Category Archives: Starting or Growing a Business

Los Alamos Connect Helps Inventor With Irrigation Management Breakthrough

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By Kurt Steinhaus, Director of Community Programs, Los Alamos National Laboratory

By Kurt Steinhaus, Director of Community Programs, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Plant physiologist David Groeneveld started the Santa Fe consulting firm HydroBio 14 years ago to help farmers optimize their use of energy and water — two resources that are increasingly scarce and expensive.

Using data he collected over years as a consultant, Groeneveld devised a way — using satellite data and software-based technology — for farmers to precisely monitor and control how much water their mobile center-pivot irrigation machines emit, reducing energy and water costs and boosting yields.

Groeneveld’s trademarked innovation — Targeted Irrigation Management, or TIM — is a software program that allows a farmer to remotely direct pivot machines to follow a water schedule customized for specific crops, soils and climates. Continue reading →

Yogurt Business Takes Next Step Toward Franchise Goal

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Joe Justice

Joe Justice, Loan Officer, The Loan Fund

Los Angeles-based entrepreneurs Paula and Matthew Pope and Tom and Precious Haines knew they didn’t stand a chance convincing a bank to lend them startup capital for a build-it-yourself frozen yogurt “creative space” in Albuquerque. Besides their distance from the business’s home, none of the four had prior experience in retail.

So the couples pooled all their savings with investments from a few family members to open their first Olo Yogurt Studio in the Nob Hill neighborhood near UNM in 2010.

The store did so well that the partners made plans to open a second store in 2013 in a West Mesa shopping mall. But they hadn’t reached the three-year threshold that most traditional banks require of businesses before they’ll lend. Continue reading →

Startup Weekends Set Ideas in Motion

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Eric Renz-Whitmore

Eric Renz-Whitmore, Founding Executive Director, New Mexico Tech Council

Developers, designers, marketers, product managers and startup enthusiasts gathered March 1-3 in Santa Fe for a marathon of brainstorming, team building and product testing aimed at transforming entrepreneurial impulses into viable ventures.

More than 60 people showed up for the inaugural Startup Weekend Santa Fe, a 48-hour intensive, immersive collaboration known to the tech world as a hackathon. Participants pitched 32 ideas for marketable products or services, formed 16 teams around the most feasible ideas and ended the weekend with 10 groups presenting projects to judges.

A proposal to develop a broadcast platform for amateur sporting events — dubbed SportXast by its Santa Fe and Los Alamos team members — emerged the winner. Continue reading →

Grants Support Rural Business Development

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Terry Brunner

Terry Brunner, State Director, USDA Rural Development Agency

The U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development agency is encouraging nonprofit organizations in rural communities to apply for a Rural Business Enterprise Grant to help them finance projects designed to develop small and emerging private businesses. State and local governments, Indian tribes, nonprofits and public and private nonprofit higher education institutions in communities with 50,000 or fewer residents are eligible to apply.

During the last fiscal year, the program provided $283,000 to six New Mexico recipients. It helped the Southwest Regional Housing and Community Development Corporation establish a revolving loan fund to benefit micro businesses in four New Mexico counties. And it awarded $50,000 to the Ramah Navajo School Board Inc. to pay for a preliminary architectural feasibility report and schematic design for CedarBluffTravelCenter and the Cedar Bluff Restaurant and Business Complex in Ramah, New Mexico. Continue reading →

Meaningful Gestures: Corrales Company Puts VAF Grant to Work

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Belinda Snyder

Belinda Snyder, Program Manager, LANL Technology Transfer Division

Ideum, a Corrales-based company founded in 1999, needed help updating its successful gesture-based software and preparing it for international release. In 2011, it was awarded one of three $100,000 grants that Los Alamos National Security gives tech-based innovators every year through its Venture Acceleration Fund to develop commercial uses for innovative technology and get them to market as quickly as possible.

