Pandwe Gibson is the Founder of EcoTech, a smart manufacturing lab for smart cities with an on-demand marketplace.
Tell us about your company. What inspired you to start it?
EcoTech Visions, established in 2015, is a smart manufacturing lab for smart cities with an on-demand marketplace. We have built this model through organic growth to launch and scale circular economy start-ups to use innovation as the means to meet Paris Agreement goals of climate neutrality by 2050. With our business to business white-label SAAS framework, we will leapfrog the supply chain. ETV is an end to end solution for our worlds largest problems. Think of us as a cross between a WeWork and Amway focused on high tech innovation within 4 verticals: Farmtech, GreenTech, EnergyTech, Space/Health tech. We accomplish this by providing access to leading laboratory and manufacturing facilities to those willing and ready to tackle climate change– focused on the future of food, the consumer product market, and energy applications using: tech processes; IOT; Blockchain; AI; AR/VR; and, battery innovation.
How is your company making a difference?
We currently service 26 start-up business founder though our space which sees about 300 visitors weekly about 16,000 annually. In the next five years, we will have spawned over 20 facilities; at capacity we expect to serve 300,000 to 500,000 entrepreneurs. This will bring us closer to our goals aligned with the SDG’s to drive innovation that saturate energy markets, consumer product markets, and other markets within the context of a circular economy model. ETV will aid in seeding the innovation that leads to a clear path for the future with sustainable food and water supplies and the manufactured goods for daily modern life in the context of an advanced human society, a sustainable natural world, and a diverse ecosystem.
We have also developed a green protocol to optimize pollution data through the open source movement where the users will be rewarded for being stewards of the planet
What are some of the challenges you have faced?
At ETV, we provide co-working space and advanced manufacturing equipment for product entrepreneurs to scale by removing the three largest barriers to market entry:
1.Eliminate the need to raise funds to cover cost of advanced equipment and reduce the risk of deployment of sophisticated machinery.
2.Access to and training for use of sophisticated co-shared machinery and robotic production lines to reduce the time and cost for entrepreneurs to get their products to market.
3. As ETV replicates throughout the Southeast and Midwest areas of the United States, our members will decrease their shipping expenses by up to 90% through: access to regional raw materials; use of local manufacturing processes; and, development of markets. Our mission is to develop the facilities at a regional, national, and ultimately a global scale for the leading brands who make quality green products. Currently our 52,000 square foot headquarters, located in Miami, Florida houses 26 start-up businesses.
What is your biggest win?
This is not just your average Billion Dollar start up. With each new facility, we will develop conceptual plans that attract public funding to change the infrastructure of the adjoining community such that it will become a more resilient, sustainable, zero waste and zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, diverse, well-educated, just, egalitarian, healthy, productive, and free society capable of successfully responding to the existence of existential threats that will be facing all communities around the globe by the second half of this century if human behavior does not significantly change to achieve by 2030 the Sustainable Development Goals articulated by the United Nations. By 2020, we plan to open five new facilities in Southeast and Midwestern America.
Who is your role model?
Elon Musk, Sir Richard Branson, Ida B Well
What do you wish you had known before starting your company?
How important it is to hire the right people and that you will fail a lot before you win
What is your CEO superpower?
Anything else you want people to know?
We house 26 start-ups–All circular economy opportunities. One Example: Earthware is a compostable cutlery product. Our resin is being developed from waste stock of sugar, corn and potato to complete the supply chain as we expand. In America, we currently discard over 50% of our yield due to blemishing or frostbite. In Florida, this waste stock has been linked directly to red tide which killing millions of fish annually and pollutes our fresh drinking water for months. Instead of allowing waste stock to threaten the environment, Earthware is using this crop waste in a manufacturing process where it becomes a green consumer cutlery product.
These products once produced and used–degrade in 90-100 days unlike plastic disposable products that take between 200-300 years to degrade, if at all. This solution and lab have endless applications and benefit to the world; however, it can only exist due to our business model of co-sharing equipment–like the co-work models.
The introduction of technology to network locations allows the entrepreneurs who use our space to secure business-to-business contracts at a 20-30% cost saving to insure market saturation. Just as the cost of renewable energy has decreased over the past decade, at scale our model will insure locally sourced product hit and saturate the market. Consumers want better green products that are regionally sourced and locally available. ETV provides a streamlined framework for manufacturing of such products that are to locally access within the context of high-quality walkable communities (a better circular recycle-to-market process).
