| Freddie Figgers | |
| Birth Date: | September 26, 1989 |
Freddie Figgers (born September 26, 1989)[1] is an American technology entrepreneur, inventor, and founder of Figgers Communication and the Figgers Foundation.
Freddie Figgers was abandoned at birth and adopted in two days by Nathan Figgers. Nathan was a maintenance worker and handyman, while his wife, Betty Mae, was a farm worker. Freddie grew up in Quincy, Florida. As a child he enjoyed repairing old electrical equipment. His first computer repair was a broken Macintosh he acquired when he was nine and fixed by soldering parts from a clock radio to the circuit board.[1] When he was twelve, he began repairing and maintaining computers at his school during an after-school program. The program's director, who was the mayor, the hired him to repair computers at city hall. Later, Freddie wrote a program to check water pressure gauges. He then left school at fifteen 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.[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] [5]
Following 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 it created an alert in case of abnormalities.[1]
At sixteen, Figgers started Figgers Communication.[4] [6] [7] In 2008, when he was nineteen, he started Figgers Wireless[6] 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.
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] [8] [9] [10]