How Do You Fund a Deep Tech Startup Without Venture Capital? Ep 34

SCORE Houston Podcast: Subscribe/ Follow FREE: 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwYwZdflYjHJeI8oTA_fRJw
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3DTCZlN...
Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/b4a.

In this episode of the Go Houston Podcast, host PV Bala of SCORE Houston sits down with Dr. Bryton Praslicka, Founder & CEO of Fluxworks LLC — a Conroe, Texas deep tech startup manufacturing revolutionary magnetic gears that transmit power using magnets instead of metal teeth, with no lubrication, less noise, and far less maintenance.

🚀 What You'll Learn in This Episode:

• How Dr. Praslicka turned his Texas A&M PhD research into a NASA-funded startup
• How Fluxworks LLC won a $1.69 million Army SBIR contract while still in graduate school
• Why magnetic gears are critical to NASA's Artemis moon mission and the International Space Station
• How to fund a deep tech startup without venture capital using SBIR grants, SBA loans, and pitch competitions
• What it takes to land contracts with NASA, the US Army, and the Department of Defense
• Lessons learned from the Rice University Business Plan Competition
• Why Dr. Praslicka turned down a $2 million investment offer
• How Fluxworks LLC became profitable in 2023 and relocated to Houston, Texas

🏆 Guest Highlights: ✅ Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree ✅ 2026 SBA Houston District Innovation Award recipient ✅ Rice Business Plan Competition winner ✅ Supplier to NASA, US Army & Department of Defense ✅ Technology aboard the International Space Station

Subscribe for more inspiring Houston small business success stories every week!

👍 Like | 💬 Comment | 🔔 Subscribe

Give your comments at https://scorehoustonpodcast.blogspot.com or write to pv.bala@scorevolunteer.org. Let us know what you like of this episode and suggest subjects on which you wish to know more. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello, and welcome to Small Business Success Stories at Score Houston. This is where we bring insights, experiences, and the journey of successful small business entrepreneurs. Score Mentors volunteer their time to guide small businesses. SCORE is America's largest network of volunteer business mentors supported by the U.S. Small Business Administration. Here in Houston, we provide free confidential mentoring and education to help entrepreneurs start, grow, and succeed. Now let's dive into today's small business success story.

SPEAKER_02 0:40

This is CoHouston Podcast. I am Pivi Bala, host for today's podcast. Our guest today turned a PhD research project into a company that's quite literally reaching for the moon. Dr. Bryson Preslika is the founder of CEW of FlexWorks, a Conroe Texas manufacturer building magnetic gears. Gears that transmit power using magnet instead of metal teeth with no lubrication, far less maintenance, and a fraction of the noise. Since founding the company in 2021 years one, the Rice Business Plan Competition earned a spot on the Forbes 30 under 30 list of British technology on a path to the International Space Station and was just named the 2026 SBA Houston District Innovation Recipient of the Year. Brighton, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Thanks for having me, PV.

SPEAKER_02 1:40

Now, of course, the first thing that strikes me is you are a PhD student in Texas AM and you got an opportunity for building a gearbox for Luna Rover for NASA headed to the far side of the moon. So tell me about that assignment. How did that assignment turn into an idea for forming a company?

SPEAKER_00 2:02

That's right. Yeah. Thanks for researching all that. When I joined the lab at Texas AM, I went direct to PhD and they were already thinking about the concept of magnetic earboxes. Magnetic earboxes weren't a new idea. There's even a Wikipedia page for them, and there's companies in the UK that have been working on them for now over two decades. So they were already working on the idea of magnetic gears, but it had really never taken off. One RFP came along our desk, this was 2019 that the RFP uh came along. And NASA was asking for magnetic gears by name, but they asked for a step increase in their performance. Specifically, they wanted a substantial increase in their torque crew unit weight as well as their gear ratio capabilities compared to previous magnetic gears. So we wrote a proposal, we thought of a few new potential layouts of how a magnetic gear might work. We ended up getting it awarded and we built that prototype. It was just a quick six-month project just to prove feasibility. And when the prototype worked exactly the way we said it might, this new topology, um, as a PhD student, I thought, oh, this will just make a great paper. There we go. I really didn't think company first thought. But then the we were collaborating with this manufacturer. You know, Texas AM couldn't manufacture these space-rated gears. We didn't have the capability. So we were collaborating with this company to help us make it. And after it worked, the CEO of that company called my cell directly and said, Do you do consulting? And I said, I do now. And he said, What's your rate? And I told him a number and he said, Okay. And I thought, wait, how much should I have charged? He didn't negotiate with me one bit. And so that got me thinking, maybe I should think harder about this. What did that company see in this technology that I wasn't seeing yet? And also, it was significant to me in retrospect that he called my direct sell as opposed to calling my PhD advisor or calling the university sponsored research office to continue to work with us. Why did he call me directly? So I started thinking of the technology. I started thinking about why he called me. And I decided, you know what, I'm going to form a company and let's call it Flux Works. And instead of doing that project with this guy and giving him the technology, what if I start trying to raise my own money and make this technology a product? And that's how it started. I ended up starting it right at the beginning of 2021.

