 another episode of Adventures of Commercialization. Today we have James Wagner, who's the co-founder and CEO of Jewel Case. Jewel Case is a company he founded back in 2017, 2015 that designs and manufactures battery systems and can ideally size for all applications anything from your local campsite all the way to as large as a music festival. So thank you so much for being with us today James. Yeah thanks for having me. Oh so I have had the pleasure of watching your journey from your early stages all the way up until now so tell us a little bit about your product and where you're at today. Yeah thank you. So Jewel Case started in 2015 like you said in building a product platform that sizes and scales for all of this stuff and it really started with that vision that Alex Livingston and I had back in the day and you know it's it's been something that we've worked on for a very long time in 2015 the environment the customers the technology weren't you know quite there but you know we knew that it was trending that way and it was kind of building to something that was much greater and so you know since we started with just Alex and I had an idea it's a transition where you know we've actually built out five different versions of the products that we built and sold to customers and incorporate the feedback back into our product. We now have seven patents that have been granted we have have about four million dollars in fundraising now and we have a very you know an exciting team that I'm really proud to be built up with about 10 different internal employees and then you know another myriad of contractors whether it's website development you know that kind of stuff as well so in the last three years we've been fortunate enough to double ourselves every year that's despite the pandemic and losing some of that focus where you know our focus was events and with the pandemic that went away and we were able to still double those cells so you know it's been a very wild ride it's been really exciting you know I've certainly learned a lot and there's a lot more to come. You guys were definitely successful in pivoting just in reviewing your websites it looks like you guys are doing home backup which we know was really needed a couple years ago in Texas we're looking at outdoors RVs food trucks which I just think is fantastic construction sites and then as you mentioned events so really in a wide range tell us a little bit so in general it's like a generator right but what makes your generator different from others what kind what kind of things did you add into those patents to really push yourselves outside of let's say the generator box? Yeah so we ultimately thought that all of these power applications should be solved with one product platform one simple elegant solution for anything that you need and with that idea in mind you know we've been building and selling to customers understanding that each step of the way there's a lot of additional technology to develop within all of that and then so the way the jewel case is a little bit different is is that we you know can be so much more modular the way I like to phrase it is that you know we're the Lego blocks for all of your power needs and then so your home can have 10 of these systems you can then carry two for a tailgate and then carry four for a campsite you know the point that your home grows you could buy another one and suddenly you have 11 for your home in an mx setting and then so you know I think both Alex and I are you know real big I mean we're engineers at heart we really fundamentally believe in the value of having this modularity and multiple different use cases and then so you know when you start to do that there's a lot of technology challenges that you encounter when you're trying to simultaneously solve for home backup power campsite food truck music festivals and events all of these have different voltages different power requirements can be charged with solar you know solar not available all of these different things and and then as we started to tackle those problems you start to create a more refined product you start to understand the technology that you are developing and the patterns that can be created okay wonderful so under your leadership drillcase has developed numerous battery products that all integrate into the same product platform architecture is this meaning that they can be charged in different ways you say you're taking it out camping we're taking it to festivals you can charge recharge pieces of it in your home how does that work yeah exactly right so you can start off with the the simple starter pack on our website it starts with $700 and that's going to have one battery module and one control module and so they can start to be used interchangeably in addition to that you can tack on a solar charging module you can then also add that to your home but that one starter pack is going to power a 42 inch TV for about about eight hours so if you need 16 hours you can stack two of them they can be charged via wallet they can be charged either solar as well they can hold that charge for about a year and they're going to do you know more well more than a thousand cycles before you're going to notice any type of performance decrease in the battery that's fantastic and so if I have say a couple different pieces of the stack puzzle here and I am camping and I say lose 25 percent of my charge can I throw a stack out to charge while I'm continuing to use the product itself yeah yeah exactly and so you could dynamically charge that with some portable solar panels you can also swap that out and stack one that is you know empty with one that is full you know the technology in that would mean that each one of these battery management systems are smart and communicating and are able to turn themselves on and off so as a as a consumer it's seamless for you but within the battery there's a lot going on to make sure that it's safe and that it works and that it protects the battery and protects you but now you can you know use these modules as like a fuel source you know meaning that you know maybe you are remote and solar's not keeping up with your demand you could then show up with a truckload of batteries that are freshly fully charged and you could exchange those and you could exchange them you know with live powered meaning you don't have to turn anything off and then you continue to stack and swap those and suddenly you you've replaced that fuel source with you know a whole new fresh battery pack and the application still runs that's fantastic that's very cool keep keep the battery going yeah so tell us a little bit about your journey towards patents you said you have seven patents and I we did talk in previous episodes about the journey to patents and owning your your product and owning your art so what what kind of hurdles did you