Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Eric Zeanah | American Accessories

Our final meeting of the semester was with Eric Zeanah at American Accessories located in the Bank of America building on Main Street. American Accessories is a company that provides manufacturing services to fortune 500 companies such as Uniroyal, Phillip Morris, & Johnson & Johnson. The company has one office here in Knoxville and another office in China employing a total of 28 people. Essentially what they do is take the burden of manufacturing away from these larger companies. When a company wants to run a new marketing campaign with a product, they may want special packaging or some kind of trinket to be included in the box. The large company calls up American Accessories and explains what they want, then Eric and his team find a manufacturing facility in China that is capable of delivering the product. American Accessories has strong relationships with around 100 different manufacturing facilities in China.
Eric is actually not the original founder of American Accessories, the company was founded by an Industrial Engineering professor from the University of Tennessee in 1960. Eric was a student of the professors in the early 1980's and was given a job evaluating time studies as an intern. After his summer internship ended he was asked to come on full time and finish his degree at night, he agreed. Eric moved up in the business eventually managing a whole division of the company, the only division that was profitable in the 1990's. The owner of the company asked Eric if he would be interested in taking over the entire company to try to turn things around. He said he would but under one condition, that the company would become his if he succeeded in turning it around. His old professor agreed to the deal and Eric became the president of American Accessories and eventually the owner. Eric takes a conservative approach to managing his business, his company grows based on their strengths. Eric has been visiting Asia for more than 25 years and even has a house in China where he lives while working over there. His statement to us was that China is probably the most capitalist country in the world, that is a pretty interesting but also scary thought. Eric's words of advice were to align yourself personally with the people you conduct business with. You can be friends with the people you do business with. He also told us that doing business in other parts of the world has become much easier in recent years because of the advancement in communication tools. His parting words to use were encouragement to always listen and take the time to be mentored by older and wiser people. And if you ever have a business be smart enough to hire people who are better than you.

Monday, April 26, 2010

Tony Buhl | EnergX

Tony Buhl started life in a holler in east Tennessee where no one had running water or electricity. He told us that no one he knew had ever even finished high school because they had to quit school to work on the farm. Tony was lucky enough to find a great teacher at school who really believed in him and his ability to excel. His teacher helped him get through high school and apply for college, he got into school at UT and received a scholarship. He decided to become a nuclear engineer. Tony finished his undergraduate degree and was able to continue on to graduate school where he worked on electronics for his PhD. After graduate school he and some friends decided to start a business selling some of the electrical instrumentation that they had developed while in school. Tony and his college buddies did a lot of business selling instrumentation to measure flow in nuclear power plants. Non of the employees had any business education so they drew straws and Tony ended up having to go back to school. He also spent a good bit of time in the military. He then help to found 3 other companies and became a senior executive at a large international company. He founded EnergX in 1997 as a service disabled veteran owned small business to contract with DOD and DOE for environmental management. Specifically EnergX specializes in decontamination and decomission of nuclear facilities. One of EnergX bigger projects was the complete dismantlement of a nuclear facility located just north of Denver Colorado. Tony's company has been declared one of the best environmental management by its certification as ISO 14001. Tony had some great words of advice for young entrepreneurs. He said that he believed in failing forward, " Experience doesn't come from doing great things it comes from learning from the things you don't do so well." Its human nature to resist change but young people who want to be successful should embrace change as opportunity. He parted us by quoting Henry Fords famous philosophy that "Whether you believe you can or you believe you can't, your right"


Dr. Barry Goss | Pro2Serve

After spring break we had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Barry Goss on campus here at the University of Tennessee. He is the founder of Pro2Serve, a company who's new headquarters is located on the campus of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Pro2Serve stands for Professional Projects Services Inc. Barry's company is a National Security Engineering company that has twice been named to the Inc. 500. They primarily do work for the DOE and the NSA but are planning to expand into the DOD and DHS. Barry started his career at SAIC a unique company where he was able to build his own business inside of its corporate framework. During that adventure Barry moved from the technical side of things into marketing where he began to analyze market trends in science and technology. He wanted to figure out how to get a half a step ahead of the market. The trend he saw was that the technical industry was moving away from employing engineers for a career and moving toward project based employment. This concept was not new, there were plenty of staffing companies in existence but these companies focused on low skill level jobs. Big companies were starting to bring in outside help to complete projects rather than hiring more people and keeping everything internal. When Barry realized the trend he decided to leave SAIC and start his own company. The way work was getting done was on a project basis, so Barry decided to start a staffing company that would provide technical expertise by project demand. During the formation of his company Barry and his team decided to include in their bylaws that the company would commit to giving back 10% of each years profits. At the end of the year 10% of the profits were set aside for distribution during the following year. Eventually Barry went out looking for investors, and he landed a 7 figure venture capital investment but not without some arguments about the companies commitment to give back. Dr. Goss was not a huge fan of venture capitalists and ended up buying the investors out to take back control of his company. Today Pro2Serve does government contract work within its four major business units: Core Engineering Design, Physical Systems Security, Environmental Management, & Nuclear Security. 75% of the employees at Pro2Serve hold high level government clearances. Barry's final words of wisdom were "never burn bridges" and "always give more than you receive".