SPEAKER_02 4:34

Tell me since this is a new product that you learned. So is it patented?

SPEAKER_00 4:41

We have a handful of patents. We have some granted, some pending. I want to say about I think 11 that we've filed that are native to FluxWorks, all the IP sitting in FluxWorks now.

SPEAKER_02 4:56

So if this patent belongs to you or the university or joint, or how does it there was a great question?

SPEAKER_00 5:02

So there was actually one patent that was filed at the university. And when I first started forming FluxWorks, I started trying to license it from the university. It actually took the university three and a half years to get that license to me, but we started getting customers so quickly that I actually thought of new magnetic gear topologies while I was waiting for the university to get that license to us. So actually, the technology that Fluxworks is commercializing is actually a slightly different patent than the one that is from AM. By the time we ended up getting the license from AM, we already had such a large customer base for our new technologies that we actually ended the license agreement with Texas AM.

SPEAKER_02 5:43

Okay, so that's past you now. You're free to go wherever you want to go.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

That's right. Yeah, we have all of our own native IP for what we call the celestial gearbox.

SPEAKER_02 5:53

Lovely. Tell me, for listeners who don't know what is a magnetic gear, can you explain what magnetic gear is?

SPEAKER_00 6:01

Sure. Probably in your head, most people can imagine a gearbox. Think these two cogs that have these teeth. And what does a gearbox do? A gearbox is really this device that helps exchange torque and speed. That's all you're doing. One of the cogs is spinning quickly and has very low torque, and the other one is spinning slowly and has very high torque. The way I like to compare it is it easier to lift 10 pounds 10 times, or is it easier to lift 100 pounds one time? It's obviously easier to lift 10 pounds 10 times, right? Speed is always easier than the lifting, than the torque part of it. So gears are really just a method of how do you lift 100 pounds then? Sometimes that that's what you have to lift. You can use a gearbox so then that way your motor can run more quickly, think that it's lifting a lightweight, and then actually your direct output is lifting this heavier weight at a flow speed. So a gearbox is really just a speed and torque exchanger. So with that in mind, what a magnetic gearbox does is the same exact thing. It extends it exchanges the speed and torque on one rotor and puts it on another rotor. Now, the way that ours is special, as you mentioned in the intro, is ours uses just magnetism. There's no actual physical teeth that are impacting each other in order to create the gearing mechanism. Rather, what's happening is you have one rotor that has a series of magnets on them and it's spinning quickly. And you have another rotor that's coupled to it, and that rotor is spinning slowly and has a different number of magnets on it. The secret sauce is how do you get these things to couple? How do you get something that has a different number of pull pairs or a different number? How do you get something magnetic to move at different speeds? And that's really what's happening. That's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 7:58

Yeah, please go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 8:01

Yeah. So there's a couple of ways to do it. In the past, people used this idea of having a steel piece and then a piece of air as an alternating pattern. So that way you could have some magnets want to pass magnetic flux want to pass through the steel, but not want to pass through the air. So then you can modulate your magnetic flux to make one rotor look like another rotor across this kind of steel and air filter. What we've done instead is we've actually made the rotors move eccentrically. So it's a lot more like an engine that has a camshaft where you have these sort of piston-like things moving up and down. And what that does is creates areas where the magnets are closer to each other at one time and further from each other in another time. And that is what allows us to create this effect where some of them appear to be moving one speed and the others appear to be moving another speed. It's pretty difficult to show without just coming and touching and spinning a gear. But the exact mechanism of how we do it is something that we don't even put on our website. You cannot find anywhere on the internet about how it works. And that's something that we protect pretty closely.

