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OVF is a non-profit organization providing entrepreneurs and growing ventures in Oklahoma access to capital and management development through education, networking and other resources. OVF’s membership is a diverse network...
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OVF is a non-profit organization providing entrepreneurs and growing ventures in Oklahoma access to capital and management development through education, networking and other resources. OVF’s membership is a diverse network of venture capital firms, private investors, banks, non-bank lenders, attorneys, accountants, business consultants, economic development representatives, universities, incubators and entrepreneurs committed to fostering new and existing business ventures and the commercialization of new ideas and technologies in Oklahoma.
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6 JAN 2021 · With a background in government and public affairs, Tom Robins is putting his political knowledge to help Oklahoma grow as a Top 10 place for IT. In the fall of 2019, Robins started the OITA, the Oklahoma Innovative Technology Alliance, to give Oklahoma IT companies a voice in the public policy process.
As part of his presentation for the Oklahoma Venture Forum Power Lunch, Robins will highlight the gist of their mission statement and how they educate policy members, members of the legislature, and others, the best way to create an environment for IT and technology in Oklahoma.
“We got organized at the end of this last year, and we’re really kicking things off in January,” said Robins. “We’re going to be doing a coffee and conversation with the Oklahoma legislators, with Oklahoma IT leaders. So I think that’ll be a great thing for investment, the investment community in Oklahoma, for OVF members, for people that are involved with businesses that have an IT innovative component that are either just starting or that are established, that want to network with other companies, but also want to start talking to policymakers about that.”
Robins’ main topic of his presentation will be on the autonomous vehicle side. As president of the consulting company, Solid Foundation Consulting, Robins helps build projects and coalitions around different issues. One of those he got tapped to lead was on behalf of the secretary of transportation, was to head the Oklahoma autonomous vehicle working group. The purpose of the group is to signal to the markets, signal to investments, and signal to people who are interested that Oklahoma is open for business when it comes to autonomous vehicle technology.
An example of the group’s earliest win they had was the issue on truck platooning. Similar to how flocks of birds drift off of each other to converse energy, the state of Oklahoma passed a bill that allowed for that technology with trucks.
Tom Robins, along with Jim Grimsley, will be speaking at the Oklahoma Venture Forum Power Lunch on Wednesday, January 13, 2021. Be sure to register for the online ZOOM event to learn more about how technology is shifting in Oklahoma, ask your questions, and network with entrepreneurs in Oklahoma.
https://ovf.org/
1 DEC 2020 · Before becoming an International Business Coach, Stacy Eads had been the CEO of a Norman technology company for over a decade when she fell in love with the book, Scaling Up by Verne Harnish.
For Eads’ presentation for December’s OVF power lunch, she will teach a tool that helps expedite decision-making processes during stressful times, especially with all of the pandemic’s pivots. The OODA Loop, which stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act, has helped her clientele make better designs during moments of fight or flight.
Eads said one of the things she loves about the tool is that the first step is to make sure that you observe that you’re observing facts only. She explained that when people are in a crisis mode, their emotions are at play or there is competing information, and they’re unsure which way to go.
Stacy Eads will be speaking at the Oklahoma Venture Forum Power Lunch on Wednesday, December 9, 2020. Be sure to register for the online ZOOM event to learn more about OODA, ask your questions, and network with entrepreneurs in Oklahoma.
“Many of them might’ve even heard of the OODA loop before, but maybe they have not put it into the perspective of how to use the OODA loop within the year 2020, and within the type of anxiety that CEOs are having these days,” Eads said. “The types of pivots that they’re making during this pandemic. So I’m excited to take an old concept that’s been around for decades and maybe breathe in some new life into what the year 2020 has to offer.”
OVF.org
4 NOV 2020 · As a smart truck and trailer movement leader, Drōv Technologies enables intelligent and safe technology in the transportation industry. They're developing the AirBoxOne, which controls tire inflation and deflation on the trailer dynamically based on the vehicle's load.
