Happy Valentine's Day!

Well it's been a little over a month since my last entry.  Quite a bit has happened since then.  I'll give you a cycleWood update first.

We went up to our research lab in Dayton and put together a plan for moving forward.  We had laid the groundwork in the months prior and with the help of our lignin adviser we have refined that plan and have a solid path forward.  Basically it boils down to more testing.  That's probably all I can say about that at this point.

February is going to be a busy travel month for Kevin and I.  We're headed down to New Orleans tomorrow for the Informex trade show.  It's one of the chemical industry's largest shows.  Next week we are headed down to Little Rock and Dallas.

Now the exciting news.  We've been selected as a finalist for the Edison Awards.  This quite an honor.  Some of the other finalists are Kraft, GE Healthcare, Proctor&Gamble, Nissan, Ford, and OnStar.  So you can see we are in good company.

Now lets get to some Walton College news.  This years incoming class is the largest class ever at 46.  I got a chance to meet some of them during orientation and they seem excited and full of energy.  We'll see what their demeanor is around midterms.  The Spring Social is Thursday at the Powerhouse.  I believe it starts at 6pm.  If you're interested in getting an MBA, even a little, you should show up.  Unfortunately I won't be there since we'll be in New Orleans.  It's always a good time.

As always, I'll try to post more frequently, but the trend for the past few months have been one post a month.  Maybe I'll try to double that this month.  We shall see. Until then....

Happy Valentine's Day!    

Happy New Year!

It's a new year and time for a new post.  Let's take a moment and reflect on 2011.  I graduated from the Walton College, Graduate School of Business.  cycleWood Solutions started as an entrepreneurship class project and became a VC funded start-up.  It was a good year.  The momentum needs to continue through 2012.  cycleWood still has plenty of hurdles to overcome as head towards an official product launch.  Kevin Oden and I have been working hard at it and have quite a few folks pulling for us to succeed.  Our families, friends, and significant others have been patiently cheering us on and supporting us.  We have a couple big milestones coming up in the next few months.  I'll keep you abreast of these happenings as we approach these significant events.

Now let's switch back to the Walton College of Business.  I had the pleasure of meeting this year's incoming class this past Monday.  It's a record breaking class, the largest class in the history of the Walton MBA program.  There are 46 students in this class.  That's over 35% more than my graduating class.  This is a smart, diverse, and motivated group of students.  I'm sure they are anxiously awaiting the first day of class.

In sports and entertainment news, the Arkansas Razorback football team finished the season with a Cotton Bowl Win and a #5 ranking.  Not too shabby.  That provides the team with some momentum going into next season.  Last night I had the opportunity to go see the Blue Man Group at the Walton Arts Center.  They put on quite a show.  It was very entertaining.  I'd recommend anyone to go see them.

The weather has been great so far this winter, unless you love snow.  Today was actually the first day we've seen snow this winter and it was just a light dusting.  It is cold and windy outside though, wind chills are in the teens.  It's supposed to warm back up in the next few days.  If this is all the snow we see this winter it won't bother me much.  I do like to see some snow though.  Maybe we'll get a few inches later this month or in February.

That's about it for now.  Again, I'll try to post more often, but no promises.  Good luck to the incoming class of Walton MBA candidates!

What's Going On?

Well it's been over a month since my last post.  It's been a busy month.  cycleWood is officially funded.  The ink has dried and money is in the bank.  We are moving along with the scaling of our process.  Last week we created the our first film sample literally in my garage.  It's pretty exciting.  We were in Dallas this past week giving a talk at TEDxSMU.  Pree, our chief marketing officer, delivered a very compelling talk.  I think we opened a few eyes in the audience.

This week we have a visitor in from the UK.  He's one of our mentors.  We met him while we were in Winnipeg last year.  We met up in Little Rock and had a short chat with the Secretary of State.

These are exciting times for us.  There are times when things don't move as fast as we would like and there are times when we have trouble catching our breath.  We've learned to take it all in stride and that's all part of being an entrepreneur.  I will try to post more frequently again, but again no promises.  Merry Christmas to all and to all... well that depends on when you're reading this.

Time Flies

Well here I go again, it's been almost a month since my last post. I gotta get better at this. It's been a busy month. cycleWood has been traveling around getting funding. The good news is we could be very close. We've started working with our research lab to scale up our process. It's exciting stuff.

This past week we met up with our "The Ol' Adviser." I think that's a new nickname for her, Dr. Carol Reeves. We met up to do a video for the entrepreneurship program. Some of the other teams from years past were also present; Silicon Solar Solutions, Biologics MD, Tears for Life, and Merchant View. It was great seeing everyone again. These are the folks that helped us get off the ground. Lots of great advice.

We are also preparing for our trip out to San Jose in a couple weeks for the finals of the CleanTech Open. Silicon Solar Solutions will also be along for the ride. Hopefully one of us can bring home the big prize.

In other news, Halloween was this weekend so Sarah and I decided to dress up as Lego Minifigures. We were a hit at the party we went to and won the best costume contest.

A good time was had by all. A couple of my old classmates were also at the party. It's always good to catch up with friends.

The Hogs keep winning somehow. Hopefully they'll break out of their funk this week against South Carolina. The games are definitely entertaining so I'm not complaining as long as we end up on top.

I will try to do a better job of posting but no promises.

It's Been Over a Month

So my blogging has been less frequent of late.  I do apologize, it has been a busy month.  cycleWood has officially obtained the exclusive license for our technology from the University of Minnesota.  We've also converted to a Delaware C-Corp.  We'll remain in Arkansas for the near future though.  We'll see what happens long-term.  We've also moved into a little office space at the Genesis Building in the University of Arkansas Research Center.  We've been fairly busy to say the least.

We just returned from Austin last week where we placed 1st in the Clean Tech Open South-Central region.  Silicon Solar Solutions, another Arkansas-based start-up, placed 2nd.  We'll be headed back out to San Jose to compete in the Clean Tech National competition.

We are currently working with our research lab to scale up the process, so we are moving right along.  We are also working on getting funding and hope to have a deal in place soon.  We are excited and anxious at the same time.

I will try to blog more frequently, but there may be periods of less frequent blogging. 

It's Been a Month

I can't believe it's been a month since my last post.  Time flies when you're busy.  A good bit has happened since my last post.  cycleWood has been moving right along.  The last few months have been a learning experience in negotiating.  While I would love to share the details, it will be a bit before I can fully disclose all the goings-ons.  There is still plenty of work in front of us.  We'll be doing some development work in the next few months.

We've been putting our MBA education to good use too.  All that finance, accounting, and logistics actually comes in handy in the real world.  We've been managing all the financials for our lil start-up ourselves up to this point.  At some point we will need someone else to support those efforts, but until what we learned at Walton serves us well.  On the logistics side we've been looking at different ways to optimize our supply chain.  All that stuff Dr. Hofer taught us turns out to be rather useful.  We think about what service level we want to have and pooling our risk and also modes of transit.  I think the EOQ model has been etched into my brain.

These are exciting times for cycleWood.  I constantly have this feeling of nervous anxiousness.  I wonder what will be around the next corner.

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.