One minute, Henry Thorne is expounding on how Thorley Industries' current baby products make a mom's work easier. The next minute, he's apologizing for rescinding his offer to give a sneak preview of coming attractions, sketches of which are all over the Strip District startup's offices.

Thorley's first creation was a simple, foam-encased faucet cover with a built-in temperature sensor. Next came an over-the-sink baby tub that uses the same LCD technology to ensure a clean, safe and steady water flow.

And by September ...

"I really would love to show you these products," he begins, acknowledging that it was a bad idea to tease them in his e-mail only to take it all back in person.

In the middle of his sales pitch/apology, Mr. Thorne's train of thought is again sidetracked.

Derailed, actually, by the sight of a wrist bearing a bright-red, large-print digital watch. He's in love not with its color, nor its size, but that eye-popping curve in its liquid crystal display.

"Someone figured out how to print LCD onto flexible plastic. I did not know that," he says. "That's cool."

What's not lost on Mr. Thorne, a one-time robotics troubleshooter for General Motors Corp., or Thorley co-founder Rob Daley, is that a flexible LCD might be handy in designing future products.

For Thorley, the key is that a curved LCD has become inexpensive enough to be used in a $50 watch -- and that, Mr. Thorne says, puts it squarely on their radar.

"That will be in our mental tool box. That possibility will be there, so that if it's better to do a curve, we can do a curve."

The latest venture of Mr. Thorne, Thorley's chief technology officer, and CEO Daley is 4moms, which last year inked a $215 million licensing agreement with Hasbro Inc. to design new products.

In its 2007 annual report, Hazelwood-based Innovation Works touted Thorley as one of the venture capital fund's success stories. The 3-year-old Thorley, which has nine employees, also has broken away from the pack by raising an undisclosed amount of capital from the Ben Franklin Partnership, Blue Tree Allied Angels, FNB Capital Corp. and plenty of friends and family.

"Henry is a serial entrepreneur," said Terri Glueck, Innovation Works spokeswoman, referring to the CMU graduate's three earlier startups here and in Flint, Mich.

"We are all about applying low-cost electronics to industries that haven't applied electronics before," Mr. Thorne said. "Our premise is that they're not going to be the ones to think about using robotics or automating something like a high chair."

Mr. Daley is a venture capitalist who focused Mr. Thorne's ideas to the infant care market. He also shaped the 4moms marketing strategy, using his wife Jenn Daley and three of her Mt. Lebanon friends as the go-to focus group.

"When we talked to them about the spout cover, that was really the springboard to our being in the juvenile space," Mr. Daley said.

"It was such an impactful part of the business that we named the company after them. They're the first line of consumer research."

Truth be told, Mr. Daley says there's a fifth Mt. Lebanon mom who doesn't appear on 4momsonline.com but has subbed for his wife in some ads. But Mr. Daley has kept Erin Rimmel under wraps because "Five Moms" doesn't pack the zing of a double entendre.

"She's our Stealth Mom," Mr. Daley said.