Monday, April 19, 2010

Dr. Terry Douglas : Provision Foundation

On March 15th my classmates and I visited Dr Terry Douglas at his company, Provision Foundation, in Oak Ridge. Dr. Douglas was one of the founders of CTI, a company I have mentioned before where Joe Matteo also worked. CTI was a medical imaging company that developed PET scanners along with several other imaging technologies. CTI was acquired by SIEMENS for around $1Billion, leaving its founding members with substantial resources for their next adventures. Dr. Douglas began putting shares of CTI stock into a foundation in the late 1980's when the stock wasn't really worth anything. By the time SIEMENS bought the company and Dr. Douglas was free to do what he wanted the foundation had substantial resources which could be used to help people around the world. This was probably the most interesting visit we have made thus far, Dr. Douglas now spends his time and his money trying to make the world a better place. Provision Foundation provided the initial funding for Invisible Children, a grassroots movement to raise awareness about children in Uganda and Sudan who are stolen from their families and forced into becoming soldiers. Provision foundation has been working with local organizations and churches in Haiti for some years and recently when the earthquake struck team members from provision were on the ground within a few days to help out. Provision currently has a rotation program in Haiti, where volunteers will go stay for a few weeks and then be replaced by other volunteers. Provision is also in the healthcare business as part of its for profit division. The foundation is helping in the development of the East Tennessee Health Care Center which will house a state of the art imaging center. The Center will house a world class comprehensive cancer center, a proton therapy center where the most advanced form of cancer treatments will be administered. Provisions role in the development is to provide the start up capital and support, in return they will retain a minority share of ownership. Dr. Terry Douglas is getting older in age but he is still young at heart. When asked by a student about retirement he answered, "I want to die with my boots on".

Monday, March 29, 2010

Vig Sherrill : Aldis

On March 1 we visited Aldis in Oak Ridge. Aldis is Vig Sherrill's most recent venture. Aldis is seeking to improve traffic flow with control systems using fish eye cameras and vehicle recognition software. The Aldis system tracks vehicles and sends calls to traffic lights when vehicles approach intersections. It does this all through a camera which replaces the current in ground induction systems which fail and have to be replaced fairly often. Aldis is strictly a software company, they allow others to produce the hardware which their system runs on. This allows the company to take advantage of Moore's law; next year when faster processors come out Aldis does not have obsolete products, they just install their software on the new faster platform giving their product more functionality. The real problem with Aldis's business is that the end user is not the person who will pay for the technology. The end users will be drivers however the municipal government which maintains the traffic lights will be the decision maker on purchasing the product. There has to be some value in the product for the city governing offices. For this reason Aldis has built in the ability for the software to count every car that comes through an intersection over a given time period. Normally cities send workers out to intersections with clipboards to take samples of traffic numbers. With the Aldis system there will be no need to count with a clipboard, the data will also be much more accurate. This data can also be used to determine the best place to build new stores or community attractions. Aldis is a venture capital funded company not because they think they will make a ton of money selling camera's to put on every traffic light in the US, but because there will be substantial value in the data that is collected from those systems. Vig's memorable advice was "Don't start a company, you have to work really long hours, put in tons of effort, success chances are small, why would you do that? You would have to be crazy!"

