Company
The two (Hassett and Hodowanec) founding members are extremely talented engineers. They have patents and a multitude of articles in highly regarded technical journals. Several of their technical advisors are post co-workers and co-authors. They have worked for several companies in the target industries in different roles over their careers. From basic engineering design to division and company management. I could not find evidence of any failures in their careers. What is particularly relevant to me is that their careers have been mostly in very cautious, low risk, industries. Power companies tend to want to be the last people to adopt a new technology, they want someone else to work out the kinks. But the founders got their start at NASA, so early in their career they found the value and motivation of thinking outside the box and using prototypes to come up with a design. Most highly skilled engineers want to go into more exciting or profitable industries such as defense, computing, oil/gas, etc.
The question investors should ask themselves is if this is such a great idea how come someone hadn’t already done it. I believe its because typically innovative creative engineers don’t pick the generator and submersible pump industries to work in. The design and operation of generators, motors, and associated technologies hasn’t had a dramatic change in decades. I believe if it was typical for exceptionally talented engineers to decide to build careers in these industries this would of already been done. But rather than work on stealth technology for DARPA or deep learning for IBM these two happened to fall into jobs that allowed them to see and move on an opportunity.
Cons
They have repeatedly and consistently been overly optimistic and incorrect in their estimates of profitability and market potential. I am at the point of not believing anything they say with respect to potential unless there is some other validating information. An example is that they now say they are close to going to market with mobile generation. I only believe them because of Craftsman’s Industries involvement and my belief they would not be involved unless they were in fact close to going to market.
I do not believe they lie. I invested as their price dropped because I felt that they wouldn’t of said pumps were close unless they thought they were close. But I also knew that they could of thought they were close then found out they had a million dollar design problem and told us nothing about it.
They can go silent for months on end and this usually indicates horrible things are happening behind the scenes. Right now with the relatively frequent blog updates and occasional twitter updates, I'm thinking they are feeling confident. But we have to hold our breath and keep our fingers crossed.
