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"Some entrepreneur ventures turn you inside out".
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BOGO for Billions
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I am interested today in green tech – that is the catch phrase that connotes entrepreneurial investment in technologies that will reduce our dependence on foreign oil, improve global warming and generally make our country more environmentally responsible since we have finally realized that we cannot treat this planet as our personal garbage can for the next 100 years without significant adverse repercussions.
And today I want to call your attention to one man who made something small, simple and wonderful, and with it, changed the lives of thousands of very poor people in Fugnido, Ethiopia and ultimately all over Africa. It is the small steps that each of us take that will ultimately triumph over the largest problems.
As you know I have my little LED company and we recently spun out a small solar company that uses the novel material science that we have developed. So, I am keenly interested in things solar.
Well, here is the story that warms and, yes, lights up my heart…
Meet Mark Bent, entrepreneur and visionary, who literally is lighting the way. Mark is a Houston oil man, former marine and navy pilot, and former U.S. diplomat. His website is bogolight.com; “bogo” stands for buy one, get one. It is a simple concept, if you buy one of his solar powered flashlights for $25, he will send a second solar flashlight free to the villages in Africa, where indeed they have lots and lots of sunshine and very little electricity. (An efficient solar cell really rocks their world).
His mission statement: “to provide light to people in developing countries using the latest scientific advances in solar technology…”
How he does it: you buy one, he gives a second one free to a non-profit that distributes it to the developing world.
Marketing: the internet. You cannot buy the lights in any store; they can only be bought on the website…no bricks, no mortar, no Costco, no Wal-mart.
The technology can recharge three AAA batteries for use up to 1000 nights before the batteries wear out. The batteries costs 80 cents and it was developed in conjunction with the Department of Energy, several American universities, and even NASA got in the act.
Mark Bent has worked with major corporate benefactors – Exxon and Mobil (each gave $50,000). For sure there is some irony there, but we will leave that for the political commentators. Together they have distributed over 30,000 flashlights to United Nations refugee camps, African aid charities and directly in the country.
Listen to Mark’s words….
“If you are an environmentalist, you think about it in terms of discarded batteries, and coal and kerosene smoke. If you are a feminist, you think of it in terms of security for women, and preventing sexual abuse and violence. If you are an educator, you think about it in terms of helping children and adults study at night.”
To that I would add a thought from the Jewish prayer book….there is a prayer that says “light is the symbol of the divine in man…”
Bent invested $250,000 and with solar technology and powerful LEDs, he is now in the process of changing the world.
Think about what it would be like if we did not have light at night – it is a luxury we take for granted. Here is the crusher number --- 2 billion people on this planet do not have affordable access to light. Big number, big market. Take heed, entrenauts, solar is going to rock the world.
And finally do not forget Tom Friedman’s, The World is Flat. Where are the flashlights manufactured? China, of course.
And so we come to Baby Billionaire Rule # 39 which honors my favorite song writer, Bob Dylan, who once said, “The times they are a changin’.”
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Lighting and LEDing the Way
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As you know, from time to time, the BABY revisits one of our favorite segments….the “I wish I’d thought of that idea” idea… and today we are going to visit two of them.
First, let’s take a look at the Transport……the Transport is an egg-shaped fiberglass vessel – think cocoon – outfitted with speakers and soft LED lights. The inventor, Alberto Frias, calls it a “perceptual pod.”
Frias, an architect by training who lives in Las Vegas, had his spiritual epiphany in the New Mexico desert where he saw the light. It was a hot sunny day, the sun was beating down on Alberto, and he saw the light…..not exactly a UFO, but he says, he was in a trance.
If you ask me, he was suffering from a bit of sun stroke….
The Transport does not take you anywhere in real time…it is like a bean bag with a plywood floor….but it does transport you into a virtual world of bright LED lights synchronized to music.
Still – the reason I am down with this crazy domed shell is that it uses LED lights…and my little chip company, Quanlight makes LED lights. So bring it on, Alberto.
The Transport is like the 2007 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I say that if people want their pods to come with cushions, sub woofers and a waterbed ….and they use LED lights as well….then I’m there for you baby!
The drawback is you can’t get any work done in the pod. You crawl into it through a hole in the top dome…..sort of like entering a submarine….and then you zen out.
The first buyer was a couple from Florida…$12,000 dollars for a chance to be transported to nowhere-ville. But what do you expect from Floridians? They’re retired and most of them have been in the sun too long anyway.
