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Fast Friends Leads to Fast Track: How Dynamo Micropower Crowdsources a Ready Braintrust

What if you were an entrepreneur and were offered the inside track to funding your startup? What if you had in-house experts review your engineering designs on demand and PhD scientists critique your prototypes as they are built?  What if you could pull a peer group of MBA’s and founding entrepreneurs together for a brainstorm on a go-to-market strategy?

Jason Ethier, co-founder, Dynamo Micropower, enjoys these benefits as a member company at Greentown Labs. “I was pulling together a grant and learned OsComp Systems (another Greentown Labs company) had successfully applied for the same one,” said Ethier.  “Oscomp gave us some coaching, insights into the nuances of the reviewers and review process, and put in good word for us.  We got the grant.  It was incredible leverage for us.”  Dynamo Micropower’s team piggybacked on the institutional knowledge housed among the more than thirty companies comprising Greater Boston’s largest cleantech incubator located in Somerville, MA.  Mentorship from other founders also helped Jason and his team identify, prepare and secure prestigious Small Business Innovation Research grants (SBIR I and SBIR II grants) in 2012 and 2013, and earn a $100K prize for First Place, NASA Tech Briefs Create the Future Design Contest (Machinery and Equipment Category) in September 2013.

Dynamo says its fast start – getting funding, visibility and customer validation – was aided Greentown Labs, an incubator with a mission to build a vibrant community that enable entrepreneurs to solve the biggest energy and environmental problems of our time.  The fast start also gave the co-founders, 2010 graduates from Duke University’s engineering school, more time to iterate on prototypes and focus on validating the technology.

Dynamo Micropower is developing microturbines that provide efficient and lower-emissions power for applications that require power in remote places.  One application is replacing dirty-fuel diesel-powered generators that run remote oil and gas wells in developed countries or for industrial applications in developing countries.  For the oil and gas applications, the microturbine can actually be powered by the waste gas that is otherwise burned in a flare twenty-four hours a day.  Other applications being explored include backup power following extreme weather events.  DM highlights three advantages to its system: it is power dense, reliable, and fuel flexible.   In addition, the design allows for extremely low-maintenance costs, often the hidden cost of current diesel systems with pricey service contracts.

Leveraging good ideas is in Dynamo Micropower’s company DNA.  The company inspiration came, in part, through the founders’ work at Duke with a professor working on miniaturized microturbine technology originally intended to power laptop computers.  It also came from running the nightshift of an assembly line manufacturing turbines at GE in Lynn, MA.  Next week, more new ideas may come from a scheduled lunch brainstorm on market segmentation with fellow entrepreneurs at Greentown Labs.