"For ten years, people have been saying nanotechnology is going to hit next year," CEO Craig Bandes joked. "Well, now it is actually happening and these companies are finally seeing that nanotechnology is real -- that it is having real, significant impacts in a number of different technologies and products."
Finding a Competitive Edge
Of course, the nanotechnology industry is extremely diverse, so stories about growth and maturation shouldn't be applied too broadly. There are simply some technologies that are a little further ahead than others.
According to Bandes, the key discriminator defining which nano companies are best profiting from this market upsurge is ease of application they can sell to their customers.
"There are still a fair amount of nano companies that still think that large companies are going to change what they are doing for them," he said. "But our experience tells us that just isn't going to happen. You have to find out what they are doing and find a way to drop it into where they are headed."
Doing this, he said, is exactly what has pushed Pixelligent ahead.
| Pixelligent's nanocrystals are delivered to customers in liquid form. The additives seen here are going through the nanocrystal surface modification process and will eventually be used to improve several optical, mechanical and chemical properties of the customer's products. |
Unlike many nano companies, Pixelligent uses a wet synthesis process to create its nanocrystals, which bypasses a lot of the environmental health and safety issues involved with powder carbon nanotubes and results in a product that can be dropped into customers' solvents without further engineering.
"Our technology is a drop-in, so there are no changes our customers have to make to their own manufacturing process or their equipment to start using it," he said. "They may need a little less of it, they might need a little more, but it can move seamlessly into what they are doing today and what they want to do in the future."
Beyond that, he says, the most important thing that nano companies can do is perfect their technologies and get them into the hands of customers... though not necessarily in that order.
"What I always tell entrepreneurs is, don't sit back for too long in a dark room trying to perfect your product and then bring it to the marketplace. You are very rarely right without customer input," he said.
"We've had a lot of success by getting out in front of customers early, showing what our technology can do and having them tell us where it can help them. Because of that you can get a lot of knowledge about where the technology has the most potential -- about where it can play into the market that can afford to use it."
