ROYAL OAK – Jake Sigal founded Livio in 2008 and spent five years developing Internet radios and a language that lets mobile apps and hardware systems communicate. Ford bought Livio in 2013 and in 2014 Jake co-founded Tome to develop products for the hot new technology market called the Internet of Things. Jake told his story to Irene Spanos of Tech248 in this segment of M2 TechCast.

According to Tome’s website, the company retrofits current products of established companies by bringing “Big 3” new user experiences, the best partners through business development, and the latest technology. This combination answers “Y” users are willing to pay for the new connected experiences.

So what sort of IoT products is Tome working on? He’s big on bikes so they more safely interact with cars. One of his clients is SRAM, a Chicago company that builds very high end bicycles for athletes that race on the Tour de France.

Tome also is working with auto companies and connecting multiple services to vehicles. Making cars part of an autonomous ecosystem is also what Tome does. Uber has touched on this, Waymo (Google), and Tesla, but the upside potential remains very high, he said. He also said you can’t stop innovation until you get it right even if some experts warn that connected vehicles remain very vulnerable to hackers. That’s why MCity at the University of Michigan is so valuable as will be the American Center for Mobility at the old Willow Run airport in Ypsilanti. The kinks can be worked out before these vehicles take over the roads.

Michigan has a huge educational ecosystem that develops a lot of skilled technology talent. Michigan, he said, also has a unique balance of cost-of-living, with this talent and the right attitude to go after it, why Sigal decided to stay in Michigan.

By the way, Tome is hiring software developers, but it’s also hiring business development talent.

To listen to what Jake has to say about technology in Michigan and the future of IoT, click on https://soundcloud.com/podcastdetroit/m2techcast-episode-88-tech-248-tome-software