"As the trailer's loaded, it calculates the optimal tire pressure and adjust accordingly," explained Lisa Mullen, . "Then, in that same box, we have set an IoT gateway that will connect to sensor capabilities around the trailer. Everything from the door lock, GPS, accelerometer, refrigeration, temperature, wheel-end temperature, light out detection, camera, cargo sensing capabilities, just to name a few of the initial feature sets."
The benefits of the system include safety and financial ROI. There are fuel efficiency savings that come with standard tire inflation and management. In terms of safety, having correctly inflated and managed tires will prevent critical issues such as blowouts or leaks that lead to that.
"Our system can detect not only typical leaks like when you roll over something, but we can get down to valve stem leaks," Mullen said. "And diagnose situations that could ultimately, if left undiagnosed, become bigger problems for the fleet."
In addition to leak issues, AirBoxOne can diagnose if bearings are heating up or if the temperature on wheel ends are getting to a critical level and prevent wheel end fires. The system can alert the driver and the fleet of those issues to avoid situations that might occur if it gets to a critical level.
Mullen's involvement with Drōv Technologies started when a group of investors and business partners bought the company when it was just a mechanical tire inflation product. During evaluations, they made the bold decision to take all of the previous products off the market and re-engineer the wheel-end componentry.
"While we did that, we took a look at the market and said, 'There's all this money going into technology and the truck, and there's no technology or very little going into the trailer,'" Mullen said. "In addition to that, we had the notion of inflating and deflating on load, but we had a prototype we hadn't flushed that out. With what was not happening in the market for the trailer side but what was happening on the truck, we thought let's make this more of a technology solution. We've spent the last few years building out a comprehensive technology solution that can lead the trailer industry from now into the future."
Mullen is excited about Drōv's position to continue developing the future of trailer technology.
Lisa Mullen will be speaking at the Oklahoma Venture Forum Power Lunch on Wednesday, November 11, 2020. Be sure to register below for the online ZOOM event to learn more about DROV, ask your questions, and connect with other entrepreneurs in Oklahoma. https://ovf.org/
12 OCT 2020 · For over 30 years, the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology (OCAST) has been the state’s agency for technology development, technology transfer, and technology commercialization. With Governor Kevin Stitt’s goal to make Oklahoma a Top 10 state, OCAST is doing its part through partnerships and collaborations to stimulate economic development and technology-based economic development.
“We help to get science and technology projects, support those through our grant process and elevate Oklahoma’s science and technology community so that we’re competitive nationally as well as globally,” explained OCAST’s Executive Director, Michael Carolina. “We have some leading-edge researchers and research companies that benefit from OCAST’s grants, and they’re able to attract federal grants as well as private money from the private sector to accelerate research to commercialization or conversion; the conversion of technology to the marketplace.”
With the task to grow and diversify Oklahoma’s economy, Carolina described his job as atypical. Before joining OCAST, he worked in management and executive positions with the Western Electric Company, AT&T and Lucent Technologies. While with AT&T and Lucent Technologies, he was involved in engineering, strategic planning, new product design and introduction, manufacturing, technology transfer, and joint venture operations in Europe, Asia and Latin America.
“I think in Oklahoma, we have an asset base here that’s pretty rich. Again, with our higher education system, with our industrial complex that includes energy and includes aerospace and defense, bio-science, biotechnology, information technology, manufacturing, healthcare,” Carolina said. “The healthcare industry is growing, and so I think there are a lot of things that we can point to that are strengths in a global economy.”
One example of OCAST’s success stories, which Carolina plans to discuss during his presentation for OVF, is the work of Craig Shimasaki at Moleculera Labs.
“[Moleculera Labs] is doing some work now on the impact of COVID or the correlation of COVID and brain health and mental health,” Carolina said. “That’s a real success story. Craig Shimasaki was able to take an OCAST grant and leverage that with federal dollars as well as private investment to move the autism spectrum along. Hopefully, we’ll have some effective treatments for it.”
From research to pre-seed dollars to seed capital dollars to manufacturing through intern partnerships, OCAST is developing the local talent base Oklahoma needs to go forward and keep the state from losing engineering STEM talent.
