New Elevator Pitch Video

Quick update - we are awaiting the legal documents for our patent license. We are also looking at different blends to develop for varying plastic applications. There's lots of excitement around what we can deliver and we're getting requests from customers for products besides just plastic bags.

In other news, we've produced a new video of our elevator pitch.  It's a little more professional than our last attempt.  This one was submitted to the PitchUniversity competition.  So check it out and "Like" it, add comments too, as long as they're good ones.

You can see from the video where the inspiration for the elevator pitch came from. "The Graduate" is a great movie too, so if you haven't seen it I highly recommend it.  It's an older movie, but still very funny.

That's about all the news for now that I can share.  We'll be headed to Dallas towards the latter part of August. I'll keep you posted on our entrepreneurship adventures.

CleanTech Academy and Travel Woes

The CleanTech Academy ended this past Sunday.  It is now Tuesday and I am still not back in Fayetteville yet.  That's the travel woes part of this post.  I'll get to that in a bit.

The CleanTech Academy and Investor Conference was ok.  The Investor Conference portion didn't have as many investors as I would have thought, but it was ok.  I went solo on this trip.  It was different doing everything by myself, but very manageable.  There was an exhibit fair, it was ok.  The Academy itself provided a good overview of what to do win the competition.  We've been through most of this already due to our great adviser, Dr. Carol Reeves.  We prepared an elevator pitch.  If you've followed us through the competition circuit you know that we did fairly well with our pitch.  There were some good speakers sprinkled throughout the weekend.  I think what made it just ok was that for being in the middle of Silicon Valley there were a lot of technical glitches.  Mics didn't always work, website was very slow, and internet was worst than 56k.  I understand there were a lot of people using up that bandwidth, but this is Silicon Valley.  There was also a lot of information crammed into the weekend and the days were long.  Many of the participants were exhausted by the flood of presentations, most of which were good and some were well... not so good.  I'm sure I could say that about most of the competitions and event we've been to, but part of the purpose of this event is to network.  They skimped on social activities and left little time to network individually.  Overall it was a decent event.  Some things that could make it better is more technical preparation, firmer schedule, and smaller sessions.  For some of the topics smaller groups would've definitely been beneficial, while for keynote speakers it was fine to have everyone in one room.

And now I'm sitting here in Little Rock waiting for a flight to Dallas then transferring to a flight to Tulsa, then driving back to Fayetteville.  I started in San Jose flew to Los Angeles then got delayed by the dust storm in Phoenix, missed my connection to Tulsa and so here I am.

As you can see it was a bit of a beast.  I guess it's been an adventure of sorts.  All part of the roller coaster ride of being an entrepreneur.

Negotiations and Challenges

cycleWood Solutions is in the final stages of negotiation for a patent license.  While this is definitely not a trivial step, it has taken longer than I thought it would.  We've been through several rounds of negotiation and we're getting close to an agreement that works for all involved.  It has been a learning experience.

We have other challenges as well as we move forward in the business.  Some of these challenges we foresaw, while others have sprung up.  We knew there would be things that would come up that we had not anticipated, so in some ways we were prepared for these challenges.  I can't go into to much detail on these as some of the information is proprietary.  One of the necessary skills for a successful entrepreneur is to be able to overcome the expected and unexpected hurdles that arise.  Being quick, nimble, and flexible allows entrepreneurs to navigate their way through the challenges of starting up.

We are somewhat limited in what we can do until the patent license is signed, but we haven't been sitting idle.  We have been talking to investors, mentors, and customers.  We've also talked to suppliers and manufacturers.  These are things that we need to do anyways so we're trying to get a jump on that so that as soon as the deal is signed we're ready to go.  Being proactive saves time and shows initiative.  It's easy to say we're waiting on this to get done or that to get done.  There are plenty of excuses, but in order to be successful you have to be resourceful and efficient.

Speaking of resources, Molly Cunningham with businessadministrationdegree.com recently wrote an article about some specialty search engines that could be helpful for any business student.  Her article is titled "30 Specialty Search Engines and Web Databases for Business Students."  Check it out, there's some good information there.

More Travels and Intellectual Property

I'll be headed to San Jose for a few days this month.  I'll be attending the CleanTech Investor Conference July 14th and the CleanTech Academy July 15th through 18th.  It'll be the first trip I take without any of my teammates.  The main purpose of the trip is to learn and network.  Participation is mandatory to compete in the CleanTech Open.  Silicon Solar participated last year and told us that they found it very beneficial.  One good thing about the CleanTech Open is that you can compete more than once.  So if we don't win this year we could come back next year.

Aside from preparing for the CleanTech Open, we have several other irons in the fire.  We are finalizing our patent license and engaging investors as we move along in the process.  We are also refining our intellectual property strategy.  Fresh from our trip to the LES conference in London, we were eager to put what we learned to good use.  Besides patents, there are several other forms of IP that we can develop and put to good use.  For example, we can develop trade secrets which may be more beneficial than patents.  Trade secrets, unlike patents, are not exposed to the public.  When a patent is filed the technology is open for review by the public.  Other IP that we plan on using our brands and trademarks.  As we learned in marketing, brands add value by forming a bond with consumers.  Consumers trust brands and are willing to pay extra for that sense of security.  These are just a few of the myriad of things that we have been busy working on the last few weeks.  Entrepreneurship is not all fun and games, it can be quite exhausting.