Jeff Bohanan : Protomet Precision Manufacturing

On Feb 22 my class mates and I visited Jeff Bohanan at Protomet Precision Manufacturing. Protomet is a world class machine shop where lots of fancy and complex parts are manufactured for a variety of products. Jeff started his career at Y-12 nuclear weapons facility in Oak Ridge. After going through a 2 year rotation program at Y-12, Jeff decided he wanted to go out on his own and build a world class manufacturing company. He and a friend started a two man engineering consulting company. In the beginning the two did a lot of work back for Y-12, the employer they had left to start their company. This helped them stay afloat while they pursued other contracts. An opportunity came up to bid on a Mercedes contract to machine a part for their SUV's seat belt assembly. Only problem was that Jeff didn't have a machine shop. Mercedes needed 1 million parts over 5 years at a target price of $4. Jeff and his partner came up with a cost effective way to manufacture the parts and bid on the contract without disclosing that they didn't have the facilities to machine the parts. They got chosen for the contract and immediately bought and installed a machine to produce the parts. While their machine was being installed they contract manufactured with a few other shops to make prototypes. A week or so after Jeff had ordered his machine for building the parts, Mercedes called and said they had a new cheaper way of making the part and wouldn't need Jeff's help any longer. He was devastated, they had spent everything they had to buy the machine to make the parts. He negotiated with Mercedes to make some of the first parts while they were getting their new process up and running. It turned out that their new process didn't work quite like they thought and Jeff ended up making all 1 million of the parts over a 5 year period. Protomet Precision Manufacturing grew out of that experience. Today Protomet's two biggest industries are homeland security and wakeboard boat parts. They manufacture surveillance camera housings that can read license plates and automatically check them in a database in a fraction of a second. Protomet is also a major manufacturer of what Jeff calls "bling parts" for wakeboard boats. These are typically the polished aluminum logo plates and tower components that may house speakers or wakeboard racks. Jeff's real competitive advantage is his ability to design and help customers redesign things in a way that they can be manufactured cost effectively. He is a big proponent of setting goals and spoke highly of Brian Tracy and his leadership development philosophies. Jeff's final words of advice were the following: "You may think that technology will be your biggest difficulty in entrepreneurship, but people will most certainly be your biggest difficulty". He spoke a lot about how to hire good people and reward them for what they do. He said "The main thing is to have integrity in the process, be very honest and shoot strait with people"

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Mark Medley : Control Technology Incorporated

On February 15th we got a chance to visit Mark Medley at his company, Control Technology Incorporated. CTI, not to be confused with the CTI from last week, has been around for a while here in Knoxville. Mark Medley founded two companies in the 70's with a few college friends, one was called 1330 corp and focused on publishing magazines, the other was called computer concepts and was focused on building computer systems to automate manufacturing facilities. Mark worked with the Mayfield milk family to help automate their dairy production facilities with programmable logic controllers. In the 1980's Mark was interested in expanding the business beyond milk production so he decided to buy Mayfields part of Computer Concepts and take the company on his own. Initially Marks company was financed by borrowing money from family and friends and from the bank. Bank loans for start ups are pretty much impossible these days. CTI now makes custom circuit boards and PLC's that go into all kinds of products. CTI has a clean manufacturing facility and some state of the art equipment. It was pretty entertaining to sit and watch a robotic arm place different components on a circuit board. Once all the components are placed, the entire board is soldered at once to fix each component in place. CTI does specialized boards in orders of 50-500, not huge lots of production. This forces them to remain nimble in their operations and create competitive advantage through their customer service and adaptability.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Joe Matteo : MicroTypes


This week we got the chance to go visit Joe Matteo at his home in Walland, TN. He and his wife live in an amazing log cabin style home that sits on top of a hill. The glass wall in their living room frames out miles and miles of beautiful east Tennessee mountains. Joe spent his early career working on Defense Robotics but decided soon that he wanted to learn more about being an entrepreneur. While living in San Fransisco he was recruited by a Knoxville company called CTI to work on cyclotrons. To jump ahead in time, CTI is one of Knoxville's great success stories. They advanced medical imaging technology using PET scanners substantially and eventually ended up selling half the company for $1 Billion. Back to the story: Joe decided to take the opportunity because CTI was founded and run by a group of entrepreneurial thinking men. In the early days CTI primarily made products for researchers in radioactive drugs and medical imaging fields. The company was dedicated to interaction with customers and trying to understand their needs. They also relied on outside collaboration with larger companies or national laboratories to utilize facilities and resources without high fixed costs. Joe decided to step out on his own in 1994, that year he founded Matteo Automation & Robotics. He won two SBIR grants and was awarded two patents for the work he did in rapid prototyping with his first company. A short time later one of the founders of CTI decided to retire and asked Joe to come take over his position in the company. After some thought Joe agreed and put his company on the back burner. During his time as Division Director at CTI he gained a lot of skills which included rapid manufacturing, building facilities, executing contracts, sales and marketing, & business development. Joe was asked to head up the LA TechCenter, a research lab started by CTI to develop new technologies. Two new microfluidics technologies came out of that venture one of which CTI decided to pursue and the other of which Joe asked to take out and pursue on his own. The company that Joe started around this microfluidics technology was called NanoTek and they focused on glass based microchemistry. Over a period of 4 years Joe and his team at NanoTek were on track to launch their technology into the drug delivery market in the clinical world, for this they needed a distribution partner. The plan was to continue to develop the technology however a window of opportunity came when Advion a mass spec company offered to buy NanoTek. Joe and his partners decided to sell in Aug 2008. Joe moved to Ithica NY where Advion is headquartered to help transition the company. His main observation during this time was that innovation slowed substantially because they no longer had small business speed. The company also lost eligibility to receive more SBIR grants which reduced funding to R&D. Joe has since moved back home and started another business called MicroTypes.
His new company consults on rapid product development. Joe has a pretty amazing workshop in the basement of his house with CNC mills and vacuum molding equipment. He uses this stuff to help companies develop products quickly in order to find out what doesnt work, then learn from it and make something else that does work. Some of the key pieces of advice or key learns that I took away from our visit with Joe were that your value in a business sense doesn't necessarily come from the great things you have been able to accomplish but its is more about how you have persevered through the failures. He also said that everyone has great opportunities, the question is whether you know enough to recognize them and have enough guts to jump on them.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Chuck Witkowski : Protein Discovery