SPEAKER_02 9:11

Yeah, you have to protect the. Tell me here the movement takes place through the magnetism happens through the electromagnetism.

SPEAKER_00 9:20

No, that's actually a great question. That's actually the reason that the technology is really taking off, I think. We developed a method that uses just passive permanent magnets, like the ones that are on your fridge in order to create this effect. And why that's so important is from a commercialization point of view, we are capable of taking off people's mechanical gearboxes and putting on one of our celestial gears. Not only does our new topology allow us to be the same size and weight as most previous mechanical gearboxes, especially the planetary gears that we're replacing, but also from a control and operating principle point of view, it's also no different. There's no cables, there's no coils, there's no drive needed. It's just as passive as the old device.

SPEAKER_02 10:09

Yeah, so obviously permanent magnet, rare earth elements, those come in here. Yeah. The magnet should be made of those belonging to the rare earth elements, which is more difficult to manufacture. So you get the rare earth depth. Do you make the permanent magnets in house or getting from somewhere?

SPEAKER_00 10:28

Yeah, so uh this is not the first time that rare earths have been a topic. When I was getting my PhD, there was a first talk big talk about rare earths in 2011, the second big talk in 2019, and in in 2025 was the third time that people started talking about them. So, with that in mind, we had rare earths on our mind since the beginning of the company. So, one of our patents that we're pretty excited about is we figured out how to use the same geometry and material composition that's used in most consumer packaged devices in order to make our gears work. So we actually use the same type of magnet that's used in like a JBL speaker to create like its subwoofer in our gear. So we actually have a variety of US vendors that can make this product.

SPEAKER_02 11:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 11:17

And one of the things that we like to really show off on is when we were doing diligence last year, the Department of War is one of our investors through the Office of Strategic Capital. And they asked us about rare earths, and we were able to show that actually pre-tariffs versus post-tariffs, we actually got our gears significantly cheaper because we get them all from US vendors, and these US vendors love working with us. So rare earths have not actually been a big challenge for us.

SPEAKER_02 11:42

Okay, good, good. Tell me, I read on the web before when researching, which said that you actually started a business before FluxWorks. That didn't take off. Was that true? And what was the experience that got you when you started this business actually?

SPEAKER_00 12:00

That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And I think also my obsession with starting businesses, I think, comes from probably my mom. When my dad lost his job, my mom just started making flowers in the evenings and then started selling them to people for 30 bucks or 50 bucks, making bouquets and stuff like that. And before you know it, now she's been in the knot and listed as one of DFW's top tourists. My family lives up in the Dallas Fort Worth area. So I think I saw from a young age that like not every business has to look like a SpaceX or a Tesla. It's certainly cool if they do, but you can also have very small one-person show businesses, right? It just depends on what's your the what's the mission of the business. What is the purpose and what's the goal of the business? So yeah, that's true. When I was in college, Tech CN, when I was an undergraduate student, I thought of a couple different things. And one of them that I actually ended up incorporating was a business called Jade. And that business didn't take off. It's not because the idea wasn't good, and I don't even need to get into what the idea was. What I think the main thing that I learned was actually my gaps as a leader at that time. I really felt like at that time the way to lead people was just honestly bossing them around, just telling them to do tasks. And if I just got the right people that would do tasks quick enough for me, I imagined that suddenly things would go well. And as I've grown older, I've realized that's not what a great leader does at all. I think that a great leader gets people to believe in the mission and gets people to internalize what are the values that this company cares about. And if you have that down, then everybody starts rowing in the same direction. And then your people can start to think of ideas that are better than ideas that you could have ever imagined, which are all rowing in the same direction. And so with that in mind, when I started FluxWorks, we really I spent a lot of time thinking about what are our core values, and we've even set up a ranking system for them. So that way people can be making decisions that they are confident are the right decisions. And I don't need to be involved in every decision or even most decisions for that matter, because I'm confident that we're all rowing in the same direction. So I'd say that's the main thing that I took away from previous attempts at starting a company.

SPEAKER_02 14:05

From what I understand, you are just finishing your PhD and you're getting the fluxworks off the ground in a manufacturing field. So that could have been very challenging, the early part of starting a manufacturing when you're not really ready. So can you talk about the early years of the first couple of years?

