Month: March 2014

Well, I had expected things to accelerate this month and they certainly have. I’ve been on the road the last two weeks investigating potential markets, exploring potential partnerships, and laying the groundwork for opening our first office. The range of stuff I’ve been dealing with extends from determining who our first customer and market will be to figuring out how to get our initial employees health insurance.

On the partnership side, we have met with a paper company that is interested in exploring the technical and business aspects of embedding our RFID inlays in their product. They have an end customer who is interested as well and who will participate in this activity. The purpose of the initial work will be to determine the cost and manufacturing implications of integrating our inlays into their papermaking process, to identify any technical challenges that will require attention, and to assess the benefits that will accrue to the end customer.

We’ve also encountered an opportunity to embed our inlays in synthetic paper. This is a material that has the appearance of paper yet is made from a petroleum or silica-based resin. It tends to be more durable and water-resistant than paper and is used in many applications such as various types of cards, product packaging, and labels. Going in this direction would present a different set of technical challenges and markets relative to embedding our inlays in paper. It may be that both the paper and synthetic paper integration options present attractive paths forward but we will likely need to choose just one on which to focus initially.

With Doug Crane now on board we have accelerated our engagement with parties in various end markets.  This is helping us better understand users’ needs and expectations, the attributes of existing solutions, the alternatives customers are exploring, and the benefits our technology can bring.  As a result, we’ve been able to cross off a few markets from our list of candidates as we seek to determine our initial focus area.

Lastly, I spent last week in Fargo catching up with my co-founder, interviewing an engineer that will likely be our first hire, starting the work of finding office space and health insurance, and working on the various other details associated with bringing on our initial employees. This type of stuff is new for me, but there is nothing overly complex about it.  It’s just a matter of allocating time to learn about these things and doing them. Many a first-time founder-CEO has gone through this before.

Our first hire will begin at the start of May and we will bring on a second engineer at the start of June. Once these people are in place, Uniqarta will start to feel like a real company!  Now we just need to complete the work of determining our product/market focus so that we can properly tailor these engineers’ work on that target.

While the search (for a business model) that I wrote about last time continues, we have made progress on some other fronts. First, and most significant, is the addition of a new team member. I had written back in December and January about our need for greater expertise in the areas of paper manufacturing and paper markets.  I am pleased to have found the ideal person to help in these areas and that he is joining our team as our VP, Business Development. Doug Crane is a former executive of Crane & Co.—the prestigious manufacturer of currency and security paper.  In his thirty years at Crane, Doug held a variety of technical and business roles which makes him a perfect fit for our needs. Looking ahead, Doug will help us greatly in exploring potential markets, developing paper manufacturer partnerships, and scaling the process by which we’ll embed our inlays within paper.

On a related note, we have also begun to search for the first addition to our technical team. This is for a process development engineer to work with our founder Val Marinov in Fargo.  Val and this first hire will form the start of our core development team.  On my next trip to Fargo later this month I’ll starting looking for office space and hopefully start screening a few candidates.

Also, I have been in negotiations over the past few months with North Dakota State University’s technology licensing office for rights to the ultra-thin chip assembly process that Val had developed.  I’m pleased to note that we have agreed on a term sheet and will be closing on a license this month.

To address the costs associated with the above activities, we have just closed on a Friends and Family financing round. This has brought in a modest amount of money that will help defray our initial licensing and employee expenses.  We will need to supplement this with a Seed round by the end of 2014.

Lastly, for those of you who may have visited our web site and found not much there, we have recently expanded it to include a bit more information about what we do, our technology, our team, and the position we are seeking to fill.

That’s a quick rundown for now.  With Doug on board I expect our efforts to explore potential markets and further our paper integration process to accelerate.  We have a series of engagements on both fronts planned for the balance of this month.