Finally getting around to posting this

So last Wednesday was definitely one of the most exciting days I’ve had in a long time. Some of you may know that this past year I’ve been working on a research project for Drexel Smart House that involved creating LED lighting fixtures.

Essentially, several companies have created a new way to bring sunlight into rooms without windows. What they do is install a system on your roof that tracks the sun. This then focuses the sun onto a bundle of fiber optic cables which are routed through the roof and split up into multiple fibers that then are put into the ceiling as fixtures. This is great because a lot of people work in rooms where there is no sunlight, and it is really draining on a person because the color changes in sunlight throughout the day are instrumental in modulating our circadian rhythm.

They have one little problem, clouds. When a cloud passes over the room gets darker. This just doesn’t work. What my team has done is to build an intelligent LED light engine that attaches to these fiber optics and adds light as necessary to maintain a constant brightness in a room. The important thing is that our fixture acutally outputs the light at the same color temperature as the light coming through the fibers making it seem like a perfectly clear day inside.

Anyway, we put a lot of hard work into this project, and it paid off. My roommate and I decided that we thought this work was good enough to commercialize, so we submitted a business plan for the yearly business plan competition at Drexel. (This competition is no joke. You’re basically required to start a business if you place in the top 3.) We submitted, and we made it through to the final competition where we’d have to present our pitch in from of 5 VCs. We were seriously psyched.

This project was done as my senior design project for my senior year in engineering. Apparently, my department thought it was good enough to send it through to the senior design competition where we’d compete against projects nominated from all of the other engineering departments. Again, super psyched.

Then I found out both of these presentations were on the same day which brings us to Wednesday, June 4, 2008. Absolutely crazy. First, my roommate and I stayed up almost all night finishing up the business plan presentation and the senior design presentation. This was after I’d already put in about 50-60 hours of work into my Keynote presentations. (It was really pretty, and it would have taken 200 hours with PowerPoint.)

Then, we got to World Cafe Live, the location business plan competition, around 8 AM. The first part of the morning there was a presentation from some experienced entrepreneurs. Then it came to the competition time. I’m just running on caffeine at this point. We went last, and there were some pretty good presentations before us. My roommate and I got up there, and I thought we rocked it other than a few times that my computer decided to be glitchy. Then, I had to rush out, grab food, and go to the senior design presentation which was back on campus. We absolutely nailed that presentation. It was awesome. We presented on a 20 ft. 16:9 screen, and the animations I set up really looked fantastic at that size.

Anyway, that ended, and I rushed back to World Cafe Live to hear if we won the business plan competition. Well, they announce third place, not us. Then second, not us. I’m freaking out. I didn’t have the confidence that we could get first.

Then we did. It was awesome. I totally didn’t expect it, although, I should considering second place went to a group that wanted to start a retail store to sell bras to “tweens.” It was amazing. I hung out and talked to a bunch of people. I talked to some VCs. We got great compliments about our project. At this moment, I knew that our company was really being born. This is when I knew Summalux Technologies was a reality. This was great for us because it meant a little bit of seed money, some office space, and a bunch of donated services to help get us off the ground. I was so excited I decided to skip the senior design winners announcement.

The festivities wrapped up at World Cafe Live, so I headed back over to campus to try to see my teammates and ask how we did in the competition. As I was walking over there, someone came out and said congratulations. I said for what? He said, “For winning the senior design competition. Get in there, you need to get your picture taken.” This day really made my entire college career and all the Drexel Smart House work worthwhile.

All that, and they still gave me a B+ in senior design.