Hologram is an Inc. Best in Business honoree. The second annual Best in Business awards recognize companies that have made a huge impact on their industries, their communities, the environment, and society as a whole.
There are smart thermostats and lights. There are electric-vehicle charging stations. Delivery drones. The internet's ability to connect a growing list of devices promises to change how we live. shoddy WiFi connections are still a problem in this tech revolution.
Hologram came up with a device-agnostic sim card that works across 70 networks through 200 countries and territories, and automatically switches between carriers when in motion. Hologram helps companies monitor their energy use by tracking fleets of connected devices.
Ben Forgan came back to the U.S. after working at a food-delivery startup in Singapore. One of the reasons he was upset was that unreliable internet could cripple the ordering systems. His peers were building mobile apps. He said that he felt like we were entering the third wave of computers and the internet. I thought about the future of the internet and connected everything to the real world.
Even Forgan couldn't imagine what his customers would do with Hologram. Paso Pacifico planted decoy sea turtle eggs in Central America and embedded the sim cards in them. If the egg moves, it will be able to detect and track people. The presence of decoy eggs has helped decrease the incidence of poaching. Other groups are working on hardware applications that could deter illegal shark fin and parrot egg plucking.
The Chicago company co-founded by Forgan and Pat Wilber has just 100 employees. It is expecting to triple its staff over the next year-and-a-half, thanks to a $65 million investment in August by Tiger Global. "We started as a humble infrastructure provider, and everyone is building these cool things on top of it," co-founder Ben Forgan says. I think it motivates our team.
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