Scaling Up Your Food Business: How Can Ben Franklin Technology Partners Help?

- Welcome everyone.

Thank you for joining us this afternoon for our webinar on Scaling Up Your Food Business.

Today's topic is How Can Ben Franklin Technology Partners Help?

And we have Julie Bratton joining us to share what the Ben Franklin Technology Partners can offer to you and your business.

But before I turn it over to Julie, just a few slides and items that I need to run through.

So first off, a few tips for those of you online.

First of all you may have seen today's webinar is being recorded.

That recording will be made available to you through email, that you should receive an email next week that will have a link to the recording and also the webinar will be posted to our Penn State extension website in a week or so.

If you need close captioning, that is available towards the bottom of your screen.

There should be a icon that you can click that will make that available to you.

If you have questions, I would ask that you please enter those into the Q&A pod.

You can use the chat pod, but if there's a lot of conversation sometimes it becomes easy to lose track of the question.

So the Q&A pod is a little nicer to work with.

And then finally we do have a short evaluation survey that will pop up on your screen upon exiting the webinar this afternoon.

And so we ask that you just take a few moments to complete that very short survey, provide us some information.

It's very helpful and useful to us in working on our programming and determining what we can do to help you.

Your hosts this afternoon are myself, I'm Sarah Cornelisse, I'm a Senior Extension Associate at Penn State.

Also online today is Martin Bucknavage, a Senior Food Safety Extension Associate, and Rick Kralj, a Food Safety and Quality Extension Educator with Penn State Extension.

Do want to note that this presentation is available in an alternative media upon request.

So when you receive the the email, if you would like this presentation in a different format, please just respond to that email or email any anyone of us, Martin, Rick, or myself, and we can get the slides to you.

And also we do wanna note that wherever trade names appear, no discrimination is intended and no endorsement by Penn State Extension implied.

This is our non-discrimination statement that we need to show.

And then a final note before I turn it over to Julie.

Next month, please join us for our webinar, which will be on resinous flooring for your business and also peace of mind.

And we will have Kevin Grega from CTS joining us to share about that.

So with that, thank you, and I will turn it over to Julie.

- Okay, great. Thank you.

Start sharing my screen.

Okay, and everyone can see that?

Yes. Great.

Hello everyone and thank you for having me this afternoon.

I am Julie Bratton and I am a College of Ag alumni and I have a BS in Food Science, so I'm ever grateful for the program that helped me land a job right out of college.

I got a job with Mars Wrigley, the candy company, and I worked in product development and marketing for 16 years.

I had a unique opportunity while I was at Mars in that they pulled a group of us out of the business and put us in an incubator or pilot program and said, okay, we're gonna give you two years.

We want you to act and operate like a startup company in trying to bring a product through testing and to market.

What that did was, one, you know, helped me to think like a startup company and it also told me that I wanted to be in a startup company.

So I kind of left my corporate world and I went into a startup business with a group of four founders.

We launched a fruit and vegetable juice business for toddlers.

And upon selling that business I started consulting, did my own consulting business for a number of years with large and small companies on how to bring a product from concept to market.

So hopefully after today's presentation you'll kind of see where I was grateful and happy to join Ben Franklin 'cause I get to do much of what I'm passionate about and continue to help with startup companies.

So I've been with Ben Franklin for five years.

And who is Ben Franklin Technology Partners?

Ben Franklin Technology Partners, and I'm just gonna call it Ben Franklin 'cause it's a mouthful, is an economic development organization that supports early stage tech-based businesses and small manufacturers and we support these businesses in the likelihood and hopes that it will make them more successful, grow larger, grow more revenue, and bring on jobs so that they create high paying sustainable jobs in the state of Pennsylvania.

To that point, each year the state approves a budget that provides Ben Franklin with funds to keep investing and keep supporting businesses in Pennsylvania.

This is a statewide initiative and that's been around for over 40 years and one that other states have replicated.

Now, while there was one man, there are four Ben Franklins across the state.

We have our Innovation Works, which is highlighted here in yellow, that's in our Pittsburgh region.

We have NEP, which is around the Bethlehem Allentown area.

