Just Tuning Up

Just Tuning Up

By Francis X. Gilpin | Associate Editor

All Carlo Franzblau set out to do was teach the world to sing. But the fate of his Tampa startup took an unexpected – and potentially more profitable – twist two years ago.

The mother of an off-key middle school pupil who was testing Franzblau's pitch-recognition software discovered that her daughter's reading skills were improving along with her singing.

From that pleasant surprise, Franzblau's Carry-a-Tune Technologies has morphed into Electronic Learning Products Inc.

Franzblau's company is rolling out Tune into Reading this summer. The reading instruction software could bring in as much as $405 million in annual revenue on top of the $94 million that Franzblau envisions from his Singing Coach application, according to estimates by the company and the University of South Florida's business school.

Franzblau reported respectable 2005 sales at a recent meeting of venture capitalists in Ponte Vedra Beach. "I feel kind of proud, throwing up the slide and going: 'We sold a million bucks of this last year,'" he recalls later at his Tampa office. "All of a sudden, people sit up in their chairs."

They were lined up at Electronic Learning Products' booth, listening to a singer while simultaneously watching on a computer monitor to see how close her pitch and rhythm were to perfection. The same immediacy is what struggling readers in middle school are responding to.

A 2005 academic study by USF's education school found the singing software produced positive early results with students who lagged behind classmates in reading.

"This software is an experience for them that re-engages them," says Franzblau. Teachers tell him that their students get discouraged when they can't read at their grade level and fall behind. "It's very easy to move your scores," he says, "if you apply yourself."

But slow learners aren't Electronic Learning Products' only potential new market.

Franzblau, the company's president and chief executive, and Ken Spiegel, the vice president and general manager, presented a new variation of the technology at MacDill Air Force Base last month. The military and intelligence officials in Tampa think the language-recognition program could assist American-bred spies to learn to speak in foreign tongues faster and without the trace of an accent.

Kid with an idea

Franzblau, 46, claims he was thinking about Singing Coach all the way back in 1973. The young Charles Adam Franzblau was cast as Conrad Birdie in a summer camp production of "Bye Bye Birdie."

It must have been his acting talent that won him the role. The musical director at the Maine camp ordered the 13-year-old Franzblau to speak his singing parts.

An amateur musician, Franzblau says he always had trouble with tasks such as tuning a guitar. "'Can you hear this?' Bam-bam-bam," he says, mimicking his music teacher hitting a piano keyboard. "'Yeah, I can hear it. But I don't know which way I'm supposed to turn the peg.'"

Franzblau got over such childhood trauma to obtain two degrees at Harvard, including an MBA, before returning to Tampa to work with his family.

Spiegel is a childhood friend of Franzblau's wife. The two lost touch for more than 20 years. But in 2002, when Spiegel's employer transferred him to Tampa, his mother told him that was where the now-Beth Adler Franzblau had settled.

Over for dinner at the Franzblau home in Tampa, Spiegel, who has an engineering degree from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, was introduced to Carlo as an information-technology consultant. "I'm in this family business," Spiegel recalls Carlo telling him. "It's not so interesting, but you want to see my hobby?"

Franzblau opened up a laptop and showed Spiegel a rudimentary version of the Singing Coach, which he had been working on for four years.

"Ken made it clear to me that I needed some quality control," says Franzblau. "I certainly didn't want to mail out a bunch of products that didn't install on people's computers."

FCAT turnaround

Franzblau hired Spiegel's company. Asked how the computer code behind Franzblau's singing software looked at first, Spiegel delicately replies: "I had a nice-sized customer here for a good while."

Dispensing with diplomacy, Franzblau confirms: "Yeah, it was a mess. The code was a mess."

Spiegel subsequently joined Electronic Learning Products. Franzblau recruited the 10 worst singers he could find to try out a finished product.

After the reading revelation, Franzblau persuaded USF professor Susan P. Homan to field-test the singing software with students who had flunked the reading portion of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.

According to Homan's research abstract, the average FCAT reading score among 24 students improved better than one grade level after nine weeks of using the singing software. The scores in a control group of similarly reading-challenged students nudged up only slightly without the software. (See accompanying chart.)

"These findings strongly support the use of interactive singing software to increase reading levels of struggling middle school readers," Homan wrote.

After consulting with teachers, Spiegel has tweaked Tune into Reading and plans to distribute it over the Internet. "You can host it to tens of thousands of students without getting bogged down in the school's computer IT and all of that quagmire," Spiegel says.

Spiegel thinks Electronic Learning Products is hitting the educational market at the right time. The federal No Child Left Behind Act has designated $38 billion for remedial instruction to help students pass standardized tests.

Both men are experienced in business, but neither has launched mass-market software before. That's usually a deal breaker with venture capitalists.

Fortunately for Franzblau, he has been able to make judicious use of family money for startup capital. "So far, it's just been me, my dad and my sister," he says. "Occasionally, we hit up mom for a loan."

It was not an open-ended commitment from any of the Franzblaus. "If a year ago the reading study had turned up nothing, I wouldn't have plunked a bunch more money into this thing," he says. "I believe in persistence, but I don't believe in hitting your head against the wall."

Now, with $2 million in orders for Tune into Reading and the nation's intelligence community looking to test a language product, Franzblau can afford to be choosy about which VCs he lets in on his deal.

"What do they tell you? 'Try and raise money when you don't need money,'" he says. "That's definitely the position we're in right now."

OTHER OPPORTUNITIES

The day job he kept

Carlo Franzblau's musical career has been modest. His primary focus has been his family's catalogue company, which sells and ships cigars, household furnishings, linen, and tropical wear.

Franzblau is a principal in the Thompson Group. Somehow, he has squeezed Electronic Learning Products Inc.'s offices into the Thompson Group plant near Tampa International Airport. It wasn't easy.

The Thompson Cigar Co. operation is the heart of the Franzblau family enterprise. Founded in 1915 in Key West, the company is the oldest mail-order cigar distributor in America. The Tampa plant includes more than 300,000 cubic feet of chilled space that is set aside for the nation's biggest storage humidor.

The family acquired linensource and Casual Living after Franzblau came home from Harvard. Their operations and respective call centers take up much of the rest of the Thompson Group plant.

But computerized learning has become Franzblau's passion. "I love it," he says. "I can't stop thinking about it."

Franzblau says he worked nights and weekends on early versions of the singing software program. Lately, he has been spending more of his regular working hours at Electronic Learning Products.

"I also love the linen business, as odd as that may sound," he says. "They're both software, right?"