SPEAKER_00 14:27

Absolutely. So, yes, in 2021, when I got that call, I started the business as a one-person can as a one-person idea in 2021. And at that time, I was still in grad school doing my PhD program. I was still taking classes. Actually, also I had just bought a house and I just started really seriously dating my now wife. So a lot was going on at that time. And I was trying to keep it like a low and slow burn. I didn't actually want it to grow too quick because I was trying to finish grad school and get my life a few things under my belt before I leaned fully in. But actually, again, that didn't quite happen like I thought it would. Occasionally here and there, I was trying to get funding for the business to start growing it. And I thought maybe I'd get a 100K cash prize or something like that out of some pitch competition. And I was sitting in class one day, it was September 21st of 2022, and I had the date so locked down in my head because I remember how shocking that day was. I was sitting in class still, and I got an email that said that I had won a $1.69 million direct-to-phase two SBIR with the army. And I only had eight days to sign it and start work on it because it was the end of the fiscal year. We were probably one of the last down selects. And I was like, what do I do? We have to deliver on this. This is a huge opportunity. But also, I'm still in grad school and I had actually already bought the ring to propose to my dating girlfriend because we've been now dating for quite a while. And so I talked to her about it. I talked to lots of people about it, prayed about it, and decided, no, I'm just gonna keep growing the business while I also finished grad school for a little bit. And that was a very intense 12-ish month while I was finishing up my graduate program, while also the team by 12 months from then will have been in two different offices. We kept on expanding, hired first round of staff. They started hiring people that they knew in their network. We started winning more contracts. Before you know it, it was like by September of 2023, it was a completely different business. And then now that I've graduated, this was August of 2023 that I actually finished getting my PhD. I was able to focus full-time on the business. And one of the first things that we saw was we had hit a talent ceiling in college station that we needed to expand somewhere to keep growing this business. So we started doing site selection and of different places that we saw as a potential. We saw the Houston area as being really attractive to us for a handful of reasons. And so, fast forward another year by October of 2024, we would be in our now current home, our third home.

SPEAKER_02 17:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:09

And so it was just wild because yeah, each year we kept on expanding into a larger facility. First a thousand square feet, then 3,000 square feet, now 9,000 square feet. And actually, just two years later, we are currently doing site selection right now. We've identified a few 36,000 square foot facilities that we may sign the lease on, who knows, by quarter four. We're still just trying to do site selections. So I guess the point of that story you asked to tell you about the early years was it grew quicker than expected. And one of the core things was I had to really lean on and depend on hiring great people because I also had to finish my graduate program and I there was a few people that I needed to trust to help make decisions in the business. So I'm really thankful about the time that we spent investing in the core values and in the mission.

SPEAKER_02 18:00

Very good to think like that to that engage. Tell me, you talked about the funding 1.3 million or something from SBAR, right? No, that means you had applied for that competition. And you I think most of your funding came from non-dilutive, where you retain your control and you participated in the pitch competitions. Now this is very unique for me to hear. So how you thought that was your plan to fund with these kind of funding opportunities, or it just what happened? That you got these funds from various sources, and you don't have to run to the traditional banks to fund your project.

SPEAKER_00 18:45

That's right. I actually did try talking to banks, and they perceived me being a young person as well as the technology being so new as too high of risk. So it actually wasn't until 2024, after showing a couple of years of more than 1.5 million in revenue. And actually in 2023, we were profitable. It wasn't until then that we were able to get our first loan. So yeah, so I tried banks, it didn't work out. And then investment, there's a weird thing going on in the world, investment-wise, where it seems like a lot of people make that their business model is raising money. And it's so interesting. It's more about the raising of the money itself than the than I guess like the what you're selling. And I when I started the company, I already had customers. If you recall, we people called me and said, Do you do consulting? So from day one, we were able to actually have customers. So really all we did was start to write in in a non-delutive way, say, hey, here's a product that we already have. Hey, army, department of war. Here's this proposal that says if I make a few minor modifications for it, I think that this that this product or this technology could benefit you. And they saw, yeah, you're actually selling this commercially. Yeah, you this technology has been demonstrated and it's showing a little risk, but yeah, just a few things have to be changed. So same thing with space. And he was like, hey, it's working on the ground. Hey, if we made a few changes, could you help me get it into space and show the benefit that it would have? So yeah, there was never actually. So the reason I bring up, it's so interesting that people want to raise money. The reason I bring it up is because, yeah, there was never a need to. So it actually didn't cross my mind. And then when we won a pitch competition, we won that Rice Business Plan competition, it was advertised that you would get the 350K convertible note. But then after you win the competition, they actually said, Hey, I want to actually invest in you in a price equity round. And they verbally offered me a $2 million investment at a $9 million post-money valuation. And they wanted to make some changes to the board. And I said, no, thanks. I'll actually take the $350K convertible note. I actually have no need for $2 million. I could not perceive what I would do with $2 million.