In red you'll see our Philly Ben Franklin and then in Blue is our central and northern Pennsylvania.

All four Ben Franklin offices have the same mission but they operate slightly differently.

I represent and work in the central and northern Pennsylvania Ben Franklin that you see here in blue.

So for the sake of this presentation we're gonna really focus on how we operate in central and northern Pennsylvania.

And this really is 32 counties that span across the state, kind of from the top corner down through the hinterlands, the center of the state and into our center counties.

We have six offices across that Eerie, Johnstown, Harrisburg, York, Lancaster, and our headquarters for are Ben Franklin sits smack dab in the middle of the state, which is Center County, and as you guess, home to also Penn State University.

Built there to be dead center in the middle of the state.

Interesting to note, sometimes hard to explain why we get our funding through the state.

We are an entity of Penn State University, similar to how the university owns and operates the College of Medicine.

So we're all Penn State employees and Ben Franklin sits under the vice president of research.

And that really came to be as the university was looking to figure out how to better commercialize the innovation and the research that was coming out of the university.

So how do you support and have the framework in our state to take these innovations and turn them into to businesses.

To that point we work closely with the Office of Technology, understanding, you know, the licensing, we sit in Innovation park, our headquarters, which is right next to invent Penn State and an incubator there with a number of startup companies.

And we all have the same mission and that's really to spur on economic development, create jobs and, you know, commercialize.

It's a win-win if we can commercialize student faculty-run startups, or we can put students into other startups in the state of Pennsylvania.

So what is our mission? I alluded to that.

We grow early stage tech companies, we help manufacturers to be more competitive, and then hopefully we foster and promote a community where startups and companies have resources to grow.

So what are the type of companies that we have in our portfolio or that we work with?

As I mentioned we work with early stage tech-based companies.

So early stage meaning that there's been a product or a service that's been developed.

Maybe there's a minimum viable product, an MVP or a prototype developed, it's in testing.

There's a founder, maybe there's a solo founder, or hopefully they're building a small team around the founder.

The founder has put money into the business from their own or possibly from family and friends.

It's generally before you need to start going to angel investors or VCs.

Tech-based, meaning there is some type of technology, innovation, IP that's associated with the product or service, you know, or is it innovative?

Is it disruptive, first to market of some kind?

To that point we have many, to give some examples of the types of companies, we have a lot of software as a service or SaaS based businesses.

We have Ag Tech, Food and Bev, a lot of medical devices and products that have some type of a platform that they've developed as part of their business.

However, this doesn't include businesses like in our portfolio, retail stores or shops, restaurants, consulting services.

Those are mostly supported by the SBA or the Small Business Association, unless there's some kind of technical innovation, manufacturing something with their product.

So, and then the companies have to be headquartered in Pennsylvania and there has to be a business entity, meaning that a business has been founded, there's an LLC, they've incorporated, you have a tax ID number, an EIN number, you have a bank account with your business name on it, that makes you a business.

So that has to be established and then we really look to say, is this business scalable?

Is it really gonna grow to the point where you are gonna need, you know, more headcounts, a bigger team, and most likely more investment to get that company to grow versus, you know, other companies that don't actually have that, you know, is it more of a hobby business or a lifestyle business?

Those are incredibly important to our economy, but we're not chartered to support those.

Again, we help small manufacturers, and manufacturers that come to us are usually looking to change a processing line, add a product line, something that's going to retain jobs for that manufacturers or require new ones.

So that's how we generally work and the types of companies we work with.

So then how do we help?

How do we help companies start to scale?

First, and I would say probably the most important thing that we do, is provide support, business support.

We understand as a startup or a founder of a business, you may not have a big team and you may not have all the skillsets on that team that you need at the different stages that you need to develop the business.

So we come in to try to help fill those gaps.

Our Ben Franklin team is made up of a very diverse group of individuals with all kinds of different functional skill sets with a lot of different industry experience.

So we can come in and help with HR needs.

Do you need to write a job description?

Do you need help hiring someone, accounting?

Do you need help, you know, setting up QuickBooks?

Understanding how you use, you know, and look at your financial aspect of your business.