“If we have the kind of industrial base that’s attractive to our graduates when they leave our higher education system, they’re more likely to stay in the state because they have jobs in their specific areas of study,” explained Carolina. “We can organically grow our own businesses from scratch. And that's basically our task as OCAST, to help businesses grow organically.”
For Oklahoma to be top 10 in more areas, Carolina said it would require some strategic investment. By taking advantage of our geography, educational assets at the university level, industrial base, and the pioneer spirit of Oklahoma’s citizens, he believes we can make a difference and make Oklahoma relevant and competitive on a national and international scale.
“It requires working with our politicians, our legislature, the governor, and his team saying, how do we coalesce those assets, so that Oklahoma becomes not a Silicon Valley, but we can become a technology corridor,” Carolina said.
Michael Carolina will be speaking at the Oklahoma Venture Forum Power Lunch on Wednesday, October 14, 2020. Be sure to register for the online ZOOM event to learn more about OCAST, ask your questions, and network with entrepreneurs in Oklahoma. As a member, he encourages others to join the community and help with new ideas. He is looking to addressing the OVF and having some dialogue about where people think we should go next. https://ovf.org/
7 SEP 2020 · September 2020 Virtual Power Lunch Guest Speaker David Jankowsky, President of Francis Renewable Energy. With origins in the solar-power industry, David Jankowsky saw a problem in the electric vehicle market. With billions going into EV technology, Jankowsky noticed little of that funding was going towards infrastructure. While Tesla Motors may have popularized the electric car and built their superchargers, they’re all closed source.
“We know there’s literally going to be hundreds of car manufacturers in the next five, ten years coming out with electric vehicles, and they would not be able to use the Tesla superchargers, so we solved that problem,” said Jankowsky.“We developed and installed universal chargers, so any car in the world can use them, including Tesla drivers. We solved the range-anxiety issue, meaning no one’s going to buy a car if there’s no infrastructure to fuel them if they’re away from their home.”
The Francis EV Charging Network solved range anxiety in Oklahoma by having a charging station every 50 miles. One could travel from Broken Bow to Guymon in their electric car. Jankowsky notes that one may have to drive 10 to 20 miles out of the way to access a charger because they currently don’t have enough in Oklahoma. The first phase of the network features 225 fast-charging stations across 109 strategically located sites in Oklahoma, including small towns.
The Oklahoma Venture Forum offers a combination of peer-to-peer conversation, Pitch Presentations of viable business scenarios (not just potential) and Success Stories. OVF promotes the economic development of Oklahoma. OVF.org
18 AUG 2020 · KItt Letcher, CEO of the Better Business Bureau of Central Oklahoma details her appreciation for the efforts of OVF to provide exceptional value for BBB as the Most Promising New Business Award sponsor during changes in the annual VOTY/MPNB event forced by COVID-19 in 2020.
The 2020 finalists for Most Promising New Business, presented by the Better Business Bureau of Central Oklahoma, included Galvanic Energy and Canopy Weather, LLC. Galvanic Energy addresses economic and technical barriers to create an abundant domestic supply of raw materials for alternative-energy future. Canopy Weather identifies roof condition and damage within 1 hour of hailstorms by using innovation within the data science and AI required to create the original dataset.
The Oklahoma Venture Forum annual awards event was developed to recognize the achievements of successful Oklahoma companies. These awards encourage and identify the importance of entrepreneurship in our state. Each of the recipients is an outstanding Oklahoma success story with a bright future.
The Better Business Bureau of Central Oklahoma’s mission is to be the leader in advancing marketplace trust.
• Setting standards for marketplace trust
• Encouraging and supporting best practices by engaging with and educating consumers and businesses
• Celebrating marketplace role models
• Calling out and addressing substandard marketplace behavior
• Creating a community of trustworthy businesses and charities
Oklahoma Venture Forum is the oldest organization of its kind. The organization was founded in 1987 and will continue to be the champion for small business ventures and economic development by connecting and recognizing venture talents in Oklahoma for many years to come.
Since its beginning, the Oklahoma Venture Forum has been the preeminent Oklahoma organization promoting the formation of venture capital and development of entrepreneurship.
