Still astounded by Pittsburgh’s choice in the recent mayoral race, I decided to see for myself just what the high-tech community might have lost, had Mark DeSantis indeed been elected over Luke Ravenstahl.

You see, Mark started MobileFusion on the start-up fecund South Side about eighteen months ago. While I must confess seeing very little connection between that name and this company’s flagship product, I can say that I came away from my three-hour visit/demo extremely impressed. (And I’m a guy who looks at literally hundreds of companies each and every year.)

In short, MobileFusion makes and sells a hardened ball that contains all kinds of exotic sensing devices and software that is designed for deployment (usually by hand) into dark and dangerous “Bad Guy” areas - mainly by anti-terrorist personnel.

“We’re tired of sending eighteen to twenty year-old kids into these traps”, a prominent, yet unnamed Marine Corp General is quoted. “For a small price, we can instead use the MobileFusion device to feed back to us all that it sees, hears, smells, and even infers.”

How is this possible? Well, that's the secret sauce. MobileFusion has done a lot of things right; but the first and most important thing they've done correctly, is their research. Interviewing primarily the branch of the service known as SOCOM (betcha didn’t even know that there is a 5th branch of the military, did you? Well, there is, and it’s been in existence since 1978) MobileFusion’s professionals determined exactly what the very top direction-setters in our defense department truly want from their surveillance devices.

MobileFusion’s product seems to provide almost all of SOCOM’s requirements. Just lob one of these babies into a bad guy’s lair and turn on your laptop. In mere seconds, it will provide feedback for everything that is in the area (including the dimensions of the bad guy’s facility).  It is also capable of concentrating on specific targets that have been specified in advance.

I love this product, but what I really love is the team that Mr. DeSantis has assembled to make it all happen. (I can only imagine the brains and initiative he would have brought to bear at city hall.) Thirty-five years and dozens of start-ups have taught me that your business will never exceed the talents of your key people, and MobileFusion has painstakingly found these folks.

From here, I ventured on to yet another local start-up, Aethon. And while I again must confess to seeing no logical connection between company name and product utility, I can once again say that this late-stage start-up, owned primarily by Aldo Zini, ex-of uber-success Automated Health Care, is also doing the right things and doing them right.

Aethon makes a fairly autonomous robot (called a “TUG”) that is specifically targeted to hospital environments. And while I’ll admit to questioning how a hospital pharmacy could possibly (remember, this was ten years ago) achieve significant ROI by installing AHC’s robotized system for managing the delivery of medications in those same hospital environments, Aethon seems to have no such concerns.

“A client can achieve payback simply on the processes of serving meals and then collecting the used plates, cups, and utensils,” says Zini, “But we go way beyond that by delivering meds, bedding, and even keeping track of hard assets. ROI is generally within a year.”

One look at Aethon’s national map told me all I needed to know about their sales success … with a push-pin representing a hospital installation, Aethon has a foam-core USA map that a Fakir could sleep on quite comfortably.

Of course, Zini’s success didn’t come easy. “We’ve made mistakes, that’s for sure,” he said without prompting, “But isn’t that the whole reason guys like us do this (start companies)? And remember, nobody’s telling me what to do each and every day.”

(I’m sure he temporarily forgot about two constituencies; his customers, and his board.)

And speaking of his Board, what a collection of players this is; including Don Jones (my hero and perhaps the greatest entrepreneur I have ever met).  It seems Aldo Zini has learned the value of great advice. “No one has all the answers”, he said, “but with enough experts in disparate fields, the job of building a successful company sure gets a lot easier.”

In the words of my good friend Jake Haulk (CEO of the Allegheny Institute), “Pittsburgh is like a forest fire. The fire hit a decade or so ago, and now it has almost burned all the way through.”

I agree. And, just as any natural disaster tends to purge the weakest from its premises, the Pittsburghers who have remained here in the region would logically seem to be the strongest, the most creative, and the most industrious. Remember, they have nowhere to go to work for someone else. They instead have to create their own jobs.  Combine this work ethic and mental toughness with the new generation of tech-based entrepreneurs like Zini and DeSantis, and we might just have a winning formula.