Ideum first released GestureWorks in the summer of 2009 as a free, unfinished (or “alpha”) version of its software, which analyzes and simulates human gestures for the kinds of touch-activated tables that are increasingly used in interactive educational exhibits. Later that year, Ideum issued an improved version as a commercial product that educators could use to design compelling “touch-table” demonstrations of scientific concepts. Continue reading →

NM MEP Helps Entrepreneur Prepare Revolutionary Product

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Matt Moser

Matt Moser, Innovation Director, NM Manufacturing Extension Partnership

Most entrepreneurs who approach the New Mexico Manufacturing Extension Partnership are well along in production of an invention or commodity. Some operate decades-old businesses but need help identifying and overcoming production bottlenecks and instituting lean processes that can increase their profitability and competitiveness.

Vince DiGregory tapped into the talent at MEP before he had even built a prototype for the folding flat-pack modules he hopes will revolutionize the temporary shelter industry for military and disaster relief operations.

DiGregory’s invention is an 8-by-8-foot folding structure that can interlock with other modules to create larger enclosures. The lightweight structure can be rapidly assembled and taken apart, making it ideal for small-scale, temporary operations. Continue reading →

NMSU Harnesses Intellectual Capital to Drive Economic Growth

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Kevin Boberg

By Kevin Boberg, director and CEO of New Mexico State University’s Arrowhead Center; photo by Darren Phillips

Entrepreneurs don’t have to live in or near Las Cruces to take advantage of the many services offered by Arrowhead Center – a business development hub launched in 2004 by New Mexico State University to stimulate economic development for the betterment of all New Mexicans.

The center’s resources are open to any state resident who needs help turning an idea into a commercial venture or taking an existing business to the next stage.

The Enterprise Research service draws on students, business mentors, entrepreneurs, faculty researchers and research partners to create and validate research studies for startups and existing businesses. And the Arrowhead Technology Incubator links technology-based firms with the resources they need.

Continue reading →

SBA Changes Intensify Business Lending Surge

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John Woosley

By John Woosley, District Director, SBA New Mexico District

Jerome Garcia completed 23 years of military service, multiple overseas tours and one combat deployment before retiring in Las Cruces just before the economy collapsed in late 2008. Garcia and his wife, Michele, proceeded with plans to start their own business and launched Southwest General Construction in February 2009.

SGC is a service disabled veteran-owned small contracting business that builds and maintains airfields, railroads, roads and buildings in New Mexico and the Southwest. It also builds fences, drills wells, maintains grounds and conducts environmental remediation. Continue reading →

Two Programs Reimburse Employers for Training New and Veteran Workers

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Sara Haring, Manager, JTIP

Sara Haring, Manager, JTIP

Job creation is on the minds of many as the economy continues its slow but steady climb from recession. In New Mexico, job creation has been on the agenda of the state Economic Development Department since 1972, when the New Mexico Job Training Incentive Program (JTIP) was launched to help businesses defray the cost of hiring and training new employees.

JTIP is one of the most generous training incentive packages in the country, funding classroom and on-the-job training for new jobs in businesses that are expanding in New Mexico or moving here. The department supplemented JTIP in 2005 with STEP-UP to help qualified companies train their existing workforce in new technologies or skills.

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Entrepreneurial Network Helps Local Man Build Fire Extinguisher Business

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Monica Abeita

Monica Abeita, Regional Development Corp. for NNM Connect

When Gordon Johnston and his wife had trouble getting the fire extinguishers serviced at their Taos bed and breakfast about five years ago, Johnston decided to launch a part-time fire extinguisher business of his own.

That one-time side venture is now the couple’s central enterprise, Alpine Fire Safety Systems Inc. Johnston credits Taos Entrepreneurial Network, or TEN, with the support and connections he needed to pursue the government contracts that have made his business such a success.

TEN is an independent nonprofit organization of entrepreneurs and local community leaders that the McCune Charitable Foundation launched in 2004. TEN is now funded by Northern New Mexico Connect, which coordinates economic development projects for Los Alamos National Security LLC, operator of Los Alamos National Laboratory.

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