Frias says his target markets are hotels and spas, especially in Las Vegas where after dropping a big wad at the table, you can enter the Transport and remember that you do not take a hit on 17.
Why does everyone seem to want to return to the womb? What ever happened to facing reality – as opposed to hiding from it?
I have another “idea” idea today – and lo and behold this one involves LED lights also. This “idea” idea is actually pretty clever. It is a padlock – named appropriately the “G.L.O.” (glow), made by Master Lock, the world’s oldest lock company. Master Lock was founded in 1921 by inventor Harry Soref and today they dominate almost 70% of the basic padlock and dead bolt market.
Their idea is brilliant in its simplicity. The G.L.O. is a combination padlock--the kind that kids have used to lock their lockers at school for the past 50 years--except that the rim of the lock is convex and beveled so you can spin it with one hand…great if you are carrying books or holding hands with your girlfriend.
And when you spin the dial, the LEDs inside light up and you can see the numbers more easily. It is easy to see in the dark, so you do not need to carry a flashlight to unlock the gate on the back 40.
And 30% of Master Lock’s retail sales are provided by students.
Master Lock listened to their customers and combined two disparate technologies--the desire to open a locker with one hand and the desire to have a bright LED light so you can see the numbers more easily – just like a cellphone key pad.
The G.L.O. is Master Lock’s answer to the iPod. It goes to show that great design triumphs cost. The G.L.O. sells for twice what the standard padlock sells for and they are currently sold out.
Now if Master Lock can figure out how to get a small screen into the lock, then the student can download videos while he is putting his books away. And, if I get lucky, my little LED company, Quanlight, might have two new markets…transport pods and padlocks. Maybe I can spin this into an increase in pre-money valuation for the next financing round.
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Innovative Dreams...and Disasters
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As you know the BABY celebrates innovation in all its various manifestations and today we feature once again the “I wish I’d thought of that idea” Idea. And today, we focus on a few of these…..
First, the box--or more specifically, the steel container box—you know the cargo container that is about 40 feet long and 8.5 feet high with a pair of doors at one end and wooden floor….sort of like a truck trailer without wheels.
The container box ranks with the telephone and the jet plane in the way it has transformed business and productivity. It was 50 years ago in April 1956 that this idea sprung forth when a converted oil tanker ship set sail from Newark, NJ to Houston laden with 58 converted truck bodies filled with cargo….never before had such a voyage taken place. The story of the container cargo box is detailed in a book by Marc Levinson, called what else… “the box.”
What the BABY loves about this story is the idea is so blessedly simple….it is not high tech, it is not biotech, it is not ethanol or solar or string theory….it is simply an idea that met a need and changed the world.
And the simple change was this. Prior to the box, it was brute strength of the dockworkers to unload a ship. With the advent of the box and a crane it became horsepower not manpower…..today it takes about 15 hours to unload 886 containers; prior to the box, it took 2 weeks. Productivity is dramatically increased and so it goes.
There was only one downside – what we call “unintended consequences.” Now that we have about 15 million containers coming in and out of approximately 72 ports every year -- and subsequent to 9-11 – we have the interesting problem of trying to know what is in each of them; opening each one by hand and looking inside is not the answer.
So the next big thing – the “idea” idea – will be a way to monitor the cargo container industry with a wireless sensor network. But in the meantime, be thankful because the shipping cost of your $2500 flat screen is less than $14 because of ----- the box.
The second “I wish I’d thought of that idea” Idea is a picture of a pair of eyes. At Newcastle University there is a coffee station which operates on the honor system and the woman running the station began to notice that there was less and less honor among more and more thieves (i.e. she was losing her shirt on the coffee program).
Everyone knows about the coffee jar and the honor system…..Fortune 100 companies have almost gone bankrupt on the losses in this department.
This woman was a Fortune 23,000 so she could not afford to hire another person to watch the coffee drinkers, but she instinctively understood basic human psychology. If no one is watching, the tendency is to try to get away with murder…or at least a free cup of coffee.
So she installed a pair of eyes… just a photograph of a pair of eyes, sort of her version of Bogie’s in Casablanca “Here’s looking at you kid…..” and she found out that three times as much money was collected as before.
So what can I say, – the “eyes” have it.
Now the question is, would this work on real criminals? Imagine a bank where the vault is protected by a pair of eyes.
