Cheetah's Founder Looks at the ErgoBilt Merger

AUTHOR'S NOTE (updated March 2001): I, with some of my Cheetah partners, filed a lawsuit against both ErgoBilt and its chairman, Gerald McMillan, for fraud and breach of contract related to their acquisition of Cheetah Systems. The suit has been settled, ErgoBilt has sold Cheetah, and Cheetah's new owners have no affiliation with ErgoBilt, me, or my former partners. I have not had any financial interest in Cheetah Systems for over six years--please do not contact me about any problems you might have with this company!

Cheetah Systems has been a fixture in the court reporting profession for over a decade. Now they have been acquired by another company. In this interview, we ask Cheetah founder Gary Robson how this will affect the rest of us.

JCR:  Let's start with a bit of history. Briefly, where did Cheetah come from?

Robson:  I started Cheetah about 11 years ago with my wife, Kathy, and a single programmer. We started with our CAT product, TurboCAT, and added captioning in 1990. We're headquartered in Fremont, California, and moved our sales and support organization to Tucson, Arizona about five years ago. We now have more people in Tucson than we do in Fremont!

JCR:  Is Kathy still with the company?

Robson:  No, she left a few years ago. She missed court reporting, and so she has developed an independent career in closed captioning. She still tries to stay involved and attend the major shows with us, and she does make a good beta tester!

JCR:  ErgoBilt is a new name to court reporting. Tell us about it.

Robson:  ErgoBilt is a public company from Texas with two divisions. Fon'iks provides steno writers and theory systems, and BodyBilt provides high-end ergonomic office chairs. It fits nicely: court reporters need both chairs and steno keyboards. The Fon'iks philosophy is to create the easiest possible learning environment for new reporters, so that the combination of the writer and the theory can get students up to an accurate 100 or 120 wpm quickly, and they can earn income in text entry while they go to school. Essentially, they're being paid to practice, so they get through school faster.

JCR:  Is the Fon'iks steno writer brand-new?

Robson:  The Fon'iksWriter was just released in early 1997, but they've already shipped well over a thousand of them. Most have gone to schools, where they're used with the Fon'iksLogic writing theory, but working court reporters can use it with any theory.

JCR:  So why would ErgoBilt want to buy Cheetah Systems?

Robson:  They have sold mostly to schools and into data entry/text entry markets. They really had no presence in the court reporting industry. They wanted to pick up a company that was a software leader that also had a support infrastructure that could pick up support for the Fon'iksWriter.

JCR:  I guess the reciprocal question would be: why would Cheetah want to be acquired by ErgoBilt?

Robson:  ErgoBilt has resources Cheetah doesn't, so we can expand into new product areas we simply couldn't handle before. Also, since Stenograph no longer sells writers to other CAT companies, having our own writer makes a big difference.

JCR:  Didn't Cheetah already have a writer of its own?

Robson:  Yes, Cheetah sells the Gemini, but it's a specialty product. It's an ergonomic realtime steno keyboard, which is great for captioners or people with hand/wrist problems, but it has no paper or disk, so many reporters shy away from it. The Fon'iksWriter is a full-blown writer with a computer built in.

JCR:  Since ErgoBilt has the Fon'iksLogic theory, will Cheetah's products become theory-specific?

Robson:  Absolutely not. Obviously, we'll be developing new tools for the Fon'iksLogic theory, but our products will continue to work for people on all of the other theories as well.

JCR:  So now that you've sold Cheetah, will you be cashing out and moving to Los Cabos?

Robson:  No, I'm staying on board as the Chief Technology Officer for ErgoBilt. I think my time in Los C abos will be limited to fishing trips!

JCR:  What will your new responsibilities be?

Robson:  I'll focus on the technology while somebody else worries about running the business. I'll be evaluating new technologies and figuring out how best to apply them to reporting and captioning. I'll also remain ErgoBilt's liaison with NCRA and the court reporting and captioning professions.

JCR:  Does this mean you're moving to Dallas?

Robson:  Actually, no. I'm remaining in California, and we're also keeping our Tucson, Arizona office open. That's where all of our technical support and most of our product development is now. I do expect to be racking up quite a few frequent-flyer miles, though!

JCR:  We all know mergers mean lost jobs. How does this affect Cheetah?

Robson:  Actually, it's the other way around in this merger. There is surprisingly little overlap between Cheetah and ErgoBilt. Since both companies are growing, we'll be combining departments and hiring new people rather than eliminating overlapping jobs.

JCR:  Bottom line, then - how will this affect Cheetah's customers?

Robson:  This is a very important question to us. We have over 6,000 software packages out there, and most of our customers chose us for our service. We're expanding our tech support hotline as we take over support for the Fon'iksWriter, so we can maintain or improve the level of support. We're also dramatically increasing our support mechanism on the Internet.

JCR:  Will this have any affect on the reporters that aren't your customers?

Robson:  I think it will. Will more R&D money available, and me focusing entirely on new technologies, we'll have a barrage of new products and new features. In this business, when one company releases a feature, everyone else does it, too. It's like the intelligent conflict resolution, or number handling, or audio synchronization - we all have it. Our new push will introduce technologies that the other vendors will also have to introduce, and the whole industry will move forward.

JCR:  What kinds of technologies?

Robson:  As the January issue of the Journal pointed out, digital video is coming hot on the heels of the digital audio we already have. Some of the technologies that have been around a while will be turning mainstream, like realtime database interfaces from CAT systems, advanced display technology, videoconferencing, realtime delivery over the Internet, research tools, ergonomic keyboard designs, and multimedia embedded in transcripts. You'll be seeing voice recognition in CAT software again (I say "again" because one company was showing it almost ten years ago - well before its time). Also look for technologies like language translation.

JCR:  NCRA already sells two of your books, The Court Reporter's Guide to Cyberspace and Inside Captioning, and the Journal has printed quite a few of your articles. Will you continue writing now that you're an ErgoBilt employee?

Robson:  Absolutely. ErgoBilt encourages my writing and speaking. Expect more books and articles, most likely related to advanced technologies, the Internet, and closed captioning. I'm also writing a column for Newswaves, a national newspaper f or deaf and hard-of-hearing people.

JCR:  Let's sum it all up, then. What's your vision for the future of the court reporting profession?

Robson:  Wow. That's a broad question. I guess the best way to start is to say I see steno shorthand as an increasingly marketable skill. Even with the doomsayers forecasting the demise of the profession, I see court reporters adding more services and finding more work outside the legal system. I watch the voice recognition technologies very closely, and I can tell you we're not going to see computers replacing humans in the court reporting profession in the near future!