For one night at least, Southwest Washington was the place where business dreams came to life.
Earlier this month, representatives from three innovative Southwest Washington startup firms met at PubTalk in downtown Vancouver, competing for recognition and filling the minds of about 90 attendees with visions of DNA collectors, online databases and robotics – as well as the promise of hefty investment returns.
And accordingly, the three companies presented bullish projections about future revenue growth, all in the hopes of getting the capital they needed to get their dreams fully off the ground.
Organized by local business organizations, including the Southwest Washington Workforce Development Council, the Columbia River Economic Development Council and the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network, PubTalk gave companies the opportunity to make pitches as well as gather feedback from a business-centered audience to strengthen their product presentations.
One of the presenters at the PubTalk's Pitch Night on April 21 was Dr. Paul Slowey, CEO of Vancouver-based Oasis Diagnostics, who was looking for investors to inject $750,000 into his business.
Founded in 2007, Oasis develops products intended to take the pain out of diagnostic testing and to keep down the high costs of blood testing for diseases, substances and even the genetic makeup of patients, according to Slowey.
For Oasis, the problem of pain and cost of many diagnostic tests in hospitals, clinics and doctor's offices is solved by taking saliva samples rather than blood. Their DNA-SAL device looks like a toothbrush with no bristles and scrubs the inside of a mouth for 30 seconds to collect enough cells for an accurate DNA sample, according to Slowey.
As part of their pitch, Oasis projected revenue topping $36.3 million in five years.
Oasis is also planning on launching a saliva test which looks for genetic markers of diseases like cancers, tuberculosis and diabetes, displaying results much like a pregnancy test, in real time.
Also at the event was Michelle Platter, founder of web startup Shapingenvironments.com. Platter plans on creating an online business platform for the 2.8 million professionals she says are serving the "built" environment across the U.S., including those working as real estate and development consultants.
"While technology has improved our access to information, it has also provided so much information that businesses have a hard time sifting through all of the data to find exactly what they need," Platter said.
Her online network will provide a place for industry consultants to find other specialists, 90 percent of whom do not advertise, according to Platter. Fees will be reinvested into the company and for member advertising, she said, adding that users of the website will be kept abreast of industry trends through newsletters, articles and up-to-date information.
"What LinkedIn does for business people, we do for companies," Platter said, referring to the popular social networking website.
Platter was seeking $500,000 in investment to get her business off the ground. By 2012, she expected her startup's revenue to land just under $8 million.
In the end, the winning pitch at PubTalk came courtesy of Chuck Nokes of REDpoint International, Inc.
REDpoint also won Innovator of the Year at this week's 6th Annual VBJ Business Growth Awards for a year brimming with new ideas, including the Versatilt – a robotic wheelchair lift that has quickly become a growth engine for the two-year-old Vancouver-based business, according to vice president Valerie Vance.
"The continuing success of the Versatilt allows us to push other areas of interest," Vance said.
According to Vance, healthcare professionals are seven times as likely to injure themselves as construction workers since they lift over a ton of weight transferring patients from wheelchairs. The Versatilt lifts and tilts wheelchairs, giving caregivers better access to patients.
Also in development at REDpoint is the company's IV sleeve, which prevents chest tubes, feeding tubes and catheters from becoming dislodged – a problem which occurs to 11 percent of patients, according to a study conducted by the Veteran's Administration.
Vance said complications from these failures result in over 30,000 deaths per year and consume as much as 43 minutes per day of every hospital nurse's shift.
REDpoint also plans to market the Stethosafe, a device which quickly sterilizes stethoscopes between uses. Another VA study found that upwards of 80 percent of doctors didn't clean them between uses, a large contributor to hospital acquired infections.
Company projects led RED-point to increase its revenue projections from $650,000 this year to $18.8 million in 2012.
"Our ability to stay intuitive is why we are still here and our bank isn't," Vance said. "That is how we – and anyone – will prosper in this economy."
