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Part II

TIio

Opportumtv

Case

Jim P
Preparation Questions
1.

2.
3.

Apply the Timmons entrepreneurship framework
(entrepreneur—opportunity—resources) to analyze this case. Pay particular attention to the entrepre neur’s traits and how he gathered resources for his venture.
Discuss Jim’s fund-raising strategies. What other options might be considered for raising the funds
SPC needs? Is this a good investment?
Discuss the growth strategy. What additional mar ket(s) would you recommend pursuing as they move ahead?

On his way through Logan Airport, Jim Poss stopped at a newsstand to flip through the June 2004 Notional Ge ographic cover story that declared, “The End of Cheap
Oil.” Inside was a two-page spread of an American family sitting among a vast array of household posses sions that were derived, at least in part, from petroleumbased products: laptops, cell phones, clothing, footwear, sports equipment, cookware, and containers of all shapes and sizes. Without oil, the world will be a very different place. Jim shook his head. and here we are burning this finite, imported, irreplace able resource to power three-ton suburban gas guzzlers with “these colors don’t run” bumper stickers!
Jim s enterprise Seahorse Power Company {SPC) was an engineering start-up that encouraged the adop tion of environmentally friendly methods of power gen eration by designing products that were cheaper and more efficient than 20th-century technologies. Jim was sure that his first product, a patent-pending solar-powered trash compactor, could make a real difference.
In the United States alone, 1 80 million garbage trucks consume over a billion gallons of diesel fuel a year.
By compacting trash on-site and off-grid, the mailboxsized “BigBelly” could cut pickups by 400 percent. The prototype—designed on the fly at a cost of $10,000—