have to go through to achieve the patent agreements that you have today yeah you know so that journey is going to kind of depend on the type of company you are and you know the funding and your experience with patent attorneys you know for dual case both Alex and I you know are have been involved in technology for a very long time you know I'm a mechanical engineer I have my PE stamp and working with developing technologies for a very long time same with Alex and then so you know the first patents were you know working with some patent attorney friends you know a lot of the patent writing was done by Alex initially and then fine-tuning by patent attorneys to then be submitted and you know you you have to have some sort of you know I wouldn't say that you know inherently that if you have a patent that you are incredibly innovative but you certainly need to have some sort of different perspective on things so you know make sure that you're checking out different patents that you're not just going in you've never read a patent you know I really like the google patent search if you just you know google google patents it will then pull up and you can then search you know any patent for anything by you know artists or you know by title and and then you know you will need to do a lot of writing yourself you know I even if you hire a patent attorney to write the patent which would be a little bit expensive they're going to need all that information be pulled from you so you know it's it's fun to think that you know you could just be the idea guy and and that you know everything else kind of falls into place but you know that's for my experience that's not been the case you know you you need to start off with a great idea but you know everyone's got great ideas and then you need to continue to evolve and iterate that and and you're going to need to you know out execute everyone and then you're going to need to build a team and you need to have fundraise and you know this journey is a very long arduous journey but you know it's incredibly fulfilling it's by far the most exciting thing I've ever done and I would highly recommend it to everyone but not because it's easy isn't that the truth as I've watched your journey you guys came and did a round of angel funding what other types of funding you said you only have 10 internal in place and a lot of in our past episodes we did discuss you know the friends and family rounds but when you have such a tight niche little group I know that you did angel funding what other types of funding have you guys have sought out for this project so we you know we started off with a quick like friends and family round and then you know we worked with Koretsu which is great in terms of raising a angel round and we did that a couple of different times you know the angel community has been really great to dual case and what they've done and then we actually launched a crowdfunding campaign on WeFundr so you know it's a you know it's a community round that allows anyone to partake in dual case on that community round on WeFundr there now over 800 investors that have invested into dual case on there you can check it out it's wefundr.com slash jewel.case and we have just a little bit less left in there so we're about ready to close out that round you can raise up to 1.07 I think the latest number was you know just under 1.06 million that we've raised on there so it's going to close out this month in addition to kind of the equity side of things dual case has gotten a couple different inventory loans from you know people that were writing debt financing for that and then we've also applied for a lot of grants you know dual case is certainly a great candidate to provide that clean power for a lot of government initiatives whether it's defense it's you know community it's backup power grid power there's a lot of different things there as well so you have to kind of approach you know everything that you can and all hands on deck on everything yes from all angles that's great tell us a little bit about your green power initiative I was seeing that you know previously you were pretty close with the electric car groups tell me a little bit how about those partnerships so with you know electric cars you know this actually goes back to a previous startup that Alex and I started in 2007 so R2EV was founded by Alex and I and what we developed was you know these battery blades that were swappable exchangeable back in the day and built out the prototype and ultimately got a contract with Moselle Engineering and Fiat and the Spanish government for 12,000 taxis using these 20 pound modular battery blades that would mean that you know that taxi just needs to exchange these packs and there'd be about you know there's eight of them on each one of these taxis and then you you'd have to worry about charging anymore and and then so we have an extensive background on batteries and around you know the EV charging space and you know back then that was the time of like project better place if anyone who calls that they they had a massive you know 800 pound battery that would use a mechanical arm to swap out in cars they actually had $1.2 billion in funding that ultimately failed in 2010 kind of that same timeline with the financial crisis so it was you know a pretty big shock ours was a much less of a you know a lot less investors of course but we learned a lot from that which you can see in the EV charging space now and you know if you watch like the Super Bowl you know every commercial is either crypto or those electric vehicles and you know now let's start thinking about what that's going to take to take every gas station and swap it out with an EV charging station and you know these are fast chargers so you don't just take your standard 20 amp circuit you're going to need a lot of copper to get the right amperage to charge there properly and then the electricity is you know the utility is going to now suddenly have these variable loads so the demand charges for a gas station to just have the ability to have a quick 20 minute charge from an electric vehicle are also going to be astronomical so a lot of that doesn't make sense and you know what we've always imagined is this product platform the bridges all of these applications and electric vehicles is absolutely one of them and then so you know the dual case technology does extend to very large applications such as the music festivals that we describe but also electric vehicle charging and what you can do now is that you can use dual case with some of these pads we have to provide that that fast EV charging at a gas station without any capital costs for that operator for that that gas station operator and then you know dual case would absolutely develop you know charge there'd be an upside or upcharge for us to operate that EV charging but then we're