And finally a different take on human nature. It seems that the New York Marriott Marquis has installed an elevator without buttons…..it cost $11 million and it figures out where you want to go and who wants to go there and you don’t have to push any floor buttons. As a matter of fact, it is not that you don’t have to….it is that you can’t ….there are no buttons in the elevator.
You push a keypad next to the elevator before you get in…..and the elevator does the rest. It tells you which elevator in the bank to get into and it takes you there at its own damn good speed. It even factors in weight and the capacity of the car.
Bottom line: people hate it. They may have to scrap it, because people want to get into an elevator and push the button for the floor they want. They do not trust the Miconic 10 (that’s the name of the gizmo) to really know when and where to take them. People basically like control and they like the sense of control they get when they make the simple demand by pushing the button…..effectively telling the elevator, “Take me where I want to go – now!”
It has been an unmitigated disaster. People don’t know what elevator to get into and some customers riding up and down for days, even weeks, unable to get off on any floor. I mean, what if you tell it floor 9 and when you get into the elevator, you change your mind? No luck.
This is the classic example of too much technology and not enough understanding of human behavior. The BABY and the rest of you…we like to push the buttons. It is a clear feeling of power --- of man’s mind over machine.
Our coffee lady put out a $3 photograph of a pair of eyes….and the boys at Marriott spent $11 million convinced they could change human behavior.
Which leads to Baby Billionaire Rule # 26: Sometimes low-tech is all the tech you need…..
And Rule # 27: Human behavior has evolved – in spite of what George Bush thinks – over the past 6,000 years. Don’t build a product that depends for its success on changing it – unless, of course, it is called iPod.
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A dying wish...designer coffins
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The second idea of the week….a truly entrepreneurial product inspired by the death of a loved one…..
Let’s meet one Andreas Spiegel, who lives in Cologne, Germany--- well, Andreas’ father died in 2000 and when the son went looking for a coffin he was disappointed to find that there were no contemporary designs…..coffins have been pretty much the same for the last 4-5 thousand years…..
Andreas’ own words: “I did not feel there was anything appropriate for my father who was a design- and art- loving guy.”
Wood and metal have been the basic materials of choice for coffins – but they do not lend themselves to more adventurous shapes……think of a kayak instead of a rectangular box…..there was no swoop in the coffins of the past…..
So Andreas took an irrefutably large market ------- everyone dies --- and married it to a contemporary design and voila --- he created the cocoon……a semi void – invasion of the body snatchers pod, with appropriate psychological invocations to life and death and rebirth – and made it out of a natural resin so that it would decompose in 10 – 15 years…..you know dust to dust etc…..
And thus an entrepreneurial adventure was born…….
And so once again Baby celebrates the brainstorm, the stroke of lightning, the epiphany, the clear vision --- which as so often is the case springs from a real world problem that someone is trying to solve…..
Dad would not be happy in the old pine box…..so have you got something from Roche Bobois or design within reach…...
From a business perspective the leap of faith the entrepreneur makes at this point is that the solution for one will translate into the solution for many…...
So far the jury is out….
Andreas has sold about 100 of them…mostly in Germany… they cost approximately 3500 dollars and you can get one from his website – www.uono.de. Unfortunately getting one to the United States takes 3 weeks, so you need to do a bit of advance planning here in anticipation of a death…..
But that is merely a minor problem for the supply chain management gurus…...
You gotta love it --- finally high style has come to the funeral business….
Live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse – and in this case, a really beautiful coffin…..
BB – that brings us to Baby’s billionaire rule 82 --- just because it’s a business that people are dying to get into – doesn’t necessarily mean that you will have a lot of paying customers…
I’m Neil Senturia and if I’m going to roll over in my grave, this is definitely the way to do it…..
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Caffeine cuts the fat
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I’m there for you baby scours the world looking for the I wish I had thought of that idea idea……
First up is Palmer’s cellulite reducing caffeinated panty hose…..yes, you too can have thinner thighs in seven days by wrapping your legs in saturated coffee caffeine panty hose……
The panty hose is impregnated with caffeine and your body heat activates the fabric ----
Ssure enough, it seems that caffeine works well on the appearance of cellulite…..the product’s sole distributor is www.tightsplease.com in England……the price – 50 bucks for 3 pairs…..I wonder if the decaffeinated version makes your thighs bigger……
So there you have it -- one more nail in the coffin of people’s desire to get good benefits without any effort….
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