SPEAKER_02 21:03

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 21:03

It doesn't, it didn't make sense to me. I don't actually understand why I would need it. And they said, Oh, never mind then. And so actually, we never took the 350k convertible note because when I said no to the big investment, they said no to the 350k convertible note. So we have this picture of me with this big check, but they actually they actually never gave it to us, which is pretty interesting. It's it's a weird thing in the investment world. Yeah, I guess did that answer your question?

SPEAKER_02 21:27

Yeah. Matt, and we have some clients who walk in who have a good idea, pretty innovative, I would say, not really as a form of invention, but they would like to test it out and commercialize that, and they look for funding. They can't go to the bank, but you are well aware of so many other avenues of funding through this competition, SBIR, NSF, and whatnot. So, can you just for the listeners, can you brief on what are the opportunities available for these grants?

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Yeah, I would say, and this is one of the reasons why I was willing to do this podcast, because actually, as a general policy, we turn down interviews. But one of the things that I wanted to talk about on this was actually that, yeah, the SBA has done a substantial number of things for me. So I'm really thankful for their programs, especially one, I began with the SBIR program, which is just a small bit of business innovation and research program. And it's when you have a technology that, you know, in and you have a commercialization plan, but there's some technical risk remaining. And that was true for our technology. We knew that it could work in certain ground aspects, but we didn't know yet if it could work in space. The gears have never been to space before. There's certain things with certain materials that happen in space that we really actually do not know what's going to happen. So when it's in the International Space Station, it's not a sale that we're making. We're actually de-risking can this technology behave like we think it will in microgravity? And it might fail. That is a very important part of the SBI heart program, is it is de-risking something that might actually fail because there's technical risk. Now, we've done all the due diligence to make a case for why we think it won't, but it has to have some risk to it. So that's been an incredible program for us to help breaking into new markets where there was a degree of uncertainty. Additionally, my first loan that I was able to actually get to a bank in 2024 was actually an SBA loan. We got the SBA loan for a draw-term 350K loan as well as a 100K line of credit. And we worked with an SBA partner, Huntington Bank. And I think they were able to take on us with a little bit higher degree of risk because of the SBA loan program. Additionally, when we actually did finally take an investor, which was ultimately in 2025, the SBA has this program called the SBIC. It's like the small business investment company, where those companies are also able to take on at times a different type of risk than, say, a traditional investor might be able to. And so our investment in 2025 that we finally took was a strategic one in which we worked with this SBIC that was licensing funds from the Department of War. And that kind of like government-backed venture in an interesting way has been strategic for us because not only is it just capital, but the far more important aspect of it is it's a strategic alignment with us. It shows that, hey, the Department of War recognizes that this is a critical technology that the US could use to rebuild a more secure supply chain. And being able to explain that to people, hey, we haven't just taken investors that want to get rich. This is investment that is defending our nation. This is an investment that is aligned with national security priorities. And that sort of changes the whole message, right? It's not just capital, it's also validation. And those are just some of the programs that we've leveraged. I know that there's a plethora more of them. And sometimes, this is one other thing that I'll say that's been awesome that we've worked with. Some of these can be pretty overwhelming to apply for, like applying for an SBIR, when you look at the solicitation, it can be, it can make your head spin. There are free resources also available through the SBA. We use this group in San Antonio, the Small Business Development Center. There's specifically one called the Texas, I think like Technology Commercialization Center, TCC. And the team there specializes in helping people write SBIR grants that have never written one before. And I got I use their free services. I sat on the call with them. They even redlined my proposal and explained how maybe what I was saying made sense to me, but how that might read or might be confusing to the reviewer. And so it was certainly thanks to their help that I actually got some of my first programs.

