Dave, it's great to see you again. >> Great to see you too. >> Thanks for agreeing to, to talk about technology commercialization. >> Yes. >> You're a phenomenal bookmark, perfect bookmark for this course because you've taken some technologies, commercialized them inside corporations as well as in startup companies. And that's what our audience wants to do. They want to, they want to do what you've done. So could you just say a few words, tell them a little about what you've done, your current endeavour? >> All right so the current company is Vnomics and we are a spin off from some technology that was developed at Rochester Institute of Technology. The technology was developed for, the military originally. Or by the military to, give better feel for what's happening on a vehicle. Basically it monitors the vehicle, it, it looks into the future to tell what might be happening next with the vehicle. And it, allows us to understand how to optimize a path between where you are today and where you will be tomorrow. So with that we can do some pretty significant optimization of, of fleet operations. >> How many, just give us some of your statistics. How old are you, how many employees? So the company was founded in 2008, so we are now six years old. And we've grown from being myself to now almost 60 employees. >> So, can you share anything about sales? You're already selling product for a while. You, do you have any public sales information or, or you break even,. >> We being a private company, we're not disclosing all of that yet. But what I can say is that we've had pretty good acceptance in the marketplace. We've have a number of very large fleets that, that have adopted our product and are seeing real value out of it. And really aren't afraid to talk about that and that of course, leads to additional sales. And really, we're in a point of really just trying to get the word out and get everybody aware of what we can actually provide for, for the, for fleets within the industry, so. >> So congratulations on all that. Really want to do a little memory lane retrospective. >> Mm-hm. >> And, and come on back to the wow guy. So because again, the audience, and the course here is really focused on this fuzzy front end here. Where somebody, business development folks watching, engineers that think they want to start a company, engineers that want to go into business development. So we've got entrepreneurs watching different folks but they're overall saying I want to start a company or new business unit and I want it to be based on some kind of technology. We're mainly focusing on hard science type technologies which take quite a while to prove out. >> Yeah. >> So, just want to rewind you back to here. This is you. >> Yes. >> And I want to ask you a couple of question, first of all, personality wise. Why do you do this? Why do you want to do this? >> that, that's a really good question that I'm not sure that I really have an answer for, but but what it really comes down to is I have the ability to connect technology to applications, or, or to use technology to solve people's problems. And, and that's really the point that we're at with this, with this product is, as I said, the technology was developed by the time that I got involved with it. But it really needed to be commercialized, or it needed to be connected to people's problems. So I, I have an ability to understand where value proposition can be created from technology. And, and basically you know, that leads me kind of constantly looking at things saying. Oh, here's an opportunity because there's this technology can solve this person's problem and, and they'd be willing to pay us for that. So. >> So you're a, a market problem technology research connector. >> Yeah. Exactly. >> Now which came first, just in your history. Were you wow guy by yourself figuring out what to do? Or was wow guy also pretty much early on linked with the university research and some of these other, to become partners? >> No, I would say that I was probably more of the wow guy. [LAUGH] The technology that was developed, they had some applications in mind. But as we went through the process of screening and filtering what we found was that the original idea or the original thought for the application of, of the technology or, or a product that would spin out of that technology. Probably wasn't going to pass all the tests for what we want to do to get to the other end of the picture here, so. >> And back in those early days another question. First of all how long were, were you by yourself, or with others that were not being paid, it was an informal precede team, or, you, you, was that weeks or months, about? >> It was roughly six months. >> Six months? >> We spent about, or I spent about six months, really trying to thicken the idea. Go through and, and figure out exactly what this is going to look like. What developing the business plan. You have to spend a lot of time developing your business plan. The more you put into that upfront the better off you'll be in the long run. Like I said, you really want to try and create a playbook that you can, use to stay focussed on, on what you're, what you're trying to develop. So. >> What, what kind of drivers were really important to you to want to do this? I know you said maybe you don't know how to answer, but- >> Yeah. >> Just probe a little more on your personality type or. >> The, the so the first thing that I'll say is, it's not just my personality, it's also, the, my partners, my investment investors so on and so forth. Their personality. For Venomics, a lot of the inspiration that came from the people who created it was not just to solve problems in the world. But, but it was developed at the Galisano Institute for Sustainabilities so people were concerned about sustainability and, and improving the environment and that kind of thing. So we were looking for an application of the technology that, that would help the environment. At the same time having the university involved, they were interested in trying to show that they can take technology that was developed on campus and have it commercialized. Some of my investors are very focused on trying to grow a business in Rochester. So you have all those different types of personalities that, that are forming into what the company is. And where, I share a lot of those same thoughts and ideals. but, you know, oftentimes you have to kind of go along with, with the return that you're trying to provide for your investors. >> You mentioned some key drivers almost from a personality, we call in this course, an innovation creed. >> Yeah. >> And people don't often call it that, I don't know, did you? Did you do any of that purposefully, and did you have any names for it like Innovation Creed or anything like that? >> no, I mean, not any specific names or anything like that. But but certainly it's embedded in you, and as you're thinking about really solving people's problems. >> What were a couple of early on factors or elements in idea filtering that were some of the most important ones? Three or four of the most important ones. >> If you go a little further back on the picture you know it's pain here. People are willing to pay you to solve their pain. And that's what it really comes down to is, is we create a solution that, that solves a person's problem. And if you can create enough value in doing that, then they'll be willing to pay you for it. And that, that's really probably the most important part here. Is to make sure that you're connected on that, that end user. But not only to solve the problem but solve it in a really big way. So for an example, with our system we typically save most fleets about $250 a month on fuel. It's a pretty big number. We charge, probably closer to 50 to $60 a month. So there's an incredible ROI. Typically our product pays for itself in about three months which, which kind of makes a no brainer. Why wouldn't any fleet or why wouldn't every fleet just accept this. Well there's a lot of other hurdles that you come across going down the way here. Its not as simple as just having a great ROI but, but I can tell you that if you have a real, solution to somebody's problem and it solves it in a big way, it makes it much easier to, to go forward, so. Yeah, you're, you're always trying to balance the, the value that you provide to the customer versus the effort it takes to provide that value. And obviously what you're trying to do is find the opportunities where you create a lot of value with very little effort on your part. So that's part of how we screen and filter, not just looking at the value that you provide to the end customer, but what's it going to take you to provide that value? How much how much does it cost to provide that type of a service? [CROSSTALK] Yeah, how quickly you can get the market is, is how fast to revenue you can be because by definition is the start of your. Generally not making money at the beginning. You're generally consuming money. So you want to minimize that time that it takes to do that. So, you're trying to find, the, the, the particular application that allows you to, to make revenue as quickly as possible. With the least amount of, investment into that. In, in trying to balance that, basically. Really large markets, where, if you get, very small market share, you'll be successful and the other people, the current incumbents won't even notice that you're there, so. >> So how about some of the factors early on that you knew were important, but, in the early stages, you said we'll deal with those later. We don't want to get into it too much now. >> I, I always tell people one of the advantages of a startup is that you're incredibly nimble. So as you get new information, you can, you can change course very quickly. That's a blessing, and it's a curse. You have to kind of pick what you, you, do a good analysis. But pick a particular thing and work very hard to stay focused on that, because it's so easy to, to go off to, on other paths. That you may just end up kind of spinning in circles rather than trying to accomplish what you're trying to do, which is to grow.
