Freddie Figgers

Figgers was abandoned at birth and was adopted when he was two days old by Nathan Figgers, a maintenance worker and handyman, and his wife Betty Mae, a farm worker. He grew up in Quincy, Florida. As a child, he enjoyed repairing old electrical equipment, and his first computer was a broken Macintosh that he acquired when he was nine and succeeded in repairing by soldering parts from a clock radio to the circuit board.[1] When he was 12, he began repairing and maintaining computers at his school during an after-school program; the director, who was the city's mayor, hired him to repair computers at city hall, and he later wrote a program to check water pressure gauges. He then left school at 15 to go into business,[1] repairing computers in a backyard shed; he launched his own cloud storage service in 2005.[2][3] He financed subsequent expansion by writing software for clients, and in 2009 also dropped out of college at Florida Atlantic University to focus on his business.[2][4]

Figgers' inventions include a GPS tracker that he embedded together with a two-way communicator in the sole of his father's shoe after Nathan Figgers developed Alzheimer's disease and started to wander;[3] he sold the rights to the tracker for $2.2 million in January 2014, but his father died the same month.[1]

Inspired by the death of his uncle, a diabetic, he also developed a networked glucometer, to transmit users' glucose levels to a designated relative and their physician and an alert in case of abnormalities.[1]

At 16, Figgers started Figgers Communication.[4][5][6] In 2008, at 19, he started Figgers Wireless[5] and began applying to the FCC for a telecommunications license to provide internet service to rural areas in northern Florida and adjacent southern Georgia. When he received a license in 2011, at 21, he was the youngest telecom operator in the United States, and as of February 2020 Figgers Communication was the only black-owned telecom in the country.[1][5][7] In 2014 the company introduced a smartphone, the Figgers F1, incorporating a patented device to trigger "safe mode" at speeds of 10 mph and above, to prevent texting while driving,[1][6] and also allowed use by multiple accounts.[3] In 2019 it added the Figgers F3, which provides wireless charging when within 5 meters of a "super base charger", a wireless inconductive charger that the company is seeking FCC permission to produce.[1][5] As of 2018, Figgers Wireless offered nationwide service, and Figgers also offers insurance and a credit card, FiggCash.[8]

Figgers is married to Natlie Figgers, an attorney; they have a daughter. He runs a foundation that assists disadvantaged children and families and provides grants for education and healthcare projects;[1][7] he has donated scholarships to high school seniors.[9]

• Official website