Two former Cisco execs are reinventing your Wi-Fi experience thanks to a 16-year-old girl

To use the words stick, set up recently launched, in May it is, "wireless network" meets "location services" meet "machine learning."

When you attend a conference, staying in a hotel, or move a large shopping center, often specialized applications that can improve your experience there.

But if you have them, you have to download them before visiting the site. And even if it did, he would have to go through the annoying process of hunting for a new wireless password, use a specific network. This is where the game comes May.

After selection, the haze that automatically connect to any of your network using a technology called Bluetooth Low Energy Virtual (vble) to track your location and send applications or information that may be applicable to your situation. This can be a list of items for sale in a store or a selection of hotel facilities as soon as you walk through the door.

Sujai Hajela, CEO of fog, and Bob Friday, CTO of Cisco met when they both worked. Former EXEC Cisco Brett Galloway is co-founder and chairman, TOO.

Hajela previously senior vice president of enterprise networks, Cisco CTO for Enterprise Mobility Strategy Group and Cisco was Friday.

His idea to create a wireless network that does more than simply connect you to the Internet. "Today's wireless networking technology was designed before there was even a smartphone," May says CEO Sujai Hajela.

He should know. Cisco is the biggest maker of wireless network equipment in the world. Two of them helped make it so. They are groups that the internal Wi-Fi products made by Cisco and Cisco were also one of the larger merger, acquisition of Meraki's Wi-Fi for $ 1.2 billion in 2012.

An idea from Hajela's 16-year-old daughter 

Cisco, the two executives knew they wanted to go out on their own, and new types of wireless networks designed for mobile devices, but the key inspiration came from Hajela girl.

In 2014, before they try to drum a Series A investment, Hajela talking to her daughter about her product idea of ​​Wi-Fi was modern.

 He said, "Dad, that's too technical."

He wanted a network that simply putting information about where he was on the tip of his fingers.

"When he went to a market, an amusement park, museum or any social environment, he wanted a place to literally" talk to him about all the services it has to offer, with a high level of personalization, and no spam, "he says.

The idea that the network should "tell me more" is a major theme of the deck floor and new product became the company's budget.

It worked. The $ 14 million in a Series A of NORWEST and Lightspeed raised, adding to ~ $ 500,000 seed round from Lightspeed it had raised.

And worked the land for the customers, too.

"We have more than 20 commercial pilots today," Hajela says. Other pilots in the production, hotels, retailers, and conference facilities.

The company now has 32 employees and remains Hajela girl involved.

"He gathered a group of friends - our customer advisory board of the Millennium," Hajela says. "Their stories about the types of information they want with a swipe of your smartphone screen critical insight to us in our discussions with customers, some of the largest companies in the world."

Cisco bought Friday's previous startup for $450 million 

Friday before the successful launch of mobile wireless has done.

He joined Cisco Wi-Fi when it bought last startup he founded, Airespace, for $ 450 million in 2005. Cisco Airespace watch was actually launched in 2001, told us Friday. The young and growing Wi-Fi market for Cisco in that day.

"I think probably a year after our first meeting we started this company," he says. "I do not think much of it. But when I go to college on Saturday Cisco in November, 2004, for one of the most important meetings of my life, we decided to gaining the right direction for us."

Two months later, the deal was done and he went to work for Cisco, help it grow into a business Airespace $ 2 billion while seizing more than half of the total market of Wi-Fi.

But he says he always considered himself a son set up and ready to do it again.