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Smart Chips for Smart Houses

In 2006, Robert LeFort left a role overseeing $2 billion in revenue for a major international semiconductor firm to run a small startup in his home state of Massachusetts.

LeFort had served as president of the North American operations for Germany-based Infineon Technologies since 2002. He oversaw the business during a time of upheaval at the company; a U.S. Department of Justice investigation of the company for price-fixing began the same year LeFort started as president.

“Literally, one of my first few official acts was (dealing with) our employees being subpoenaed by the DOJ,” LeFort said.

The investigation culminated in a guilty plea by the company in 2004, and LeFort was the executive speaking to the press for the company at the time.

But that’s not what caused him to leave the job two years later to take over as CEO at Boston-based Ember Corp., a maker of chip technologies for smart meters and other “smart home” devices.

“What caused me to leave was that (Infineon) was really on a cost-cutting mission for those years,” LeFort said. “It stopped being fun at the end of the day.”

Since joining Ember, LeFort, 49, has helped the company to take the lead position in the small but growing ZigBee chip industry. ZigBee’s is seen as the leading technology for wireless communications behind smart meters, which monitor energy use in buildings to reduce consumption and cost.

In May, Ember announced that it had shipped 10 million ZigBee chips since its founding in 2001, the first company to achieve the milestone. And the pace is picking up fast. Ember is on track to ship 10 million chips in 2010 alone, LeFort said.

Ember’s revenue is on track to grow by more than 300 percent this year from 2009, with the company now seeing revenue of $9 million to $10 million per quarter, he said. Ember achieved profitability in the first quarter of this year, and has grown its staff to 50 from 40 over the last several months, LeFort said.

Todd Hixon, a member of Ember’s board of directors, said LeFort first and foremost is someone who “likes to build things.”

“He built what he’d built (at) Infineon,” said Hixon, co-founder and managing partner of New Atlantic Ventures in Cambridge, one of Ember’s investors. “I think he was looking for a new challenge.”

LeFort fondly recalls something he heard from a member of the team at Ember:

“When you started, you immediately jumped right in headfirst whether you knew what you were talking about or not. You just got up there and tried to help us move forward.”

“I think he regrets saying that, but I took that as a compliment. That is my style—I’ll learn by doing,” LeFort said. “As a friend of mine used to say, ‘If you want more hits, get up to the plate more.’”

Editor’s Note: This profile is excerpted from a Boston Business Journal profile of Robert LeForte. For the full profile, click on the link.

Kyle Alspach writes for the Boston Business Journal

Read more: http://www.portfolio.com/companies-executives/2011/01/03/robert-lefort-is-boston-business-journal-executive-of-2010#ixzz1AHKl8ieG