Luminus Devices Founder and Chief Technology Officer Alexei Erchak (Part 5)

SM: Where were you doing your manufacturing? AE: We were able to support the type of volumes that Samsung needed for that initial launch in Massachusetts. We can do probably 50,000 parts per month in Massachusetts. In preparation for that market taking off, we had also established contract manufacturers in Asia and taught them the

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Luminus Devices Founder and Chief Technology Officer Alexei Erchak (Part 4)

SM: What is the price point of your product? AE: We had the same price as the lamps, and they were $100. We just added one light source per color. That is all it took to illuminate these large-screen televisions.

Luminus Devices Founder and Chief Technology Officer Alexei Erchak (Part 3)

SM: Where did you look for business opportunities once you realized traditional LED markets were not viable? AE: We got connected to InFocus, a projector company. They started talking to us about projection applications and rear-projection television in particular. They said that the lamps they were using in those applications did not last very long,

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Luminus Devices Founder and Chief Technology Officer Alexei Erchak (Part 2)

SM: You spent your time at MIT doing the theory and physics. When did it start to become a commercial thought? AE: In five years we really felt that we had an understanding of how these devices work and if there were a way to commercialize this technology or make it beneficial for the industry,

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Luminus Devices Founder and Chief Technology Officer Alexei Erchak (Part 1)

Alexei Erchak founded Luminus in 2002 after being awarded his PhD in materials sciences and engineering from MIT. There he designed and tested photonic lattice LED technology which has evolved into PhlatLight, the most powerful LED in the world. PhlatLight offers a 20,000-hour life span and high production volumes (low cost), which has been enticing

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The Montana Mogul: RightNow CEO Greg Gianforte (Part 7)

SM: In your opinion, what are some of the typical problems entrepreneurs have? GG: I think the biggest problem is they think they have to a perfect product before they can go to market. The reality is that learning does not start until you have some value proposition. When you go through the process of

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The Montana Mogul: RightNow CEO Greg Gianforte (Part 6)

SM: Have you taken any venture capital funding with RightNow, or has it been solely bootstrapped? GG: We raised about $27 million in 1999 and 2000. The first key is that our partners were really good. We also were a good size, we had about 160 people on board. We had a $6-million-a-year business and they

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The Montana Mogul: RightNow CEO Greg Gianforte (Part 5)

SM: Is there any particular market segment that you have targeted, or do you simply focus on companies by size? GG: We have about 1,800 clients who tend to be larger organizations. Over 60% of our business is with corporations that have over $1 billion in revenue. Some of our larger verticals are telecommunications, which accounts

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