SPEAKER_02 25:41

You have been supplying to NASA, US Army, testing gear gears in the International Space Station. For a Texas startup company to achieve that is phenomenal. Now, what does it take really to get acceptance from such agencies like NASA?

SPEAKER_00 26:01

That's a that's a great question. I would say you need there's two big ingredients, is what I've noticed. An internal champion that believes in what you're doing at NASA, and then additionally, agency level strategic alignment. I think those two components are essential when working with these larger organizations. And that's true. Yeah, that's true if you were to try to sell to ExxonMobil as well. You need someone in the agency, preferably someone with some degree of decision-making power or level of technical influence, that maybe has seen your technology or has seen your potential and says, wow, this could benefit the agency. But then the second and very important ingredient is that decision maker now has to go talk to if it was a company, their board, or their manager, or if it's NASA, they need to show how this is reasonable and necessary for one of their highest priority missions. If it's the Artemis program, which right now, you know, the NASA is investing substantially in creating infrastructure on the moon. It's important to make sure that the technology that your champion is excited about isn't just exciting for being excited to say, but you need to show how, hey, this technology also helps close a gap in NASA's strategic priority of, say, it creating infrastructure on the moon. And here's how, right? And it is true in the case of our magnetic year. And for let's stay on the lunar example for just a little bit, which is not why we're going to the space station. That's a different reason. But just since I brought up the moon, keep talking about that one. Right now, one of the one of the challenges that NASA is having in developing infrastructure on the moon is a lot of the mechanical systems from seals to valves to motors and gears require grease in order to operate. And grease freezes below negative 60 degrees Celsius, any grease does. And so they have to have all these heaters on all of their mechanisms to heat up the grease in order to be able to perform functions. If you think about a large lunar rover that has hundreds of mechanisms on it, how much energy is being used anytime you want to do something just to heat up all of your joints? And the answer is it's actually a substantial amount, sometimes as much as 60% of the entire battery energy can be used to be just heating up the system. And then they perform a quick task. And then once it's done with the task, it cools back down. And so now you have to wait a few days again to do something else. And when you hear that, it's ridiculous, right? You're like, this is the craziest thing ever. Why are you spending so much energy heating up your system? Why can't you use a dry lubricant? There are dry lubricants available. The answer to that one is it ends up shortening the lifetime. If you use a dry lubricant, suddenly this rover now can only do something a hundred times before it's completely stripped itself. And so if you need these longer-term missions, but you also need more energy to perform more tasks to complete the mission, right? Suddenly a greaseless gear makes a substantial amount of sense, not just for the sake of being greaseless and that's being exciting, but because it helps NASA solve a key problem in what they're focusing on in developing infrastructure as part of the Artemis missions. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_02 29:30

Absolutely. No, I get it. I didn't realize that so much of the energy is required for heating of the grease, otherwise it would have failed. Wow, that's the news when I it's really interesting.

SPEAKER_00 29:42

And then, yeah, and then it's a rock and hard place because if you eliminate the grease by going dry lubricant, then you shorten the lifetime, right? It's it's either shorter life or shorter emissions because you're pouring so much energy into heating.

SPEAKER_02 29:53

Have you thought about any other application, industrial application, which such a challenging environment on which you have to use for which one would be willing to pay the amount of money that you would be requiring for manufacturing such a product?

SPEAKER_00 30:09

Absolutely. So our commercial focus right now, and we're quiet about this on our website, is actually the food and bev packaging industry. Surprisingly, that industry is quite harsh of environments, but importantly, it's also 100% duty cycle for sometimes three months at a time. You're trying to package food and that has to be cold, but then at the end of each day, you need to wash things down with hot brine in order to clean the systems. It's pretty harsh on the gearboxes. And actually, there's a lot of frustration in the food and bath packaging industry with the commercial mechanical gears that are used right now that already are premium, and we can actually be pretty price competitive with them already. In terms of more aggressive markets that we hope to break into in the future, be after consumer packaged goods, we have our sights set on the what's called the chemical mechanical polishing industry. That's the industry that prepares the semiconductor wafers before the final stage of semiconductor fabrication. And that industry has uniquely harsh environments as well that demand very high precision. These gearboxes already cost tens of thousands of dollars. And there's a handful of challenges associated with them in the extreme temperatures that they're facing. But that's a future market for us. We're trying to just focus on one right now, and I would call it, yeah, just the general industrial and automation um applications and consumer packaged goods.

