 Interview By Elyse Ball
“Dream Big. I am 60-year-old inventor who sold and launched a product in the middle of a pandemic,” says Jamie Peltz, Founder and CEO of Dirty Laundry. Perseverance and positivity are major themes for Jamie, whose startup that takes the hassle out of laundry with its patented Forget Me Spot® stain pretreatment patch. Jamie recently shared her story with UARF's Elyse Ball, highlighting how she fought through setbacks before and during 2021 to launch her product in Meijer stores across the Midwest. Tell me a little bit about your background. Jamie: I’m a problem solver. After 17 years of working for a corporation, I found myself unemployed in 2007. I saw this as an opportunity to follow my dream to become an entrepreneur. It was a simple vision: I wanted to create a company where I could work with my friends doing the things we like to do. Over the years this foundation evolved to creating opportunities for people I know and people I continue to meet. Forget Me Spot is the second product to launch after successfully launching SureSwatch Temporary Paint Swatches to The Home Depot and Ace Hardware.
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Written By Nick Glavan  UARF is preparing for the first I-Corps cohort of the year. While the application is quite short, there are a few pivotal items that we look for in a stellar applicant. For this week’s blog, I wanted to highlight three ways applicants can stand out and show us that they are ready for the 7-week customer discovery program.
 Written By: Elyse Ball The first few weeks of 2022 have been invigorating for some and agonizing for others. 2022 promises to be the kind of year that yet again reminds us that there isn’t and probably never has been a “new normal,” that there are innumerable parts of the status quo that can benefit from being shaken up, and that creative people working together can accomplish extraordinary things. It’s also the kind of year that forces us to think not just about what we do, but why we do. For UARF, our North Star has always been to generate value for creators, innovators, researchers, and problem-solvers through quality entrepreneurship programs and startup support services. In 2022, we’re putting some specific goals and numbers to that aim.
Our goals are:
What does this mean for you?  By Nick Glavan
Every cohort of I-Corps, we assign the participating teams a worksheet to help them think through their overall market opportunity. We ask them, “If every person who experiences the problem you are trying to solve bought your product or service, how much money would they collectively spend?” This is just one way to think about how big an opportunity a startup business has in their industry. Here are a few common tips I share with early-stage founders taking their first crack at deciding what number is right for them: There is no one right answer! No matter how hard you try, there is no exact way to determine how much your future business revenue will be. It will always involve some form of guesswork or assumptions, so don’t stress yourself searching and searching for the one right answer. There are quite a few acceptable estimations. Most reviewers and advisors acknowledge there is some level of uncertainty in determining these numbers, so no need to panic. Share your rationale in making your assumptions. Because there isn’t a singular right answer, you will want to explain how you arrived at your number. If the explanation makes sense, the numeric values will too. Many reviewers are more interested in seeing how you got to the market size number than the actual number itself. If you used sound assumptions that seem logical in determining your total, addressable, and target market values, you will convey that you as the business leader can make sensible decisions in other aspects of the business. On the other hand, if you are giving overly optimistic or unsupported rationales, you may appear too out-of-touch with the realities of your market.  Interviewed by Faye Nicholson
Tell me about yourself. Barry: I graduated from Northwestern University with a Ph.D. in chemical engineering. I went to work for Exxon Chemical and spent my entire career for Exxon in the elastomers business including technology, manufacturing, and business management. I lived in Europe for six years. My final assignment with Exxon was bringing Advanced Elastomer Systems to Akron. One of the proud moments of that assignment was to rehab the BFGoodrich rubber plant. We helped to revitalize downtown Akron on South Main Street. I retired from Exxon Chemical and went to work for OMNOVA Solutions. I was the director of corporate technology and, the technology vice president for OMNOVA Solutions for about seven or eight years. How did you get involved with UARF? By Elyse Ball
All throughout startup land we throw around the term “minimum viable product” or “MVP.” The term is meant to signify a simpler, uglier version of a product that customers will still buy. But for perfectionists like me (and many of the engineers I know), it’s hard to commit to making a product that is categorically less than the best we can do. Why would we show customers a product that is only 50% of what it could be when we’re pre-wired to want to give our customers 110%? It turns out there are a few good reasons:
 By Darius Sharpless
So, you made an invention. Great! But, how do you protect it? What do you need to get a patent? What is “prior art”? This article should help answer these questions. First, let’s get a few patent basics out of the way. Patents protect new and inventive products and processes by giving the inventor or patent holder the right to prevent others from making, using, selling, or importing a patented invention for a period of about 20 years. In order to obtain a patent, the inventor must prove that the idea contained in the patent is: By Elyse Ball  This past month has been a series of weird watershed moments for me. For the first time in 15 months, I went out to eat at a restaurant, attended a large group gathering, spent time indoors with people who aren’t immediate family members, and stayed overnight at a hotel.
Two years ago, it would have been inconceivable that we would spend so much of our lives maintaining physical distance from other human beings. Today, it has become commonplace. For me, I-Corps has been a fascinating case study in how we can build community and customer relationships even in remote settings. I-Corps is all about customer discovery: the practice of interacting directly with prospective customers to answer important questions about a business, product or technology idea. By Nick Glavan  For me, rewards aren’t always a consciously labeled treat. In times past, I would reward myself for a week’s job well done by setting up a social gathering with friends or planning to attend a musical over the weekend. Sometimes it was something small like watching a YouTube video or snagging a Reese’s peanut butter cup from the freezer (a life-changing hack). However, amidst the hustle to assimilate to pandemic work and life procedures, I recently realized I had put on hold this vital reward-granting process. I know myself to be susceptible to the psychological principles of reinforcement. Most of us can recall the famous experiment of Pavlov’s dog. In the experiment, Pavlov uses classical conditioning to make the dog automatically salivate at the sound of bell. To train the dog to do this, Pavlov would ring the bell anytime the dog was fed. After enough conditioning, the dog no longer needed to be fed to salivate, and would salivate just by hearing the bell. Possibly inspired by the prank Jim Halpert pulls on Dwight in the classic The Office scene, I figured I could trick myself into more useful behaviors beyond salivation. In reality, what I ended up doing was closer to operant conditioning. The main difference was that I wanted to train myself by linking special treats with voluntary behavior, rather than instinctual ones like salivating. It’s the same principle that my parents used in potty training and my teachers used reinforcing classroom rules. Just now, I am applying it to adult life.
Here are a few things I learned about reinforcing my own productivity: By Anna Radachy  How much free time do you have this week? There are 168 hours in a week, but once you factor out work, school, eating, sleeping, errands, housework, commute, and maybe a hundred other things it seems like you have no time at all. Perhaps you, like me, are trying to find some extra time in the day, but there always seems to be something more important that has to be done.
It can be easy in today’s “hustle” culture to fall into the habit of always being busy, with many, many things. Today’s America moves fast, and you are expected to move faster in your job and life, so how do you find time to do what you want? |
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