Category Archives: Articles

FCI Offers Technology – And Help to Develop It

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Los Alamos National Laboratory has a stockpile of patents covering technologies with untapped commercial potential, as well as a portfolio of copyright-protected software it wants to share with businesses that can translate these assets into private-sector jobs.

LANL’s Richard P. Feynman Center for Innovation is tasked with moving Los Alamos technology to the marketplace to stimulate private sector growth. Although the Laboratory’s primary mission is national security, its technologies often have multiple applications in industrial and consumer markets. Los Alamos issues licenses to various entities ranging from start-ups to multinational companies.

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The Loan Fund Fuels Adobe Tradition

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Albuquerque Joinery is a small design-build company that specializes in new home construction using traditional adobe building techniques and fine carpentry.

Kenny DeLapp and Esther Fredrickson launched the business in February 2020 after building their own adobe home in Albuquerque’s South Valley. Built under an owner-builder permit, their 1,600 square foot home is a showcase of modern construction and traditional materials with brick floors, exposed vigas, adobe mud plaster walls, and site-built solid wood doors.

DeLapp, who is skilled in masonry and fine carpentry, learned traditional building techniques while working with his uncle Win, a long-time adobe builder known for custom furniture, cabinets, and museum exhibits.

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New Mexico Startup Gets Help with Pitch to Potential Clients

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Working with New Mexico Manufacturing Extension Partnership (New Mexico MEP) shaved at least a year off the time RingIR president Dr. Charles Harb expected to spend getting his company’s portable gas-detecting product ready for market.

And given the disruption and delay caused by the state’s protracted coronavirus-related shutdown, the value of that time is hard to calculate.

“We were working with (New Mexico MEP) on a business plan just before COVID hit, and everything got shut down,” said Harb, who runs the company with his wife and co-founder, Anna.

The couple launched the business in California in 2013 to commercialize the wideband optical spectrometer Harb had developed at the University of New South Wales in Australia to detect airborne chemicals.

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WESST Helps Hobbyists Become Business Owners

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Photo by @courtneymcook

According to Brad Crowson, a former regional program coordinator at WESST, more than 70 percent of business registrations in Rio Rancho are for home-based businesses. Crowson, who worked one-on-one with new and aspiring small-business owners as a consultant for the nonprofit business development organization, believes the home-based business trend is supported by the widespread availability of high-speed internet, among other factors.

“It’s also, in most cases, fairly low-risk financially and offers significant upside potential for both personal fulfillment and income generation — not to mention terrific tax benefits if structured properly,” Crowson said in a recent WESST blog post.

Many people engage in home-based hobby activities that turn into a source of income; however, to claim tax benefits referred to by Crowson, individuals must demonstrate to the Internal Revenue Service that their activities are intended to make a profit.

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Tech Startup Gets Help From New Mexico MEP

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Microscopic examination of metals can help airplane manufacturers know that the planes they build can withstand the forces involved in flight and could assure airlines that jet engine maintenance would detect problems before takeoff.

A small woman-owned business based in Albuquerque is commercializing a laser optical technology that has the potential to revolutionize this “failure analysis” procedure — not just for airplane parts but also for prosthetics, wind turbine blades and any product or component made of non-cubic metals such as titanium, magnesium, and zirconium. The technology is also effective on fiber composites and plastics.

Advanced Optical Technologies’ CrystalView crystallographic polarization-classification imaging (CPCI) technology can characterize the strength of metals in a fraction of the time that’s currently required—and can do it in a nondestructive way, without cutting small samples and inserting them in a stationary scanning electron microscope.

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What is an Entrepreneur?

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According to Lorena Schott, entrepreneurs pop up in all types of industries and can have widely different backgrounds. “Really anyone can be an entrepreneur, given the idea and the right tools to develop it into a functional business,” she said.

Schott should know. The director of marketing communications at WESST has met thousands of entrepreneurs since joining the business development organization in 2009. WESST is a nonprofit organization that offers business consulting, workshops, financial resources, business incubation, and support to help entrepreneurs start and grow a business.