How do you use balance sheets, income statements, cash flows?

How do you take and look at the future with looking at expenses, cash needs, headcount needs to do projections like three to five years or pro formas into the future.

And then a lot of companies come in and they need help with marketing and sales or your go-to-market strategy will help to form those with you.

We also prepare companies to be ready to seek investments.

As I said, you know, if you're looking to scale, most likely you're going to need cash infusion over the future and we help prepare companies for that investment process.

I hate to use the analogy, but I know a lot of folks are familiar with it because it's pretty much on TV every day, and that's Shark Tank. Think about those pitches.

If you've ever watched the show, you know, those folks come in and they know all the aspects of their financial business, their plans, their margins, how they're gonna grow, how much money they need in their business.

Those are the kinds of things that we're helping companies get prepared for to make that pitch to investors.

If we identify a need that's outside of our resources, we'll make valuable connections to people in the industry or community that can help and would be a valuable advisor, which is our second most important way of helping businesses.

That's helping to build a network.

You will not get very far building a business without building a network. You can't do it alone.

You know, there's resources that you're gonna constantly need and a phone call that you're going to want to make and know someone that's on the other end.

This is a picture of one of our portfolio companies.

It's Sustainable Composites.

They have a patented process to upcycle leather scrap or leather waste from the production of leather and they turn that into a sustainable leather alternative material that they're selling to furniture companies, automotive, and clothing and apparel.

Really cool processing company.

Recently, in addition to the investments we made into Sustainable Composites, we helped them find their new CEO, who came from American Eagle, the clothing company.

And this gentleman will be instrumental in taking the company to the next stage.

So we kind of pride ourselves in making key connections to resources that can help build the business and grow.

The other resources and connections that we help make is maybe there's another founder that has been through the same challenges and tribulations that you're going through that can help.

Maybe there's an adjacent business that's doing something similar that would help you understand an aspect of your business model that's similar.

Connecting you with university resources, like the extensions group and connections to folks in the same field or industry or trade.

And probably, as I've been alluding to, some of the most important connections is connecting to other investors because as you're gonna scale, those, you know, will probably be needed.

Which gets us to the third area that I wanted to talk about today, and that's providing investment.

You'll hear it called funding, seed capital, it's cash.

It's bringing cash into your business.

And at Ben Franklin we're usually some of the first monies into a business.

So hopefully it's along with other investors, sometimes it's not, but as I said, it's the first monies in so it's when the founders put money in, possibly that family and friends have put money in.

But having Ben Franklin investment is kind of like a sign or a stamp to other investors that they've gone through the due diligence or kind of the learning process with Ben Franklin and I'll talk a little bit about that due diligence.

So it helps to attract other investors.

More money, more investors hopefully means, you know, faster, faster growth.

I'd like to introduce you to Serena Johnson in the middle of this picture.

Serena is the founder of Arcana Recovery, and this is a software app, or she's developed a software and app to keep recovering addicts connected to their support services to hopefully reduce the chance of relapse.

We provided funding to Serena's business, which sparked additional investors to come in and those monies are being used to help her build her software and beta test it.

So that's just one more example and just to provide you a little more detail into the actual funding and investment process, once we've identified a company as kind of in, you know, has the criteria that we discussed, we'll start working with that founder and team and you'll work with the portfolio manager like myself and we really take you through what's called the due diligence process.

That's preparing you for investment, putting all those pieces together that you see someone pitch, you know, during Shark Tank.

So we start working with the founders and the team on those pieces, looking at their historical financials.

Let's look at, you know, your bookkeeping over the last year, over the last six months, last three months.

Are all of those things in order?

Do they tie with the projections that you need to build to show folks, you know, what are going to your expenses going to be?

What's your pricing model, what do you assume, you know, all the different assumptions that will impact those projections are all lined up and tying all those pieces together.

And then we help companies, which I think is one of the most important aspects is putting together an investor pitch deck.

And I kind of used that word, you know, pitching.

Founders come into us and startup teams come into us and they're really, really good at talking about their product.

However, an investor isn't going to buy the product.

They're gonna buy into your business.

