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.