“An entrepreneur is someone who sees a need and takes on the financial risk to start a business to fill that need,” she said in a WESST blog post. “It may sound vague, but that’s the point; there is no cookie-cutter entrepreneur…”

Schott contrasts the ‘classic’ entrepreneur — someone who creates a business like a new restaurant or a tech start-up — with today’s entrepreneurs. “There has been a shift in the global job market that has opened the door for entrepreneurship to become more mainstream,” she said.

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Community Advantage Loan Helps Arborists Scale to Meet Demand

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Eric’s Tree Care is deeply rooted in a love for all things nature. The Albuquerque-based landscaping and arborist service has been in business since 1997. And as its reputation has grown over the years, so has the range of services and scale of jobs its team of tight-knit arborists can tackle.

When Eric’s Tree Care needed a larger loan to support the next chapter in the business’ development, they turned to DreamSpring for capital through the Community Advantage program. A loan from DreamSpring ensured Eric’s Tree Care had the tools they needed to succeed and the capacity to keep scaling to meet customer demand.

Today, the Eric’s Tree Care team provides complete care from root to tree-top. They specialize in tree management advice; careful pruning and root work; removal and stump grinding; and planting services. They’re also skilled in adding structural supports to trees — a technical feat where cabling or customized bracing is used to increase safety and extend the lifespan of a tree for years to come. Estimates are always free.

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Loan Gives New Life to Las Cruces Cafe

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Melissa & Jaime Salazar

Melissa Salazar was a manager at a Las Cruces McDonald’s when she and her father, Jaime Salazar, an executive chef at the Holiday Inn, took over La Nueva Casita Café, a Mexican restaurant in the Historic Mesquite District in 2005.

“My brother was driving through the neighborhood and saw the building was for rent. My dad grew up two blocks from here,” said Melissa, describing downtown Las Cruces and the original township. “We applied to be occupants and the owner said there were several people who inquired about it but he thought that my dad would be the right one to carry on what his mother started.”

La Nueva Casita was created in 1957 along the Camino Real, the same route that brought conquistadors from Mexico City to Santa Fe. Historians note that the path was also likely used by Indigenous people for travel years prior. Many who remain in the neighborhood are descendants of the original settlers who created Las Cruces, with some of the homes dating back to the late 1800s and early 1900s.

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Program Embeds Tech Entrepreneurs at NM Labs

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Molecular biologist Kristina Trujillo is determined to help physicians identify and treat Alzheimer’s disease before the onset of debilitating cognitive decline.

Trujillo, who holds a doctorate in molecular biology from New Mexico State University, is CEO of Albuquerque-based T-Neuro Pharma. With help from the New Mexico Lab-Embedded Entrepreneur Program (LEEP), her company is developing a simple blood test to determine the presence of Alzheimer’s disease and a treatment to prevent its development and stop its progress.

She is one of three technology entrepreneurs in New Mexico LEEP’s first two-year fellowship cohort, which started early this year. The program embeds “deep tech” entrepreneurs—people developing solutions to existential problems like climate change and disease—at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where they work alongside scientists and mentors to advance, test and validate their innovations on a path to making them marketable products.

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MEP Helps Doctor Meet Demand for Healing Products

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To deal with the pain of postpartum mastitis, Janine Mahon drew on her knowledge of Chinese medicine to create a soothing topical salve for herself from herbs and oils. In the 20 years since she successfully treated her own breast pain, Mahon, a licensed and certified Doctor of Oriental Medicine, refined the product and shared it with clients at her Albuquerque clinic.

When one satisfied patient asked for a dozen bottles of the healing oil to share with friends, Mahon wondered if there might be a larger market beyond her regular clients. Mahon launched Dr. Janine Mahon’s Rejuvenating Breast Oil exclusively through Violet Grey, a high-end retailer with extensive online reach and sales through its Melrose Place store in Los Angeles.

“I went from no product to a dream store launching it,” she said. “Being in Violet Grey led to other places wanting to carry it.”

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