iGen Networks Corp (IGEN)

[kayak_wench]

Software developers are expensive and the market for them is very tight. Companies have to pay them a good salary to get them and continue to do that to keep them.

IGEN didn't know they would get the patent until they did. They couldn't afford to invest in developing the software that would utilize the patent 'just in case' they got. The market for driver scoring is pretty full as pointed out in the video. Lots of people do it. The approval of a patent pretty much drops out of the sky. The company knows it could happen sometime in the next 2 to 4 years but the specific month it is approved is unknown until at least 2 months prior to that. Even when they really think it will be approved soon that could be delayed 6 months through nitpicking wording in the patent application.

So IGEN shouldn't of, and probably didn't spend a dime on improving their driver assessment software until the patent was approved. Once approved they couldn't just immediately have their developers start working on it. Companies hire as few developers as possible and keep them overloaded with tons of work because they are expensive you don't want them to twiddle their thumbs for any amount of time.

Even if they decide to hire a new developer to develop a new capability that takes at least a couple of months with the interviewing and onboarding. So best case developers started developing the driver scoring software that uses the patent technology in the middle to end of last summer. Getting a significantly different mobile application released with several new capabilities (igen added improved driver scoring, 5G camera analysis, and serving a new class of trucks (medium to heavy duty)) in less than a year is impressive.

As for 'first phase', agile development is the norm now so new features are rolled out in successive phases to get something out as fast as possible, rather than wait until all planned updates are completed. So we should get one or two more PRs about new/improve features in Medallion in the next year or two.

The video discussed the company having two side to their business, one that serves the consumer market(FamilyShield, Nimbo, CUTrack) and the other than markets to commercial fleet(Medallion). Introducing the DTS patent technology to consumer channels means updating one of the consumer applications to use their more advanced, cloud based driver assessment software.