After receiving his doctorate in solid- state lighting, Steven Jaffe formed his own company with some friends from grad school. They were building high- performance lighting for TVs, electronic billboards, and cockpit displays. After some initial success with television, it was clear the company’s business plan and Steven’s passion weren’t in line with each other. “I told my husband one day, ‘You don’t even watch TV, ever. Maybe you should focus your efforts on something like advancing health care, where it’s not consumable pennies on a product,’” Claudia explains. Steven took his wife’s advice, which is always a smart decision, and in 2006, Lumencor was born. Developing a sales strategy to release your product is one of the more challenging aspects of a startup. Lumencor’s first product was a custom light screening for other businesses to use. They started off by pursuing big microscope companies. “Some of them had 250 salespeople around the world, so if we could get them to be our customers, they could produce and sell the volume we needed,” Claudia says. Practicing the concept of leverage is always a great strategy, but it requires a mutual relationship. Without a two-way street, everything falls on its face. “It turns out [microscope companies] are more conservative at adopting new technology,” said Claudia. But their tentativeness was justified. “These companies all outsourced their lighting and had been burned because it underperformed. It wasn’t bright enough, and the manufactured product wasn’t up to standards,” says Claudia. “It created a reluctance to take something new on.” When a market is saturated with an underperforming product, it can be difficult PUTTING THE PIECES OF THE PUZZLE TOGETHER
to build trust with potential clients. After hearing sales pitch after sales pitch, only to have the same product let them down, it can be easy for a business to feel burned. But Lumencor was working on something different, and they came up with a unique way to win clients over. “We found we had to find a champion in the potential company who understood our mission,” says Claudia. Developing a unique selling proposition in a tarnished industry requires dealing with what Claudia calls “healthy skepticism.” “They didn’t appreciate that we were building something different,” says Claudia. “The uninformed consumer thought, ‘I’ve seen that, and it didn’t work well,’ while the aware consumer said, ‘Show me how you can do better.’” This wasn’t viewed as a negative by Claudia, however. “It did help us differentiate ourselves. We’ve always felt that performance is king. If we could show we could do better, then we could close the sale.” The first product Lumencor rolled out was for a genetic training company. “We needed to go to someone that had some relative pain and needed solid-state lighting,” says Claudia. The company was using lasers, but it wasn’t giving them the performance they wanted. The product Lumencor developed wasn’t just the same
LED rehashed. It ended up being the first of its kind.
TAKING RISKS
While the company was getting off to a good start, it wasn’t
without its risks. Right out of the gate, Lumencor ran into a patent issue that had the ability to bring their company to a screeching halt. “It was a patent that was granted to a very large microscope company,” Claudia says. “In our opinion, there was technology that predated that patent, but it didn’t really matter because the patent was granted.” They were faced with a pretty big decision that many companies would potentially shy away from. “Ignorance can be self- serving,” says Claudia. “In our fear and ignorance, we sold products despite [the patent’s] existence.” That fear and ignorance affected more than just Lumencor. “When people came to us and said, ‘I don’t know if we can buy from you because of this patent,’ we did our best, but it was an impediment,” admits Claudia. If you’re an entrepreneur, you don’t get anywhere without risk. “You have to be comfortable being uncomfortable,” she says.
Lumencor moved forward and sold their product anyway. But it couldn’t go on
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