providing the electric vehicle charging at a competitive rate that's competitive to the market the the gas station suddenly has EV charging and what they want is they want that EV owner to be there for 20 minutes at the convenience store for you know 20 minutes as they wait for their electric vehicle to charge which now makes its efforts a win for everyone that is correct we know that Starbucks has already hopped on that game so wonderful all right we'll tell us a little bit so I'm really excited to hear last time we spoke or that I was watching you pitch we were hearing about some EDC contracts I know that COVID put a wrench in that plan for a little while but tell us a little bit about this festival like how does this work are we talking about backstage are we talking about EDC has campsites that I know that are run by their own electricity so how does dual case play a part in this yeah so when we you know really thought of a go-to-market for dual case we really like the event space for several reasons you know one is that you can get a brand and a name out there you know two it's a really ideal application for dual case because in you know an event or a music festival you know the sight lighting the ticketing merchandise you know catering food first aid in safety the main stage all of these are very different power needs power dynamics where if you're trying to solve that with something that is static you know you're going to be too expensive over here you're not going to build power things over there so you know dual case is ideally sized for that it gets our name out there and you're dealing with enterprise customers that are publicly stating they need to be eco-friendly and green and their alternative are these very dirty diesel generators that you know are you know as an example a music festival diesel generator will mint more CO2 over weekend than you and I driving our cars for an entire year so you know there's a lot of incentive to doing all of this and dual case is ideally built for it and then so you know each festival is different you know whether it's a week-long festival or it's just a one-night show so you know dual case can dynamically size for that so meaning that you know we can set up with solar and be charged indefinitely with hot swapping so that that power never runs out for an entire week or we can show up with the fully charged battery system and power it for a night and if there's any issues just do a live swap just at that one evening event right but what you would do is that you know we sell to event operators they show up with a truckload of batteries and they can of dual case batteries and then they can dynamically size dual case power solutions for each one of the power applications and you can eliminate all the cabling the cable ramps you eliminate the diesel generators and we do go all the way up to the main stage so you know check out the dual case youtube channel there's some really exciting demonstration videos and what we've done but you know events were the focus of dual case for a while there until the pandemic and you know we're fortunate enough to have a product that you know arches beyond just events and then we're able to sell into these other business enterprises and you know our focus has been more on the business enterprise certainly you get as a consumer you can buy it but you know let's take a food truck you know they're going to need about $15,000 worth of dual case battery systems but they come to us you know we're selling you know many different food trucks and styles and sizes every month right now and it's because that diesel generator experience is so bad for them and the ROI really proves itself to pay for itself in less than two years oh that's fantastic yeah two years is a good turn i don't know for that so when we're talking about needing more power are they larger products you said you have a couple different ones and i did hear you came out with a new product this year called stigma so is this a larger it doesn't have more stacks on it how does that work so sigma right so uh you know it's kind of another nerd reference in terms of the sum of all of your parts uh but um you know so sigma is a culmination of the last year's worth of work on the instrumental dual case team uh about a year ago we hired uh Dave DeMuro which was apple's head of battery um you know he's got a career around consumer focused battery applications he had 17 patents to his name around these consumer applications and sigma is the culmination of everything that alex i've worked on uh plus you know kind of inserting dave and a whole um you know large engineering team to advance this product to where we wanted to take it so we unveiled sigma at ces and what it does is it incorporates all of the feedback we've got from our customers it integrates you know the latest battery chemistry developments um you know so dual case is not trying to become a battery chemistry company but you know similar to apple or del will integrate the latest advancements in battery chemistry into a product platform that is now accessible for the end user and and then so we have you know twice as much energy per battery module we have twice as much power on the inverter side it's got a full iot capability it really provides all of the needs that all of our customers have been saying and it's you know it really advances the dual case product in in a very exciting substantial way but you know all of these different systems really stack together right so there are smaller there's different modules uh zoe but each one works within this product product platform you know meaning that you know if you have one dual case it does work and interact with all of the other dual case systems um and that's fundamental to what we're trying to build here really so stacking technology on top of itself i really i really appreciate that because as new products come out sometimes they're not interchangeable or working with the the previous one so something from going from $700 and then realizing that you need maybe a little bit more and moving up to maybe a food truck $15,000 in two years turnaround time to make up your money seems pretty reasonable and affordable for anybody to to build up on upon yeah we really like that right i mean people are going to buy a dual case battery system for one application but then our customers start to realize all of the other applications that they have for power and then they come back and they you know buy another system and another system so um you know with the electrical grid failures that we're having with the adoption of additional renewables that are going to tax the grid even further um and then with the kind of dependence on further technology where you know it's it's now a must to have that power at a campsite or a tailgate that wasn't the case before you know this is really