Company: GoSmart technologies Inc.

• Author: Peterson, Eric
• Position: [small biz] TECH STARTUP

INITIAL LIGHT BULB: With a combined background spanning project management to electrical engineering, Brian Smith saw an opportunity in charging stations for electric vehicles and founded GoSmart last year. "I had a vision and thought it was a good market to enter," Smith says.

So Smith put an ad on craigslist looking for a software engineer and an electrical engineer and got a response from Aaron Melin. Smith quickly realized Melin could fill both roles, and the pair co-founded the company.

Since GoSmart's launch, Melin spearheaded design of the company's products, and the pair found local manufacturing partners. The company enjoyed its first installation earlier this year. Smith and Melin respectively serve as CEO and CTO. The company has eight employees.

IN A NUTSHELL: GoSmart makes public and private charging stations. The latter are aimed at municipalities and businesses, often for use with credit cards, the former at residential customers and fleets--fees would not apply.

The units cut charging time by more than 50 percent, Smith says. "It takes a 110-volt input and moves it over to a 240-volt output. That takes a charging time from 10 to 15 hours and moves it down to two to four hours." The industry set a standard for the plug earlier this year. "The issue is, you don't want 18 different plugs on hundreds of different charging stations," Smith says.

"The charging stations are just one piece," he says, touting GoSmart's back-end software. "It can provide the user with all the statistics about emission reduction and petroleum usage. It's a completely Web-based user interface." He says the units are also Smart Grid-ready. "They can alert the utility company to the charging and intelligently speed it up or slow it down to avoid peak demand." Smith says the software is of special interest to fleet managers.

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GoSmart's public stations sell for $3,750 while the private units run $2,000. Smith expects the lion's share of sales to be in the latter category through 2012. The first installation was at the Wellington E. Webb...