John Overby, the director of client services at Sirti, has announced he's leaving in January for a new job.

Overby has been with state-funded startup-accelerator Sirti for almost six years.

He's taking the job of president and CEO of Spokane Valley startup Flyback Energy. That company was started in 2003 by three area engineers.

Overby and other Sirti staff have helped Flyback get their business plan sharpened. In fact, Overby liked what he saw on the drawing board and decided to join the company at a key point -- within 12 months of the firm's first product release.

Flyback Energy has patented processes that are designed to tap into wasted electromagnetic energy — technically what engineers call flyback. Overby said the company will sell products —  the first group will be essentially a switch that is plugged into wall circuits -- that capture and reuse some of the inherent wasted energy in an electrical circuit.

Overby has helped launch two other area companies, Advanced Hardware Architecture, based in Moscow  and Advanced Input Devices, in North Idaho.

"I hope No. 3 will be bigger than those two," he said.

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