Start-ups:
PowerBeam
PowerBeam is one of the most technologically advanced companies I have ever had the pleasure of working with. The company has developed a way to transmit electricity without wires – yes, that’s correct, wireless electricity – and it is certainly the future to the consumer electronics industry. As the Senior Manager of Sales and Marketing, my main responsibilities are driving revenue through sales of Demo Kits or Customize Prototyping agreements and Marketing efforts both online and offline. However, one can imagine that in a start-up, one wears many hats and indeed I wear quit a few.
On the Sales side, I successfully sold Demo Kits to the largest Consumer Electronics, Battery, Telco, and Industrial companies in the world. Within the 1st quarter of our Demo Kit sales program, I achieved a revenue goal that was 2X of the expected goal of the company. Additionally, I sold several Customized Prototyping agreements at the CTO level to large, international corporations that sale multiple consumer electronics products worldwide.
On the Marketing side, my initial task was to conduct Market Research to discover the “beachhead” products. Since all things electronic require electricity, this process took up a huge amount of time. I began my Exploratory Research by contacting and discussing our technology with over 500 companies worldwide, created relationships with Fortune 100 companies that were targeted to be the first companies and led a team which wrote a comprehensive Exploratory Research Report valued at $20K. The resulting efforts determined three initial products which have driven our technology roadmap.
Concurrently, a major project was to create a website that communicated clearly, provided enough detail to understand a new and complicated technology, integrated SEO principals, Google Adwords, and competed well with our competitor’s websites and not to mention…all on a shoe string budget. In conjunction with our graphic designer and other team members, we created a website that was highly praised and was launched just in time for the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show. We even created an animated video where I performed the voiceover. I wrote the entire content for the website. Please click here to visit the website.
Public Relations is vital to a start-up and can make or break a company in its early stages. With that in mind, I offered to do some free PR work for David, Founder and CEO of PowerBeam – just because I was really impressed with the technology. I was able to get Dean Takahashi from The Mercury News to write a cover story on PowerBeam and sure enough, it was printed on April 21st, 2007. The investor who led the Seed Round read the article; contacted David and they closed the round in early August of 2007. I joined the team as PowerBeam’s Marketing Specialist on August 20th, 2007.
I also ran the Public Relations campaign we launched prior to CES 2009 which led to a flurry of press both at the show and post CES. I was responsible for negotiating the contract with the PR Firm – Bob Gold and Associates – and creating and managing all the messages that were communicated. We were covered by such outlets as The Economist, CNBC, ABC, and even the Italian and Brazilian National TV networks. Please click here to see a complete list of press.
Other responsibilities included prospecting, qualifying , creating, and pitching sales presentations to high-level decision makers within these Fortune 100 companies, creating marketing collateral, engaging in public speaking opportunities and making strategic and vital decision which had affected the direction of the company.
Global Educational Program (GEP)
As a student at San Jose State University (SJSU), I was very fortunate to be awarded a free trip to China in the summer of 2005 through a scholars program called the Global Technology Initiative which was sponsored by the College of Engineering at SJSU. The objective of the trip was to visit companies in Taiwan, Beijing, and Shanghai to learn about the international business environment. This was by far the best trip I have ever taken and I was inspired to seek international opportunities.
Shortly after I returned to the States, I realized how world renown the Silicon Valley was and thought there may be a business opportunity to bring foreign groups to the Bay Area for company tours. So, upon entering my senior year in college, I decided to form a team and write a business plan around the concept. After winning several awards that year, one being the SVCE-SJSU Business Plan Competition, we decided to launch the company in the summer of 2006.
As the co-founder and President, it was my responsibility to build the entire organization from the ground up. I was the major driver behind GEP and played a hand in every aspect of the business. I cold called and prospected potential clients, pitched these prospects, and closed our first trip within the first 3 months of operations. In addition to this, I was also responsible for all original marketing material, led the creation and development of the website, created a vast Rolodex of Silicon Valley contacts from large Fortune 500 companies to start-ups to government officials, established strategic and long-term partnership both locally and globally, managed all of the company’s finances and eventually hired contractors for trip management and operations while trips were in the Silicon Valley.
GEP is one of the most respected and well-known organizations for developing and managing professional study tours with an emphasis on business development in the Silicon Valley. GEP has a solid base of customers that return for annual and semi-annual trips, a network of approximately 3,000 contacts within Silicon Valley and beyond that support such trips and has seen growth for three consecutive years.
In March of 2010, GEP was successfully acquired by Explora International for approximately 3X its annual profit margin. We went from zero to exit in about 3 and a half years. This was an great achievement for both me and my business partner and we were quite happy with the acquisition.
Phastcash.com
During the fall of 2001, I was eighteen years old when I had just started school at Bryant College in Rhode Island and had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with my life. Then, I got paid $50 to smoke a cigarette at Brown University as part of a clinical trial they were conducting and realized that recruiting for such studies is painfully hard for medical institutions.Since college students like easy moneI figured connecting the two would have some type of value and viola, the concept for phastcash.com was born.
I spent the second half of my freshman year writing the business plan with a group from my Business 101 course and launched the company in the fall of my sophomore year. We were able to get some great press coming out of the gate, and had the opportunity to appears on the cover of the Providence Business Journal. Wee even got our first client within 45 days of launching. With a serious approach, we continued to work hard on this business right from our dorm rooms. Even though the company was a success, at the end of the day, it became a side project and classes were our first priority. . However, even running it on a part-time base, we were able to acquire such customers as Brown University, C.N.S. Research and The Allergy and Asthma Center of Providence. We shut it down about a year after launching because two partners had graduated and I wanted to move to the Silicon Valley.
As the co-founder and President, it was my responsibility to oversee the entire organization. However, I did focus most of my efforts on Sales, Marketing, and Human Resources. I must say, the biggest lesson I learned from this company is how to be a leader. We had four partners and we ended up replacing one of them about half way through the life of the company and to this day I attribute his resignation as a result of poor leadership on my part. I spent a great deal of time reading books on leadership and good management principals but nothing can replace firsthand experience. Some other firsthand experiences are only obtainable through starting your own company which was prospecting, closing and managing clients, gorilla marketing tactics, marketing to the college niche and handling the finances of a small company.