So an investor pitch deck really focuses on the business because investors are buying into the business and the team.

Sure, they've got to understand the product and the technology, but it's really, do they see this as a business that will return their investment?

So we help companies build that pitch deck and making sure all the pieces fit together.

That's what most folks refer as due diligence.

And then when we work with the company and put those pieces together, that company, if they're looking for funding for Ben Franklin will actually pitch to us.

So as a portfolio manager I'm kind of getting a company ready and then they'll pitch to all of my colleagues who will then vote on, yes, we're gonna take this company through and receive a proposal for them, which they'll complete a proposal.

If that gets approved then they go onto our board for funding and they'll get the investment.

We go through this on a quarterly basis, so four times a year we have companies that are coming in and making pitches for funding and we have companies that could be coming in for the first time for investment and those funding amounts are typically smaller amounts.

And then we have companies that come in for additional funding or follow on funding and those amounts can be larger.

Two aspects about that kind of helps to clarify our funding.

We like to look at it as almost funding for a project because as an economic development and organization we have to fund items that are going to grow and excel the business, accelerate the business.

So is it our funding can be used on projects to help develop the product, product development, line trials, any type of testing that has to happen.

And then, you know, what other pieces have to be developed.

Marketing campaigns, sales campaigns, going to trade shows, those sort of things.

And ideally going to salaries of people to bring in to build your team and build your business.

So those are the types of things that we like to fund and we think of it as kind of a short term project so, you know, if it's a 12 month funding period, and then we'll see the milestones at the end of that project and then look to see if additional or follow on funding is needed.

So our funds are also matched in that if we invest, say, $100,000 into a company, a company is also putting $100,000 or $50,000 in at that same time.

So we both have, you know, the same amount going in towards that project and our funds are typically in the form of a convertible note.

So it really depends on where the company is in their development and what stage they're at that we kind of look in and say, hey, how can we help and what resources or what is needed to make them grow?

We have some other programs to consider in addition to our funding opportunities or connecting companies with other investors.

We also have the Ben Franklin Learning Center and this does frequent training and informational webinars that are really relevant to founders and startup teams.

And we have, you know, quite a library of sessions that have happened with the Ben Franklin Learning Center and I believe they happen pretty much monthly.

We also have the innovation partnership and that's called IPart for short, which is a program that assists companies that are going to seek federal grants like SBIRs.

If anyone has ever gone in this path of looking for a federal grant, you will know it is a very challenging process.

So we have a person that is solely dedicated to just assisting people, you know, trying to get federal grants and that seems to be really helpful so you know where to start.

So any interest in federal grants, you know, jump on our website and look for IPart.

We also offer business programs like our Big Idea Contest, which is a pitch competition, and our TechCelerator program, and I'll share a little bit more on both of those.

The Big Idea Contest is a pitch competition.

We generally offer this two to three times a year and we receive, you know, a lot of applicants for these programs, it's pretty competitive. We select eight finalists.

The eight finalists will go through mentoring and pitch training and then they'll pitch to a community of judges and we've been awarding these types of competitions with either 25 or $50,000 prize award, which is, you know, pretty awesome seed money when you're starting a business.

The second program we have is our TechCelerator program, and this is a no cost 10 week business bootcamp where companies, it's a weekly class that you go through and the curriculum's based on the business model canvas where founders really look at all aspect of scaling their business and commercializing their business.

They meet weekly with a mentor, so there's one-on-one mentoring and these are coaches from Ben Franklin and from community organizations like the SBDC and there's also guest speakers that come in and talk and we kind of overlay those subject matter experts with the topic of the day.

And then all this learning kind of culminates into a pitch finale competition at the end.

Again, there's community judges, and we're now awarding a $30,000 prize award for these pitch competitions.

So the TechCelerator has been around for, gosh, over 10 years.

We've helped and put hundreds of companies through the program the same as, you know, the Big Idea Contest.

And participants usually tell us that while cash is great, the business training, the connections, the networking, the industry contacts that they make during these programs is really the valuable takeaway and what they appreciate the most.

