At Songshan Lake, nine competitors from previous regional competitions stepped onto gladiator style, large, outdoor stage with huge LED Displays positioned left, right and center. Each team of competitors had to prepare a one-minute video of their company and present a five-minute presentation with a Question & Answer session afterwards and then a ninety-second elevator pitch in the second round. The event was judged by 5 picked judges and 9 successful entrepreneurs. Set up much like the TV contest ‘The Voice’, the competition was high-pressure and featured a brace of competitors that had already competed and won local and regional industry-based sub competitions, the winner of Shenzhen sub-conference and the winner of graduate startup competition. Competitors presented technologies ranging from an underground wireless charging solution for electric powered vehicles, fireproofing technology, wideband power-line carrier technology, a cloud-based intelligent manufacturing solution, precision robotics fingers solution, advanced pet vaccines and 3D-printing for dental care.
Light Polymers drew the #2 spot and presented accordingly, knowing they would have to defend any lead to the end, through numerous presentations. After the video, presentation and Q&A session Light Polymers was awarded 87 points. As the evening culminated, the highest score next to theirs was an 84.5, challenging close to Light Polymers’ score. Light Polymers’ presented their breakthrough lyotropic liquid crystal chemistry which enables numerous (and various) product applications for smartphone applications including flexible and foldable OLED. Light Polymers was able to impress the judges with the utility and novelty of proprietary lyotropic nanochemistry as Dongguan makes over 20% of the 1.5B smartphones manufactured each year.
“That was lot of pressure,” according to Marc McConnaughey, President/CEO of Light Polymers. “I thought we lost at one point when the final scoring was tabulated. Adding to the challenge, our presentations and pitch had to be translated into Chinese at each point by Jie Wu, Light Polymers Manager of Advanced Product Marketing, who did a super job!”
Light Polymers is a nanochemistry company with deep domain knowledge of lyotropic materials, which have many applications including LCD and OLED flat panel displays, LED lighting, advanced building materials and biomedical assays. Currently, Light Polymers’ chemistry for OLED displays is undergoing trial stages with a number of potential commercialization partners. LED lighting products will be available worldwide in 2018 enabled by Light Polymers’ Crystallin® technology.
