into the unknown.
FS: What is it that makes you think Frore Systems and AirJet have so much potential?
Ryan: With over 30 years in marketing, especially in market leading technologies, it was quickly apparent to me that Frore Systems is in a unique and incredibly favorable position. They have a completely new technology, that is significantly better than the legacy alternatives at solving a huge industry challenge – Heat generation and the way it limits performance. It’s a problem which is widely recognized by all device manufacturers.
I’m not talking about an incremental improvement; I am talking about an approach that enables up to a 3x improvement in processor performance, and a team committed to doubling that every two years. So AirJet delivers a significantly better result with a product that, due to its intricate design, precision engineering, completely new materials, manufacturing processes and testing approaches, will be almost impossible to reverse engineer. This positions the company exceptionally well to dominate the thermal industry and prevent any near-term competitors.
FS: You’re in Silicon Valley, the home of innovation, so how the potential for AirJet differ from other companies?
Ryan: Much of the time, product innovation falls into two categories…. Generalizing of course, but companies either engineer incremental improvements to existing products, delivering slightly better performance, or different features and benefits that may lead consumer - whether B2B or B2C - to consider switching suppliers. Other companies come up with completely new products and technology. In the later, case they often need to explain the problem they are solving, then work to build demand for the solution. In addition, there are often huge regulatory barriers to doing things differently. A good example is self-driving vehicles, a market multiple companies are chasing. I am confident there will be a market in the future, but there are so many regulatory, safety, technology, and customer perception challenges, it won’t be anytime soon.
AirJet is a new technology, solving the ubiquitous but straight forward problem of heat removal – one that impacts literally billions of applications. While the problem is straightforward, the solution is anything but, and there has been little real innovation in heat management for decades. AirJet is transformative, accomplishing heat removal in a completely new and innovative way.
Industry clearly knows heat is the biggest challenge to achieving improved performance. Manufacturers, across a truly astounding number of market segments, are facing the same problem of heat removal which has not seen meaningful innovation in decades. AirJet can immediately solve the heat challenge across so many different products and markets, this creates an amazing opportunity the product and for Frore Systems as a company.
FS: What about consumers? Do they care about heat in their devices?
Ryan: That is one of the great opportunities I see in my role at Frore Systems. Before joining the company, I literally had no idea that laptop performance reduces by 70% after 10 seconds of operation; That the latest 5G smart phones, could actually only access 5G networks for seconds before heat forces them to revert to the same old 4G networks. Like most users, I was certainly aware my devices could get uncomfortably hot; I just didn’t understand the impact that had on their performance. It really is incredible - shocking actually - when you realize what you don’t know.
These issues have never been brought into the light and explained to consumers because there has never been a real solution to heat. Now there is. Manufacturers are incorporating AirJet chips in their products, making them smaller, silent, and showing the sheer scale of performance improvement that is possible. With the significant benefits, I really believe consumers are going to start to demand products cooled with AirJet.
From a marketing perspective, helping consumers understand that when their devices get hot performance plummets isn’t a difficult line to draw. They have a tangible experience of the problem… They just need that tied to the inevitable consequences.
FS: You’ve seen a huge demand for AirJet. Do you think industry’s enthusiasm for AirJet will continue?
Ryan: Absolutely! Many companies designing products that experience heat have relied on small incremental changes, to convince consumers to buy the latest product, as a way to gain market share… they tout slightly better cameras, new colors, marginally smaller form factors, or claim higher performance. But these incremental changes are small and/or cosmetic.
AirJet gives manufacturers a way to truly stand out in a crowded market. We are not talking about small changes in performance… We’re talking about 2x and 3x increases. That makes a tangible different to the customer experience.
As consumers start to understand that because of heat in their devices they haven’t been receiving the performance they’ve been paying, manufacturers using AirJet, and delivering increased performance in their products, will reap the benefits of increased sales. It really is a win win… good for manufacturers, good for consumers and of course, good for Frore Systems.
FS: So what does the future hold for Frore Systems and for you?
Ryan: I am convinced Frore Systems will become a major player across a swath of technology markets. The ability to unleash performance in electronic systems is such a far-reaching opportunity; we’re really just scratching the surface of the application of this unique technology. As the world becomes more and more data-centric, the requirement for increased performance is inevitable across an unimaginable number of current and future applications. As consumers become more and more mobile, the demand for more compact and powerful devices is inevitable… Both of these trends mean a really bright future for AirJet.
For me, I have always thrived on learning and solving new challenges. So I am in the perfect place right now. Understanding how our technology can solve so many different problems for so many different markets and users has been exhilarating. The potential to really make a difference in so many industries and to help people understand the benefits AirJet delivers really makes this position the career opportunity of a lifetime for me.
About Sue Ryan – Frore Systems VP of Marketing
With a passion for innovation, business and marketing, Sue has over 30 years of global experience in B2C, B2B and B2G companies ranging from small consulting agencies and start-up ventures to global Fortune 50 corporations.