We recently conducted a Big Idea Contest and a TechCelerator that you may have heard of, and that was the Ag Food and Bev Big Idea Contest, which we followed by the Food and Bev TechCelerator.

And this was the first time we did an industry-focused program and we chose Ag Food and Bev to raise awareness of Ben Franklin and the business resources that we offer, you know, to founders in this group and this industry.

And also knowing the significance of, you know, food and bev and agriculture in central and northern Pennsylvania.

And that's really why we do these competitions is, one, it's just how do we as Ben Franklin find startups and founders, and then how do you find us?

So by doing these, you know, competitions and getting out in the public, hopefully we can find all the innovation that's sitting in our state of Pennsylvania that we can help and support with the services that we just highlighted.

So what does this all mean in the life of the year of Ben Franklin?

Over the course of last year, over a course of a year, we typically make 30 to 40 investments into companies.

This year we made 32 that were funded.

Our investments in those 32 companies was just a little over 5.5 million, and if you're doing the quick math that's about $175,000 per investment.

Knowing that some investments obviously as that we talked about are smaller and then larger as they follow on.

Of the investments that came into Ben Franklin I think roughly 11 were first time companies and 22 were roughly follow on or the second time around.

We held two Big Idea Contests last year and three TechCelerators.

So if you're interested in any of these programs, keep an eye out on our website, better yet request to get on our newsletter and then you can see when future programs are happening.

Before I open up to any questions, I thought I would kind of wrap by showing you a few examples of companies in our portfolio, meaning companies that, you know, we've invested in and here's two.

I've chose these two companies that we're currently working with or preparing to and I have permission to share their story with you.

The first company I'd like to introduce to you is ERApeutics.

ERApeutics was founded in 2018 from Lancaster County.

The co-founders are husband and wife duo.

They are a doctor and a marketer and young parents trying to do it all and realized that they were, you know, constantly kind of dealing in a state of fatigue and brain fog and they saw that there weren't any real products on the market that addressed brain health.

Like there are products that have recently, you know, most recently been developed to serve gut health.

So they wanted to provide healthy mental clarity, a real connection between food and brain health.

Before I think we came on board, they were connected with the Penn State researcher on the benefits of walnuts for cognitive health and specifically how they could concentrate those phytonutrients to be incorporated into a functional beverage.

At that time they called it Brain Milk.

They were in talks with a walnut handle or producer for funding and had some family and friends' money into the business.

We started working with the team in 2019 to help prepare them for their first round of funding.

They pitched to our Ben Franklin staff and our funds went towards continuing the research with Penn State and some of their early product development work.

We continued to work with the founders.

They brought on a third founder from industry, so they had a little more industry experience.

They brought on a formulator and found a co-manufacturer.

So our second and third investment into that company supported, you know, additional product development in line trials as well as a rebranding project with the marketing agency.

And they're now called EverMind, which I think is a pretty big improvement from Brain Milk, but EverMind is, they are currently developed.

They made it through some pretty challenging supply chain issues to say the least with delays and being able to get ingredients and raw materials and getting co-manufacturing times that was brought on by the pandemic.

It was a a rough time period for startups, to say the least, but they are now looking to make their first production run this summer.

Production runs are costly, so the company is still actively seeking additional investment to produce and start selling EverMind.

So clean energy, if you need clean energy, mental focus, long-term brain health, think EverMind.

So hopefully coming to a store near you.

A second example of a company in our portfolio is a company called Swift Aeroseed LLC.

They're a little earlier in their development stage.

They came to BF in 2020.

They had designed and built a heavy payload drone that could fly over cash crops like corn and soy and they have a patented dispersion mechanism to disperse the cover crop seed over the cash crops from the drone.

As you know cover crops add nutrients to the soil and prevent erosion so there's hopefully increased yields, production and obviously the ecological benefits.

Swift Aeroseed has three founders.

The first founder is a pilot/farmer.

The second is a mechanical engineer who came out of the aeronautical industry, and the third is a conservation specialist.

So this team had, you know, a strong understanding around the problem they were solving, their solution, the technology to do so, and ecological benefits, but they weren't quite sure how to turn that into a business.

So we started to work with them on, really, what is your business model?

