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AutismPro Executive's goal: to sell $20M worth of educational software for autistic children

Over the last 20 years, Kevin Custer has worn many hats: investment banker, stock broker, venture capitalist, tech whiz, start-up architect, president and chief executive officer.

But since last November his main title has been CEO of Virtual Expert Clinics, the New Brunswick-based software firm behind AutismPro, a product geared for professionals who work with autistic children.

"I was brought in to scale-up the company," he said during an interview at the company's headquarters in Fredericton. "We've invested millions of dollars in developing the content and my job is to take us from our first few hundred thousand in sales to up over $20 million."

Custer has already built and scaled five education companies, taking two of them - Infonautics Inc. and Brainium Technologies Inc. - public.

The Golden, Colo.-based executive spends one week a month in Fredericton and the rest of his time making sales pitches to school districts and clinics that work with autistic children.

"We offer an entire case management system to work with autistic children," he said. "The challenge school districts are facing right now is that they don't have the resources to match the demand.

"Autism has tripled in the last 10 years and the infrastructure to support that doesn't exist," Custer added. "Early intervention is not only effective but the costs of educating the child goes down every year, so there is actually a return on their investment."

Virtual Expert Clinics was founded in 2004 by Fredericton native Cynthia Howroyd, a speech-language pathologist.

With one in every 150 children diagnosed with autism - up from one in 10,000 three decades ago - Howroyd recognized the demand for educational resources geared towards autistic children was increasing.

After brainstorming with the biggest and brightest experts in autism, the firm developed AutismPro, an educational software. It includes a Web-based professional development program for educators, classroom resources and lesson plans for people who work with autistic children.

"We got ten of the best experts on autism and took three years to write over 10,000 different interventions and lessons," Custer said. "The educational staff can watch a video and see exactly how the intervention is done."

Virtual Expert Clinics is a venture capital-backed firm, with more than $6.5 million in investments from a handful of venture funds including GrowthWorks Atlantic Venture Fund and the Business Development Bank of Canada's Technology Seed Investment Group.

"Even last December - when nobody was raising venture capital - we did about a $2 million capital raising," Custer said.

Although the firm's revenues were under $1 million last year, Custer said he expects that to increase significantly in the coming years. In order to stay up to date, the firm folds about 10 to 15 per cent of its revenues into product content and development.

The web-based AutismPro software costs about $1,000 for each child with autism, but most of the licences are sold to school districts, which pay $3,000 to $5,000 for each school.

The firm has about a dozen employees but plans on adding two employees to the Colorado sales and marketing team before the end of the year. Custer also said he expects the company's revenues to increase.

The prospective profits are attractive, but Custer said what really motivates him isn't always the bottom line. "I've had mother's come up to me and give me a hug," he said. "Seven years of being a stock broker and I never wanted to see my clients let alone have them touch me.

"We may not be the next billion dollar software company, but it's the kind of work that helps you sleep very well at night."