Scott Hix is getting the band back together, so to speak.
Hix is a product of Portland’s display technology heyday and his new company Avocor might be on its way to bringing that ecosystem back to the spotlight.
Avocor unveiled this morning a strategic partnership with search giant Google to develop and manufacture a line of smart displays specifically for the Google Workspace software ecosystem.
Two products, a 27-inch desk version and a 65-inch board version, offer a one-touch ability for users to open and then immediately join meetings and easily participate using Google’s Workspace software tools and other interoperable collaboration tools.
The deal propels Avocor into an ecosystem of millions of global companies that use Google Workspace.
“It’s such a game-changer for us, I can’t begin to describe it,” Hix said.
The Google (Nasdaq: GOOGL) agreement is for five years. The first products will go to some of Google’s key customers October and November and mass production will start in the fourth quarter for the desktop device and Q1 2022 for the board version. The two companies have been working on this for over a year to co-develop these products.
“If we do this right we could be multiple hundreds of millions in revenue in a few years,” Hix said, adding that the pace of growth with Avocor and the caliber of its strategic partners far outstrip anything he experienced in the early days of InFocus and Planar Systems.
Avocor makes interactive displays. The company started in 2016. From the outset, Hix wanted to build technology that would make it easier for teams to collaborate. The hardware is manufactured by Agile Display Solutions, another company Hix is part owner of. In 2018, Avocor signed Microsoft as a strategic partner and produced one of the first Teams certified displays last year.
Other strategic partners include Zoom, Logitech, Lenovo and Intel.
Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, Avocor was fast growing as it helped to build out this new generation of display technology that is increasingly smarter and more complex than past generations. Avocor’s products were being deployed by global brands across companies’ office footprints. Avocor had 2019 revenue of $17 million and had a two-year growth rate of 850%. In 2020 it was named the fastest-growing company in Oregon and Southwest Washington.
The start of pandemic slowed business significantly, said Hix, as companies paused projects and reassessed offices. Avocor’s products are typically in offices or public spaces. However, by November 2020, business rebounded in a big way when companies saw the need to accommodate hybrid collaboration environments where people may be in the same room, in different rooms in the same building or completely remote.
“Google Workspace users logged more than 1 trillion video minutes in 2020 and the number of Google Meet video users continues to grow, so we are pleased to work with Avocor to bring exciting new hardware options to our customers,” said Dave Citron, director of product management for Google Meet and Meet hardware, in a written statement.
Avocor, which is based in Wilsonville, has a global team of 55 people. In anticipation of this Google agreement, the company took its first round of outside funding over the summer, Hix said.
He declined to give specifics but said it was more than $10 million and came from family offices and some larger institutional money.
The company is also hiring as a result of the funding and this deal. Hix is looking across the board for engineering, operations, finance, sales and marketing.
Hix expects revenue to double this year and then double or triple in the next two years. To execute against those ambitious plans, Hix is leaning on the talent that exists in the Portland metro that was trained and honed by companies like InFocus, Planar, Pixelworks and Tektronix. That talent hasn’t gone away even as the region has shifted toward software and apparel.
“This space will allow Avocor to really back up a lot of skill and talent and revenue and jobs in the next evolution of displays,” he said. “We were the kids that benefited 25 years ago coming out of college. We got to learn (from those previous companies) and now the kids are running the house and we are bringing the next generation of the industry.”