You know, how are you gonna make money at doing this?

What does that look like? What do you need?

And then at the same time we were working with them to do that they secured an FAA research exemption to fly their drone.

So Ben Franklin came in and they pitched and received a 10,000 pre-seed grant.

Now pre-seed has nothing to do with cover crops.

It is what we call a grant that we give companies and it's a true grant in that it's not a payback investment.

We give grants of $10,000, we call them pre-seed grants.

It is also matching.

So the companies are putting $10,000 in for a project.

In the case of Swift Aeroseed, they were looking to do a test on five farms in central Pennsylvania to test the seeding of the cover crop seeds.

So the $10,000 seed grant from Ben went towards that testing.

Fast forward one year, unfortunately, like as we talk about trials and tribulations of startup companies, they hit one.

The FAA kind of came back to them and said, you're gonna need additional certifications to do this flying and this testing and grounded them until that certification is achieved.

So we in this interim have said, okay, you know, let's continue working on your model.

Are there any alternate revenues that you can help to grow your business in this process, and, you know, that looks promising?

So we have high hopes that they'll get this certification and they'll be able to get their their business off the ground, no pun intended.

And we have other examples.

I was telling Sarah and Martin in our portfolio of businesses that have started as a restaurant, we have one in Erie that had a bar or speakeasy.

And out of that during the pandemic when bars were closed, they said, okay, we're gonna create a mocktail, like a beverage mocktail mixer that we can start selling.

And they are now in, oh, I forget, hundreds of stores across the northeast in a very short period of time.

Blind Tiger is the name of that company.

So we have other types of food and bev companies in the portfolio just to give you an example of a few.

Also, another one I'm not sure if you've heard about and came through Ben Franklin is Phospholutions.

The founder, Hunter Swisher, is a Penn State grad that founded his business Phospholutions in 2016.

Their product or technology was RhizoSorb, which is a fertilizer additive that delivers phosphorus and other nutrients back into the crops, which significantly reduces the use of fertilizers, which is good for the environment.

Ben Franklin was an early investor into Phospholutions and since Hunter has grown his team, grown his business and has successfully raised over $20 million in funding.

So you can just kind of see one of our companies at a much later stage of the game, which is always good to see.

So those are really the ways that Ben Franklin helps companies to stay at scale.

So hopefully you got like a snapshot of what we do and how we help, be it its funding or investments, our Big Idea Contests, TechCelerators, you know, learning and training through the Learning Center or assistance through IPart for federal grants.

If you want to learn more, jump on our website at cnp.benfranklin.org.

You can find information on all of our programs.

You can find my contact information or contact information of other portfolio managers that might sit in your region, and if you are interested, you know, the quickest way in is through our contact us portal and you'll get to the right portfolio manager that can talk with you and understand what your needs are and what your business is all about and the stage of development.

So that was what I had today.

If there's any questions, I'm happy to open it up for anything you got there.

- Great, that was wonderful Julie. Thank you so much.

Before I jump to the questions, we've had a few come in, I do wanna note some folks have asked about this.

One, yes, just as a reminder, the recording for this presentation will be sent to you via email next week, so look for that in your inbox.

And also there was a request for the slide deck and we do have a PDF of that that Julia shared, so we will get that out as well.

Or you can email any one of us, I'll drop my email into the chat there.

But certainly you can email Julie or Martin or Rick and they will get you the slide deck as well.

So, okay, so a few questions, and the first one backed up to the top, this individual says our company uses existing technology to teach clients to use 3D printing equipment for hobby game purposes.

I'm looking for additional technology to assist with this.

I'm not sure you can help me as we aren't actually a developer of a platform.

So I think maybe the real question is, you know, can you clarify what kind of sort of technology or processing manufacturing that one needs to be doing in order to receive assistance?

- Right, yeah, and no, it's kind of tricky.

You know, we say tech-based and clearly we don't sit in Silicon Valley, so we do stretch that tech base and we look at everything.

Are you doing something differently than what's currently on the market?

So if it's standard, you know, we ha see a lot of folks that do stamping or tooling or 3D printing.