the ideal time for a product like dual case and it's something that alex and i have been building for a very long time and you know it's really exciting see all of these kind of you know larger forces at play come together to where you know we we have believed for a very long time that this is the future i believe it i definitely believe it i've had a pleasure watching your company grow and i'm excited to hear where you're going so tell us where we're at now so we're talking about a little bit of extra crowdfunding um maybe if you could tell our audience we don't know if we've touched on crowdfunding this far if i'm about to go and throw some more money at you how how does that work for the general public in your crowdfunding role that you have right now yeah so there's there's several of these community uh round rays platforms uh the largest one is we funder that we're on so we funder.com they have a really great FAQ plan session out there if you have any other questions but it allows anyone to invest into a startup that maybe is a little bit earlier than what you know would normally be acceptable and then so there was some sec regulations that they kind of changed everything about three years ago um that have allowed crowdfunding to really blossom and what you're starting to see is a lot of startups are going this way uh you know typically you know the past it was through accredited investors you don't have to be accredited anymore and then so we funder allows you to invest is a little as $250 into dual case and ultimately what you're going to get is you're going to get uh stock into dual case and you're going to get stock into dual case at an earlier time before you know it actually would be publicly listed or traded um as a you know a actual publicly traded company um and and you'd be able to kind of come alongside this very exciting journey um you know the mechanics of it there would be a you know a special purpose vehicle for everyone in there um that allows you know dual case to accept uh this funding so you know if you know startups and you have a cap table um you know you want to make sure that cap table is not flooded with you know thousands of people and so the way the regulation allows this to set up is that you have a special purpose vehicle spv that all of this money then goes into and then that shows up on the cap table this keeps our cap table clean but then it does you know we funder manages this investment so that each one of those investors you know has ownership into dual case and sees you know realizes the upside the the exciting potential as we continue to grow wonderful and as you grow what is the next thing on your calendar so we're finishing out this crowdfunding and then what other do we have events on the calendar now that they're opening back up or what's to see in the near future that we can watch out for yeah so you know events are now starting to come more and more out past covid and and then so dual case has been going to many different events whether it's a pga golf tournament uh we're at edc las vegas in october um you know what we've been able to do is to um you know work with you know really great companies such as insomniac and we've been working with insomniac now for the last uh well since 2018 um and they're realizing their clean energy vision and and so we will be back at insomniac in may uh and you know some really exciting updates that will probably be coming with that you know nothing set in stone of course but you know definitely be looking for that as we continue to build up that relationship but then you know beyond just you know something exciting with insomniac there's a lot of other things going on with events in addition you know everything that's going on with just you know businesses that need power and it's no longer acceptable to have that power come from generators you know this has been able to make dual case be a very exciting product or technology for these businesses wonderful well i will definitely keep an eye out for you it really just coming from the event space it's uh rewarding to hear that we are moving towards this clean tech and really making a difference on the impact on how these events are run so thank you for being a key part of that whole that whole thing so i do since you mentioned your previous company and being kind of not at the right time and space for the audience that you were you're reaching for but now i think that you've come up with something that is easily pivoting to multiple different avenues to help and in all regards especially now after covid i know that a lot of businesses either shut down and move to food trucks or events or trying to ramp back up do things a little bit differently and consciously but if you had one piece of advice for entrepreneurs out there today james what would you give them you know i really like this advice which was you know it's it's not over until you say it's over right and you know so you know what i mean by that is that you know some sort of thing might be a set back um you know there might not be the way that it's going that you want to go exactly it never will it always will take longer it'll always uh you know cost more um but the only person that can tell you that you know your entrepreneur journey is over is yourself and and while you're going through that journey and if you've not given up if you're still determined then you know continue to progress one step at a time you know what jewel case has done is a very long journey you know i don't think any of these you know entrepreneur success stories whatever it is is something that happens in a short period of time and more often than not when i benchmark successful entrepreneurs i learn from you know it's journeys like jewel case where it's years and years in the making and only you can determine when you're done with that thank you so much well we know you're not done and we're here to watch your journey so really excited to speak with you again i look forward to hearing more about the great things that jewel case is doing for the world and the community as a whole james thank you so much for taking your time out to meet with us today we are at time so everybody thank you so much for joining us on adventures and commercialization if you'd like to learn more about how to run a business and how to make some mining then please come and learn from all these success and stories from our entrepreneurs we'll be back every other week at 1 p.m hawaii standard time so thank you so much for joining us have a great day thank you so much for watching think tech hawaii if you like what we do please like us and click the subscribe button on youtube and the follow button on vimeo you can also follow us on facebook instagram twitter and linked in and donate to us at think.kawaii.com 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