spent 18 months looking into global textile markets, traveling to India and China, and even turned down what he says was an offer from a multinational company to buy his startup.
“It’s not good enough to have a technology, but you have to understand what market you can get into,” Curran says. “And you only know that by trial and error.”
Curran began to see the potential in home-building on a trip to the Dallas area last year, where he saw “thousands of square feet of pickets.”
Even through the financial crisis, Texas’s real estate markets have remained relatively stable along with a healthy state economy. Steady migration to the state from weaker parts of the country have kept the demand for new homes high.
When it comes to the financing of Integricote, Curran wouldn’t say how much the company has now raised. Three years ago, he said the company—then C-Voltaics—had raised $500,000. He declines to update that figure, saying, “we raised more money; we are still raising money.”
Three years ago, the company had also acquired contracts on the INSCX Exchange, a nanomaterials marketplace in Manchester, England, that operates like a line-of-credit facility for nanomaterials companies. Curran says his company, then or now, has not used that credit. “Nothing ever happened; we never got anything out of it,” he says.
Curran says he believes the company, as Integricote and catering to the construction industry, is now on the right track. “This is the first time where we see light at the end of the tunnel,” he says.
