AMBS moves into new space, seeks $2M to add staff
03/05/04
After spending its first few years in Huntsville's business incubator, Automated Managed Business Solutions Inc. is moving to a place of its own.
The company was started in 2000 with a single employee - founder Clyde Luttrell - and moved into BizTech. AMBS, which sells products to utilities that monitor and control electric, water and gas meters, now has 20 employees based at its new home at 690 Discovery Drive.
The company was to celebrate a ribbon-cutting there today.
AMBS is quite a success story for BizTech, said Dick Reeves, the incubator's president and chief executive officer. "It started with one engineer and a big stack of documents," he said.
AMBS is the 10th startup to graduate from BizTech. An official graduation ceremony will be held in late May, Reeves said.
Luttrell used his own money to buy a product that had been developed at Teledyne Brown Engineering, his employer for nearly 40 years. His new company was first named Automatic Metering and Billing Systems LLC.
"I'm standing on the shoulders" of Teledyne Brown, Luttrell said. "We took a product that already had a customer base, then built a company structure" to market and sell utility products.
During the first two years, Luttrell was able to raise $1.5 million through angel investors - "people who believe in the company and the product." It was a difficult time to be hunting investment money, as the stock market continued its slide, he said.
While at BizTech, Luttrell was able to draw on the experience of mentors and an advisory board, which helped him get "through the mine fields" of establishing a new business.
Now Luttrell's looking to raise another $2 million from investors to build a market and sales organization.
"We're doing business with 15 utilities in the area," Luttrell said. "We're now in the process of rolling it over" nationwide.
Because of the demand of the product, "we want to grow at warp speed."