(#1) Jay Potter: ECOR Global, Environmental Technology, Circular Economy, Sustainable Building Products, Passionate Optimism & Breeching Into The Unknown.
Jay Potter is a brilliant entrepreneur who (so far) has personally raised more than 150 million dollars, taken 11 companies public (3 of his own creation), and has been a trailblazer in the environmental technology movement for decades.
He and the teams he’s been central to are responsible for introducing numerous groundbreaking inventions to the world, such as developing the first high-volume electrolysis for hydrogen and non-toxic disinfectants, the world's first solar parking array, the first industrial pellet plant in the US, and today he serves as the CEO of ECOR Global, a company that is converting agricultural and urban waste into sustainable building materials providing a more sustainable and cleaner future for us all.
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OUTLINE:
02:44 Mission
09:47 5-Minute Origin Story
20:32 The early signs of entrepreneurship
26:10 Software is eating the world
31:12 Meeting Tony Robbins in the early days
36:02 Doing hard things (shareholder takeovers and topgrading teams)
42:17 Sounding smart vs. being smart in action
45:41 Transitioning to environmental technology (smarter use of capital)
52:12 The impact of greed on an organization
1:00:36 The origin story of ECOR Global
1:10:12 The ECOR Global product
1:16:45 ECOR Global use cases and the pressure to compete
1:25:47 ECOR Global and the future
1:43:54 Hiring Stories
1:53:52 Jay’s 5-Year Crystal Ball Forecast
1:56:13 Career Advice
2:01:11 Closing Thoughts
Honorable Mentions:
More info on Jay Potter:
Jay has a unique knack convincing employees and investors alike that his vision for the future is more likely to occur than their own and proved it. That skill, combined with his die-hard advocacy for shareholders has resulted in an amazing fundraising success story.
Jay has led or been at the center of six start-ups and was involved with a team on seven others. Having raised over $150M for these projects during his career, Jay is now focused on ECOR Global, the pinnacle of his career. He calls ECOR his 15-year overnight success.
A common thread between ECOR and all his projects has been his dedication and focus on clean-tech and sustainable innovations and products.
But sustainability wasn’t always Jay’s focus. Jay had a very successful career in the oil and gas industry, drilling hundreds of wells and acquiring tens of thousands of mineral acres. Why the change? The result of serendipity.
A random client meeting brought Jay to a lunch with Ray Anderson, the Founder and President of Interface, a flooring company that invented the carpet tile. Ray Anderson was well into what he called ‘Mission Zero”, aimed at eliminating the company’s negative environmental impact. Ray was clearly a visionary focusing on reducing waste and emissions in the use of renewable materials and energy in all stages of the industrial process.
Hearing Ray describe his vision for the future was an epiphany for Jay, as he saw the economic power of sustainability. This caused Jay’s pivot away from oil and gas, and towards opportunities for innovation and positive change for the environment.
Starting with waste to energy gasification technology, the first industrial wood pellet manufacturing in the US, and the first ever solar covered parking array, and today focused on ECOR, building the most sustainable building material panel on the market today. Jay’s penchant for first of their kind efforts demonstrates his hunger for positive change.
With virtually no assistance from the investment community, ECOR shareholders supported the development and construction of the company’s first commercial facility now operating on a 24/7 basis to meet its European contracts, while actively developing new sites for facilities in the US to meet the contracts for our customers here in the beverage industry.
Through this challenging gauntlet, the company has achieved several recent technical milestones in water resistivity never thought possible and through independent verification of technical viability and scalability. Most recently, a separate independent testing entity awarded the company the prestigious Indoor Advantage Gold Certification for low VOC emissions. ECOR today is being considered by these independent engineering and testing entities as one of the best materials they have ever analyzed or tested.
The recent reception from the marketplace means ECOR is poised to disrupt one of the most deeply entrenched industries on the globe, that by some accounts presents the clearest path battling resource scarcity and at the same time one of the largest opportunities to offset CO2 and other GHG emissions. ECOR, is simply a better product.
Connect with Jay Potter on LinkedIn.
More info on ECOR Global:
ECOR Global’s flagship products, ECOR-1 and ECOR-Ply have some very unique benefits to offset CO2 and GHG gasses. It starts with a durable product that lasts longer, and stores carbon in the product. But that alone is not very different from traditional legacy wood products it replaces like plywood and MDF. What is unique, is the AVOIDANCE of CO2 impacts on the front and back end.
First, plywood and MDF are not recyclable as they contain toxic glues and resins. Further, they are made from mostly virgin timber based upon the highly energy and transportation intensive 100+ year old clear-cutting technology. Instead of virgin timber, ECOR is made from a blend of agricultural byproducts and post-production paper waste, adding no urea formaldehyde and no toxic glues.
ECOR’s conversion process is clean, which means our products are clean and fully recyclable. ECOR is in the process of fully documenting all environmental impacts, and has already achieved important independent certifications like Indoor Advantage Gold. ECOR’s decentralized regional manufacturing strategy is dramatically different from the legacy producers with massive plants shipping products to the four corners of the globe. The avoidance of the massive GHG impacts associated with transportation is also a game changer for the industry. This localized approach also ensures supply chain resiliency.
Visit ECOR Global on the web.
