SM: What happened when you came out to Silicon Valley to raise money? XD: We were successful because we showed the venture capitalists that the company, for free, built a production line for the university using grant money. In essence, we had already proven our ability to succeed once, and I had the same team
SM: A $2.9 million grant sounds like real money. What was the project? XD: It was to build a hydrogen generation system using solar. At that time fuel cells were very hot. Of course, a fuel cell needs fuel, which happens to be hydrogen.
SM: Awareness of alternative and renewable energy before 2003 was much lower than it is today. It started picking up on a global scale in 2003-2004. Getting grants instead of venture funding seems like a good route to have gone in that particular timeframe. XD: It was good, although it was pretty tough to get
SM: When you went to the university, you essentially went to carry on type of work you had been doing at ECD? XD: I learned business and operations savvy at ECD. As soon as I arrived at the university I quickly built my team and developed the ability to make high efficiency solar cells.
SM: Tell me where your journey begins. Where are you from and how did you end up at the University of Toledo? XD: I was born in Nanchang, China in 1963. I grew up there and went to college at the University of Science and Technology of China. In China we have a nationwide college
SM: How will all of the political drama affect visibility of healthcare IT? Will it just result in the government’s funneling money into things that do not have an impact? JB: We have been hard at work bringing about the death of the old-fashioned software companies that dominate healthcare IT. Their business models and companies
SM: Do you plan to implement technologies like knowledge bases, automated web self services, and other similar systems? JB: Bingo. The first thing you do in healthcare is solve existing problems. Once you have the solution implemented, then you can start asking how to improve the solution, and you do that on your own time.
SM: Last year you were a $140 million company, correct? JB: Correct. The fourth quarter’s revenue rate was 47% higher than the fourth quarter of the year prior. You can imagine things are continuing to grow.