| As Bill began communicating with various medical and research organizations, David helped him to determine what questions to ask and to make sure that Bill’s ideas were safeguarded from infringement. David also served as a valuable information conduit to Bill’s primary business and administrative partner, Maureen Greene of Las Cruces, New Mexico.
“David provided Maureen with the information she needed to develop our business plan while I continued to work on the product development and patents,” Bill says. “SCORE also put me in touch with Ed Crabtree, a patent attorney who provided us with information and documents to use to file a patent on our prototypes.”
Taking a cue from Bill, Maureen teamed up with SCORE Counselor Elaine Jeveli in Las Cruces. “Elaine has been helpful in starting this process off and getting the appropriate focus to move forward,” Maureen says. “She directed me to the right contacts in the Food and Drug Administration and provided advice on the manufacturing part of our venture. I will continue to collaborate with her as we move forward.”
Given the highly complex nature of gaining regulatory approval for medical products and bringing them to market, Bill expects it will take approximately two years before his business is in full swing.
“All of us are dealing with school, deployments and other jobs, as well as laying the groundwork for this business,” Bill says. “That’s why I’m encouraging all our core people to work with SCORE representatives in their area or online to learn as much as they can about setting ourselves up and running the right way,” he says. “Thanks to David, we’ve already made one key decision—establish ourselves as a limited liability company in Colorado.”
Now home safely from Iraq, Bill plans to call on his SCORE counselor more frequently to make his dream a reality. “Our future will include working with many different companies around the country and overseas,” he says. “None of us has any expertise with this, but we’ll be camping out at a lot of people’s doors—especially those of our SCORE counselors.”
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