BBB sees trust as a function of two primary factors – integrity and performance. Integrity includes respect, ethics and intent. Performance speaks to a business’s track record of delivering results in accordance with BBB standards and/or addressing customer concerns in a timely, satisfactory manner.
We foster new and existing business ventures in Oklahoma through monthly Power Lunches, OVF After Hours and annual recognition awards. Our diverse membership includes investors, entrepreneurs and service providers from across Oklahoma representing the wide array of business interests in our state. OVF programs create awareness of business opportunities and trends and offer purposeful networking for leaders of commerce. https://ovf.org/
8 APR 2020 · What started with “poor decisions and lots of circumstances,” COOP Ale Works has grown into a company with a $20 million expansion plan at the former 45th Infantry Armory. Despite feeling like an outsider in the brewing community from not being a brewer himself, Daniel Mercer, CEO of Coop Ale Works, sees positives in his business-focused skill set.
“Once you get into the core of it, we ’re taking this brewery model, and we ’re expanding it and adding other new businesses to our model that put us right back in the same boat that we were in 10, 12 years ago,” Mercer explained. “We ’re getting into the hotel business or we ’re getting into this culinary business that involves a taproom in a restaurant and a speakeasy and all these event support spaces that have culinary features and a pool club, bar. Banks have been interested but not receptive to the total deal structure and scale. It ’s a large deal, and when you take a package to a bank that says you ’re going to spend $36 million over 20 months, including the money we ’ve already spent over the past couple of years in development, it becomes a scenario where virtually every bank is casting doubt, and then your solution, there, is to try to find alternative methods to finance your deal.”
“We spend a lot of time talking about diversifying industry in Oklahoma, and a lot of that talk is around, either, high-impact or high-level concept industries,” Mercer said. “Whether it ’s biomedical research or autoimmune disease treatment or mechanical devices... things centered around the oil and gas industry that may be new technologies and hardware technologies. But there are also plenty of other industries that just aren't ’t near as sexy, frankly. And I think, in Oklahoma in particular, we ’ve done a great job of focusing on the resources that we have. Particularly around the OU Health Science Center, around the oil and gas base that exists here and all the new technologies that have sprung out of that industry over the past, say, 20 years.”
https://coopaleworks.com/
17 MAR 2020 · As young Liz Charles traveled the world, she noticed a pattern: “People would tease my mom and they wouldn’t let her speak. So I saw her own personal fight with trying to have her space and equal opportunity. Both my parents were pastors and missionaries, but my mom got shot down because she was a woman.” Now Liz is in Oklahoma, and she is continuing the fight for women’s rights in her position as Executive Director of the Oklahoma Women’s Coalition,
The coalition’s mission is “to champion the collective power of Oklahomans to advance gender equity and justice.” Underscoring this mission are two key initiatives: Pay transparency legislation and a pipeline to politics. “There’s a lot of mania around the topic of pay transparency,” says Liz Charles, who is eager to clarify the language of two bills being considered by Oklahoma House Committees. One of the bills seeks to raise fines charged for violations against the Equal Pay Act. “These fines haven’t been raised since the Act became law in 1963,” says Charles. “Though we aren’t asking for numbers in line with inflation, we are asking for a bit of an increase for employers who discriminate against women.”
The Coalition is championing another piece of legislation that falls along the same lines. “We want folks to be allowed to inquire, through proper, established channels, about the salary ranges at their workplace. Right now, asking someone with your same experience and education about their salary can get you fired. So we are working on a bill that would allow for more transparent conversations.” And it takes many conversations to get to that level of transparency. “We’ve introduced these bills during the last four legislative sessions,” says Liz Charles, “and there have been amendments along the way.” In contrast to a legislative process that may take years and conclude with an unexpected outcome, the annual Pipeline to Politics Conference delivers every time. “It’s a win-win,” declares Charles, “because every woman who attends leaves with an understanding of local-level politics. The conference is for any woman of any age who is interested in public service. The speakers are from all levels of government, from school board members to legislators.”
