KIESEL'S LATEST TECH SUCCESS

By Caleb Trainer
 

ESCONDIDO -- Jason Kiesel shares a creative, hands-on ingenuity with his late grandfather, Lowell Kiesel. The younger is the founder and chief architect of Freedom Speaks Inc., the company that created the advanced software application program, CitySourced. (See related story on CitySourced “Escondido, Report It.”) Last century, the elder Kiesel was the founder and “chief architect” of the company that is now known as Carvin Inc., manufacturers of trail-blazing electronics for the music industry.

Kiesel’s latest tech success, CitySourced, is an application that allows people to take a cellphone photo of problems such as potholes or graffiti, then transmit it electronically to the appropriate authorities. (see our related story on CitySourced new application, Escondido--Report it!)
 

Jason Kiesel was born and raised in Escondido at the time his grandfather’s business, first known as L.C. Kiesel Company, was headquartered here. He had two decades’ worth of firsthand exposure to his grandfather’s technological acumen. And the entrepreneurial spirit of his grandfather apparently rubbed off on the younger Kiesel in a big way.
 

After graduating from Escondido’s San Pasqual High School as the Class of 1992 valedictorian, Kiesel started college at UCLA as a mechanical engineering major. He changed majors and, in 1997, received his degree in psychobiology, largely the study of brain-behavior mechanisms and neuro-based disorders. Medical school had been a consideration, but, as he put it, “I wanted to take time off and one thing led to another.”
 

The entrepreneurial underpinnings and inventiveness of his grandfather revealed themselves partly by chance, as Jason explains it. He was working a summer job in the computer department of a retailer when “people started throwing money at me for building web designs.” At the time (pre-Google), businesses were first starting to consider hosting company web pages. What began as a myriad of self-taught technical skills – he said he did a lot of reading -- became a full-time software programming career and the makings for what he refers to as his first major “project,” web-based FreedomSpeaks (www.freedomspeaks.com).
 

Kiesel started FreedomSpeaks nearly five years ago. It was an outgrowth of his interests in politics and his know-how as a web page developer. The free service allows users a convenient way to identify and write to local, state and US representatives. It also has several other interactive options, including helpful ways to target political campaigns and issues. The backbone of FreedomSpeaks is its database, which includes information on nearly 2,000 cities and 4,000 counties.
 

Kiesel, 37 next month, lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Angela, and their floppy-eared, beagle-mix shelter dog. He makes it to Escondido for family visits throughout the year, but his days of late are focused on improving and expanding the CitySourced product, both throughout the U.S. and overseas, having just returned earlier this month from Dubai of the United Arab Emirates.
 

Partnering with Kiesel on the CitySourced application is Kurt Daradics. They met while FreedomSpeaks was in its infancy. Both are expected to be on hand for the “Escondido, Report It!” presentation at Escondido City Hall on Wednesday afternoon.
 

The success garnered so far by the CitySourced product is due in part to being at the right place, at the right moment with the right technology, Kiesel said.
 

In September 2009, the CitySourced application won a TechCrunch50 award. Jason said that at the time, TechCrunch50 was considered “the tech equivalent of American Idol.” He said the live presentation, seen before 1,500 investors, venture capitalists and media representatives, was probably singularly most important in launching the commercial success of CitySourced.
 

“Once we got on stage and then received consumer response, all of our focus and time went into CitySourced,” he said. There are six full-time and as many as eight part-time staff that work on the CitySourced product, Jason said. Because TechCrunch50 was only open to technology not yet in commercial use, the FreedomSpeaks web-based product was not eligible for consideration, he said. Jason further explained, as an indication of the prestige of the competition, there were approximately 700 entries of which 50 were selected to compete. Immediately after the award, the City of San Jose – which had a councilman present and participating in the stage presentation of the application – became the first CitySourced client, he said.
 

Kiesel’s grandfather died three months after the tech convention awards, but not before CitySourced was well on its way, and now in use in the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Canada and Australia, not to mention more than 30 cities, public agencies and private firms in the U.S.