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Tag Archives: patents

Jan201210

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Features




pureNANO Technologies will be ‘the Intel of nanotechnology,’ power flat-screens and solar panels of future: CEO Lev Davidson

pureNANO leaders: CEO Lev Davidson and Eric Borguet

If you want to talk about the Philadelphia region’s distinction for startups, it lies in the slice of life sciences called nanotechnology, says Lev Davidson.

Davidson is the CEO and co-founder of pureNANO Technologies, which produces proprietary, ultra-pure carbon nanotubes said to be some 50,000 times narrower than a human hair and 100 times stronger than steel.

How do you make money on really tiny tubes?: by producing “the world’s most energy efficient flat-panel displays, high-performance flexible thin-film solar cells and advanced mobile water filtration systems,” boasts the company’s promotional materials.

“pureNANO will be the Intel of nanotechnology by providing the material that will enable technologies which will fundamentally disrupt innumerable industries,” said Davidson, 28, who lives in Center City and grew up in Lafayette Hill, Montgomery County. “We will do for nanotech what the Intels of the world did for computing.”

To start, in May, the company took top honors and $125,000 in cash, prizes and services at Temple University’s Fox School of Business 13th annual Be Your Own Boss Bowl. With co-founder, chief scientist and Dublin-native Eric Borguet, 48, pureNANO was also a standout in the last GoodCompany Ventures incubation class.

That’s a good start but not yet the global disruption that Davidson is seeking. So what’s next?


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Aug201122

1

Technically Not Tech




Bashpole Group: Center City invention house launches first product, the Pocket Grill [VIDEO]

Ben Ashpole has a technology company, and its first product is the infomercial-ready Pocket Grill, boasted to be “the first full-sized grill that fits in your pocket.”

And with a Kickstarter campaign, he’s aiming to push the first round of the grills into the market.

After leaving a job working on software for “a certain large defense contractor with offices in the region” in 2006 and earning a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania, Ashpole starting growing a list of software clients for what would become Bashpole Inc. in 2008. But all along, he had hobby projects, tinkering and tweaking existing products and dreaming up new ones.

Want a Pocket Grill?

    Hit up

their Kickstarter page

    and pledge $40 for a grill upon completion of the campaign or $150 before major production, with personalization and a signed Pocket Grill cookbook.

By spring 2009, Ashpole’s hobbyist tinkering had grown enough that he thought there might be another business there. He posted an ad on Penn’s student job listings and on craigslist: “something like ‘entrepreneur has backlog of projects, seeks assistance,” he said. One of those projects on his mind was a pocket-sized grill that could actually withhold a hearty slew of meat and vegetables.

Ashpole, 30, took on three engineer masters students, one of whom helped develop the application that led to the company’s first patent, which covers the grill’s particular flexible folding joint, something that could be used in other products, Ashpole said. By the end of 2009, he found Jay Olman, his first full-time employee who helped push forward the design, manufacturing and implementation of the product and that new company, the Bashpole Group.

Not, of course, to be confused with Bashpole Inc., the software company that now has four programmers in a narrow Center City office — “the two companies are named so similar because I’m that creative,” Ashpole said with a laugh.


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