This past Monday night my classmates and I visited Chuck Witkowski at his company Protein Discovery on Gay St. Chuck is a young guy, 33, who started his company fresh out of graduate school in 2004. His initial funding and projects were based on government SBIR grants (Small Business Innovation Research). If you have never heard of SBIR grants you should look into it! Its an amazing program that just hands out free money to small businesses!!! Anyway, Protein Discovery is a life science tools company that makes instruments for scientific research, specifically Chuck's company makes tools to prepare samples for protein analysis. Protein analysis can be used to test for cancer, drugs, drug targets, things like that. Their main customers are academic researchers at universities and national labs as well as some industry researchers at bio tech and pharmaceutical companies.


Chuck's story seemed to really be all about determination and perseverance. During his last 6 months of graduate school he wrote 24 SBIR proposals to try and get funding to start his company. He was granted 2 of them and began work with another recent graduate and a researcher from ORNL to develop the technology he had licensed from the lab. After a while it became apparent that the technology just was not going to work like they had hoped so Chuck returned it to the lab and started from scratch trying to develop something new that would meet the market need they had identified. He was able to get a few more SBIR grants during that time. The company was struggling financially when they finally landed a venture capital deal out of Memphis. The same week that protein discovery finalized a deal with the venture capitalist firm Chucks partner decided to take a more stable job. Chuck thought for sure that the VC firm would back out of the deal but they didnt and he was able to continue work to develop his product. Chuck said the key to Protein Discoveries success was his ability to find and involve people who were smarter and experienced than he was. His management team consists of seasoned entrepreneurs who have grown similar companies. Protein Discoveries first product was called the passport system it was a machine that prepared samples for protein analysis using disposable cartridges. The price point of the product was high at around $50,000. The product did not take hold in the market place like Protein Discoveries Management had hoped and again the company was in trouble financially. Luckily the scientists at Protein Discovery had been working in the back room to develop a smaller and more affordable system. This machine is called the Gelfree. The new system costs around $15,000 and also has disposable cartridges. The business model for this product is similar to the famous HP printer model. The company makes very little on the initial purchase of the machine but receives recurring revenue from the continuous purchase of the sample cartridges. The new product was only recently released but seems to be having much more success in the marketplace. Protein Discovery has also recently been in conversations with a large company about potential partnership or acquisition.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Introduction

Hi, welcome to my blog! My name is Matt Trent and I am a graduate student studying mechanical engineering and business at The University of Tennessee. I am a wanna be entrepreneur and I set up this site to tell you about my journey. Over the next few months I will have a chance to meet and talk with several founders of technology based start ups in the Knoxville area. These are guys who have been really successful at taking an idea and turning it into something valuable. I will readily admit that there are no superstars like Steve Jobs or Dean Kamen on my list of visits but each of the people I will hear from and tell you about has done something amazing. They have each created something from nothing! I am hoping to learn from the mistakes and misfortunes as well as the triumphs of people who have already been through the entrepreneurial experience. I will be sharing what I learn here on this blog for you to read and gain insight from or to laugh at or do whatever you want with. Here is a list of some of the people you can expect to hear about in the coming weeks:

Dr. Lee Martin, iPix
Chuck Witkowski, PDI
Joe Matteo, MicroTypes
Mark Medley, CTI
Jeff Bohanan, Protomet
Bert Ackermann, Spinlab
Andrew Stephan, Material Innovations
Terry Douglas, Provision
Barry Goss, Pro2Serve
John Platallero, EventBooking
John Morris, Tech2020, NetLearning, Sunlight Direct
Vig Sherrill, Aldis
Tony Buell, EnergX LLC
Mike Carroll, MKTechnology

From time to time I may also write about books I am reading or other work I am doing. You may also find ramblings here about any of my wide ranging interests which may include architecture, design, product development, business strategy and maybe even some fun stuff like music, art, or new gadgets. My goal above all else is for this site to not be a complete waste of your time. Hope you Enjoy!