Not surprisingly, the conversations at this one-day conference are very transparent. Topics include how to campaign for yourself, what to do when you win, what to do you when you lose, and how to campaign for another candidate. The full circle conversations are the best. Says the Executive Director, “It’s awesome when former attendees decide to run for office, get elected, and then come back as conference speakers. I think this belief in equality has always been ingrained in me,” she says. “Women deserve a face and we deserve to have influence and positions of leadership because of our experiences matter and our voice matters. There are people who need to hear from us. People need to put women in those positions so those little girls can see women doing things we think only men can do. Because you can’t be what you can’t see.” Interviewed by Dennis Spielman for The Golding Group.
17 MAR 2020 · Our March 2020 Pitch Presentation comes from Donna Miller with Purse Power.
It's never too late to live your dream. Our dream is to make a difference for women. A few years ago the three Babcock sisters (Donna Miller, Dr. Karen Nern and Dr. Phyllis (Freddi) Pennington) were on vacation in Miami. We were discussing our frustration with the lack of women in senior leadership positions and the 1 out of 4 women impacted by domestic violence and/or sexual assault. Our mother was a brilliant, beautiful nursing professor, author and activist who was also a survivor. All three of us have MBAs and two are medical doctors. Our mother raised us to be strong, independent women. Her battle cry was “To whom much is given, much is expected.” We have all taken this to heart and want to make a difference in this world.
Even though women make between 73-85% of all purchasing decisions, have trillions of dollars in spending power, control 51% of the private wealth and make or influence 67% of investment decisions, we hold less than 5% of the CEO jobs and around 21% of the board seats. The gap between our spending power and our representation in senior leadership is indefensible particularly since research has proven that companies perform better when there are more women in leadership roles.
When we began to discuss what could be done to drive positive change, we realized that the power was already in women’s hands. If we could get women to use their enormous economic power to buy from companies that actively create opportunities for women, we could shatter glass ceilings in a matter of quarters rather than decades. If we could also use a portion of the proceeds to create a funding stream that supported battered women’s shelters and programs that keep women safer, we could make this world a better place for all of us. Purse Power was born.
Purse Power is now working to become the primary source to find and buy from women-owned and women-led companies in the United States. We dream of playing a part in creating a day when our daughters, granddaughters, sons and grandsons can achieve their dreams irrespective of gender. https://www.pursepower.com/
Interviewed by Dennis Spielman for The Golding Group.
19 FEB 2020 · Jeff Price has an extensive background in game design, electronic media, interactive communications, and graphic design. Teaching at Oklahoma City University, Jeff draws from 20+ years of experience as an Associate Professor of Gaming and Animation at Sam Houston State University and Oklahoma State University, Assistant Professor of Interactive Design at Virginia Commonwealth University, and his experience as the owner of Price Media Group. Jeff 's experience in the design and development of websites and web-based communications, as well as interactive multimedia and CD-ROM projects, led him to launch Price Media Group in 2000. As principal of PMG, Price has won several industry awards in video, animation, interactive, and print design.
At VCU, Jeff was the director of the Advanced Visualization Lab, focusing on the delivery of traditional and 3d computer animation and virtual reality applications. He has worked for multi-service design and advertising agencies and has developed print design, signage, logos, and a/v presentations.
Jeff's students have gone on to work at industry giants such as Dreamworks, Sony Imageworks, Digital Domain, ID Software, Imaginary Forces, Magnet Interactive, Organic, Blur, Midway Games, and Big Idea.
OVF is a non-profit organization providing entrepreneurs and growing ventures in Oklahoma access to capital and management development through education, networking and other resources. OVF’s membership is a diverse network...
show more
OVF is a non-profit organization providing entrepreneurs and growing ventures in Oklahoma access to capital and management development through education, networking and other resources. OVF’s membership is a diverse network of venture capital firms, private investors, banks, non-bank lenders, attorneys, accountants, business consultants, economic development representatives, universities, incubators and entrepreneurs committed to fostering new and existing business ventures and the commercialization of new ideas and technologies in Oklahoma.
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| Author | Oklahoma Venture Forum |
| Organization | Oklahoma Venture Forum |
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