Hi, everyone.
Thanks for tuning in.
I'm Bill Aulet.
And let me just start with a story.
I'll never forget when I first started
teaching entrepreneurship at MIT.
I came back over the summer, and Nathan came into my office.
And I had known Nathan from the year before.
And I love Nathan.
And Nathan came in and said, Bill,
I'm ready to launch a business.
Can you help me raise some money?
I said, well, what is it, Nathan?
What's your business?
And he said, the name of my business is Dipole.
And it's a new membrane technology.
And what it does, it revolutionizes the fuel cell
industry.
What it does is it produces 53% more power
than anything out there today.
It does this with 100 times less methanol crossover.
And by the way, I had patented proprietary technology
on this and the patents issued, and I got it.
By the way, it costs less, too.
There's a new manufacturing technology.
So I am ready to go.
And I looked at Nathan's business plan.
And I skimmed through it quickly.
And I said, Nathan, this is really great.
You should be really proud of yourself.
I said, but you know what, here at the Martin Trust
Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, we're
about starting new ventures.
And to start a new company before you go out
and raise money, I think you need
to talk to a friend of mine's child.
And he said, well, who's that?
And he said, well, it's a friend who's
in the business of lemons.
And he said, lemons?
What is it? Synthetic biology?
What does he do?
Is it some new fuel cell that I don't know about?
I said, no.
He actually takes lemons.
He squeezes the lemons.
He puts water and sugar into it, and puts it in a glass,
and he sells it to people.
They give him money for his product.
Nathan looked at me and said, I don't get it.
I said, Nathan, here's the point of the story.
This is a center to create new companies.
This is not a science fair project.
The fundamental business of business
is to get paying customers.
The single necessary and sufficient condition
for a business-- there is one and only one.
It is to have a paying customer.
So if you have a paying customer, you have a business.
If you don't have a paying customer,
you don't have a business yet.
It's that simple.