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<< Start Me Up home
by Michael Matesic
So recalled Steve Fleck, chief technology officer and co-founder of Clear Count Medical Solutions, the North Shore-based startup that recently won FDA approval for its patented technology that keeps track of materials – mostly sponges – used during surgery that have a way of remaining inside patients unless carefully inventoried.
Fleck’s lament, or challenge, depending on your entrepreneurial bent, is an all-to-common one among those hoping to become successful in business based on a great, can’t-miss, sure-thing idea. Reality tells us, though, that it takes a lot more than a great idea to become a successful commercialized product. It takes time, effort, a willingness to admit you may not be the smartest person in the room when it comes to setting up and running a business, salesmanship, enormous resolve, and lots and lots of money.
Fortunately for technology entrepreneurs in this region, numerous resources exist to help a great idea evolve into a product that customers will want to pay money to own. One of the most notable can be found on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University, under the auspices of Dr. Art Boni who directs the Donald H. Jones Center for Entrepreneurship at the Tepper School of Business.
“We have a number of courses and programs directed toward technology commercialization and business development,” Boni said. “Students have opportunities to commercialize technology and start companies independent of whether it was their idea or not, because ideas that can be successfully commercialized are hard to come by.”
Under the CMU program, entrepreneurs go through a process of evaluating the opportunity, identifying the resources needed, developing a business model and strategy, and putting together a team to carry it forward. Most of the instructors and mentors include people who have started and run their own successful companies, so the program runs on practicality, not theory. The entrepreneurial program touches students not only in the Tepper School of Business, but also the schools of engineering, computer science, the Entertainment Technology Center, the Heinz School of Public Policy, the engineering school, and a number of other centers from all over campus.
The CMU entrepreneurial program spins out roughly three to four companies a year that are ready for seed funding, according to Boni, which may not sound like a lot to the layman, but is actually an amazing record of entrepreneurial performance.
“There’s a lot more to it than having the great idea,” Boni explained. “Technology is necessary but not sufficient. You need the right business model, the right team, and the right marketing strategy. There can be no value without being customer centric. That’s a hard lesson for anybody, and especially technology-driven people.”
Back at Clear Count, Fleck describes the evolution of the company from its CMU roots as full of twists and turns, accidental meetings and opportunistic action, product development and clinical testing, bartering and begging, tough negotiation and even the occasional heartbreak. The germ of the idea came as part of a classroom assignment while Fleck was earning his MBA at CMU in 2004. Over the next three years, he and his partners cultivated that seed as it evolved into a business plan, then through the trials of product development and refinement, seeking funding and counsel from regional business experts and venture capitalists, taking the tough medicine of real-life testing and subsequent retooling, to the point today where Clear Count stands ready to compete in the medical device marketplace and win.
And the secret? It’s that through it all, the concept they started with remained strong, workable, and ultimately able to be commercialized. And that’s the happy ending every entrepreneur hopes to write.
Start Me Up appears bi-monthly in the print edition of TEQ Magazine.
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