Is there something different about what you're doing that makes it innovative, unique, gives you a competitive advantage to scale or, you know, something really kind of new to the market is one of the first things we look at or, you know, is there a strong, you know, some kind of technology IP, something in place there that does that?

So, but we look at it as a portfolio group and say, yes, you know, we think there's something here.

So the best thing I can say is, you know, contact us at portal, it will ask you for, you know, just kind of brief summaries of what you're doing and what you're looking to achieve.

And the other thing I should tell people too is, by all means, when you contact someone like a Ben Franklin or an investor, you know, folks are always hesitant, oh, I don't wanna tell you what I'm doing.

You know, learn how to talk about your business and what makes you unique in difference without giving away the secret sauce, right?

So that is a skill that you have to learn how to do and don't let that hold you back because, you know, it's something that's necessary.

So that's what I would say is, you know, throw it into our contact us and let somebody put some eyeballs on it and say, yep, this fits or it doesn't.

And then one thing that we always do is whenever somebody comes in and it doesn't fit with Ben Franklin, we always say where you can find help and resources.

So we never let anybody just, you know, hanging.

- That's excellent.

Yeah, and I think I would definitely agree, to add on to what Julie said, if you don't ask, you don't know.

So ask and don't assume that whether it's Ben Franklin or any other organization, don't make an assumption.

So another question.

We are also researching more efficient ways to hand make (indistinct), and I won't even try because I will butcher the name of that food, but, so anyway, they're looking for researching more efficient ways.

- [Audience Member] It's halušky. It's halušky.

- Halušky, okay.

So yes. So the question is, can you help me?

So they're looking into more efficient ways to manufacture.

- Yeah, anytime manufacturing, like we love small manufacturers.

So that is an initiative of Ben Franklin that we are trying to find more and more small manufacturers in our portfolio.

And that's exactly the type of things, if you're an established manufacturer and you're looking to do something that will improve efficiencies, run better, faster, produce more, do it differently, you know, that's something that we can and it's gonna help you grow and you can keep people in your business or hire new ones.

That's the type of projects that we like to get involved in.

And that's obviously just off the top of my head.

So without knowing exactly, again, put it in there and let folks kick that around.

- So it's given some folks time to think if they have more questions. I actually have a question.

You went ran through and talked about the different contests and opportunities there are for businesses to make those pitch.

Let's say a business doesn't feel quite at that stage yet.

Are those contests open so that they could view and observe and, you know, see what they would have to expect for the next year perhaps?

- Yeah, that is a great way to say, hey, yeah, now I know what I'm getting myself into, right?

So yes, those pitches are open to the public.

We encourage the public to come and you can watch those.

We have them four times a year and those are on our website or you can, you know, request to know when those are or get on our newsletter and our newsletter says when the competitions are open for applications and then also provides dates that the finales will happen.

I can tell you off the top of my head that our next TechCelerator finale, I believe, is June.

I'm looking real quick, is June 13th.

Yes, June 13th is our next TechCelerator finale and that's 2:00-5:00 PM.

- Wonderful.

So anybody's looking for a opportunity for it and June's just a couple months away, so don't have to wait long.

Martin or Rick, do you have any questions?

- [Audience Member] No, I mean, that was an excellent presentation.

We really appreciate you coming in and talking about that and it's given me just a lot of information I didn't know about Ben Franklin, which was fantastic.

- Great, thank you.

- [Audience Member 2] Yeah, I'd say the same.

I'd say geez, if there was a job opening, send us over.

(indistinct), you've got a great job there.

- It is a lot of fun and, you know, a lot of us have come from the industry and it's kind of like how can you help and kind of payback type of thing.

And this is a great way, you know, helping businesses and startups and founders.

So it's pretty fulfilling.

- So I don't see any other questions from our audience and that's okay. Everyone, our emails are available.

Feel free to follow up with any one of us after the fact and be on the lookout for that link to the recording as well as we'll try to get you the PDF out by email as well.

And so with that, I guess, again, thank everybody for joining us and as you exit the webinar please just take a few moments to complete that evaluation survey.

So thank you and everyone have a good afternoon.

- Thank you.