Chuck Nokes didn’t seem to break a sweat on Wednesday night as he asked a roomful of strangers to invest $750,000 in his Vancouver startup.
By pitching his business at PubTalk, a bimonthly event organized by the Southwest Washington Workforce Development Council, the chief executive officer of REDpoint International hopes to make connections that will take his company to the next level.
REDpoint has reached an annual revenue of $100,000, but testing and development will be expensive for the medical device maker’s three main products — the Versatilt electric wheelchair recliner, the Stethosafe stethoscope sterilizer and an IV sleeve to prevent drip lines from accidentally pulling out.
Another round of funding could also help boost production enough to move manufacturing from its current site in Gresham to Vancouver, he said.
His audience seemed impressed.
“I was very excited about the potential for substantial enterprises in Clark County,” Lisa Nisenfeld, executive director of the Workforce Development Council, said after the presentations. “We don’t usually hear about companies until they’re hiring a lot of people. It’s good to be connecting with them now … so we can train people for specific jobs.”
About 90 local investors and other business owners gathered for the event, held at AHA!’s downtown Vancouver offices, to hear the founders of three Vancouver startups pitch their business plans.
Michelle Platter, founder of ShapingEnvironments.com Inc., and Paul Slowey, founder of Oasis Diagnostics, joined Nokes in competing for a prize of free PubTalk admission for the rest of the year and dinner-for-two at a local restaurant.
The presenters had 10 minutes to talk in the hopes of attracting venture capital funding for their ideas. Then the crowd had 10 minutes to pepper them with questions on everything from the specifics about their revenue sources, competition and market opportunities to their funding needs and plans for development.
In the end, Nokes won over the audience with his pitch. But the experience was still a benefit to the other presenters, who learned how to hone their pitches and business plans. In essence, the Workforce Development Council created “pitch night” to spur innovation and create jobs in Clark County.
“It was a fantastic opportunity because when you’re starting a company, you’re bouncing ideas off a limited number of people,” said Platter, whose online business platform for the building industry launched two weeks ago. “When you do a presentation, it helps you think about what the product means to other people.”
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