SPEAKER_02 31:25

Lovely. Okay, I think we had a good talk, but before the before the last question, what would your advice be for the listeners, the new entrepreneurs who come to SCORE or SBTC seeking advice? What would you advise them and when they are starting off for a new venture?

SPEAKER_00 31:47

Absolutely. Yeah, I'd say two two big things, and this is something that I talk about often is one, do not waste uh it's not wait, it's not wasted time spent thinking deeply about what's the larger mission at hand and what are your values. I'll give you an example that I look up to a lot. Actually, Disney Parks and Resorts since the 60s had what they called the four keys, and it was safety, courtesy, efficiency, show in that ranked order. Since the 60s, that's how they've trained their staff is when you make decisions, you first and foremost prioritize safety, and then you prioritize courtesy, and then efficiency, and then show. And if an employee made a decision that said, I was just trying to be efficient and what they did was unsafe, they'd fire them. And that's important because if you don't fire them after talking to them about it multiple times, suddenly you're saying, Oh no, actually, we do care about efficiency over safety if you tolerate that. But if you emphasize over and over, no, safety is paramount, then courtesy, then efficiency, right? You start to build this culture. And this creates so much inertia that this is now how today in 2026, Disney Parks and Resorts is still so amazing and magical. It's because when you go there, it's safe, but also it's courteous and that feels so wonderful, feel so welcomed, and it feels so magical there. And they spent time thinking about that, and now 50,000 plus employees all row in the same direction. So it's not a waste of time to spend a lot of time thinking about what are your values, right? It's it's probably something deeper than the first thing that you think about. It's what deeply do you want to create out of your organization and write that down and start to test it, right? So that is my first piece of advice is do not skip that step. My second piece of advice is always to step out of your own shoes and try and think in your customers' shoes as much as possible. That looks like going and visiting them, visit their facilities, backpack with them for an entire day if you can. Because sometimes you'll have a certain assumptions about what people want or need. But in reality, if you just watch someone work for a little while, you will learn what they actually need, or you will learn you can take this idea that you have, and if you just message it slightly differently, suddenly it's going to get people excited, right? So we'll just get in your customers' shoes, get out of your own head, and make sure that you have perspective about is what you're selling actually what people need.

SPEAKER_02 34:24

Good. What's next for FlexWorks over the next two years? And what does success look to you from here?

SPEAKER_00 34:33

Yeah. We have a mission statement and we have this mission sprint that we're doing right now for the next year. And it's a ranked priority order. It says customer success, clarity, and repeatability. And that is just die hard what we're focused on is we have a current set of customers in consumer packaged goods and industrial automation that all we're doing is focusing on making sure that they're successful so that way they can share what it's been like working with Fluxworks. And beyond that, just working on continuing to clarify and be repeatable in what we're doing. So that looks like a handful of things from clear data sheets on our website to being able to make the same product a hundred times. And a hundred times it operates exactly the same. We're just really focused on the customer success, on the clarity, and on the repeatability over the next year. And that's probably something that we'll continue to focus on. But really, this year we're not doing a single more thing other than that.

SPEAKER_02 35:29

I think your research and development continues.

SPEAKER_00 35:32

We have some stuff cooking in the background. We have a next launch is coming up in November. We have some larger products that we're working on. Right now, our commercial offerings are four inches and six inches of diameter. One of the corners of our facility is being dedicated to our 22-inch diameter product that we're working on in the background. But those are lower priority than customer success, clarity, and repeatability. If resources got tight, then we're focused on on what we call the mission spread over anything else.

SPEAKER_02 36:00

Brendan, I thank you for the podcast. Thanks for coming over to Score Houston Podcast. Really appreciate the time that you spent with us. Thanks so much, PV. And very good luck for your future and the company.

SPEAKER_00 36:15

Thanks so much.

SPEAKER_01 36:17

Thank you for listening to Small Business Success Stories at Score Houston. If you are an entrepreneur or small business owner, we'd love to support your journey. You can reach us at 713-487-6565 or visit us at 8701-South Gessner, suite 1200 Houston, Texas, 77074. Our office is open Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., except for federal holidays, and walk-ins are always welcome. To learn more, request free mentoring, or register for our workshops, visit us online at www.score.orgslash Houston. Until next time, keep learning, keep growing, and remember, at Score, we're here to help you thrive.