Brown University students Tyler Gage and Daniel MacCombie were staying near Quito, in Ecuador, last September when they were visited by a shaman. He brought some guayusa, a stimulant that comes from the leaves of a tree indigenous to the Amazon rain forest.
The stimulant, pronounced “why-you-sa,” gave Gage and MacCombie a caffeine-like energy kick when they took it. And although they took it after 3 a.m. and then stayed up until almost sunlight, MacCombie said, they were still able to fall right to sleep. “It lets you come down when you want to come down.”
Now, MacCombie and Gage, along with fellow student Charlie Harding, have taken that experience and turned it into a viable business plan. They’ve introduced Runa, a guayusa-infused energy drink that they expect will be in Northeast stores within a year.
Their business model last week won the Rhode Island Business Plan Competition’s 2009 student competition, with a $45,300 award in cash and services.
Presenting Runa LLC to a crowd last week, MacCombie, 23, said that within three years he hopes the company will be in stores around the U.S.
“The really exciting thing is that we’re at the center of numerous trends,” he said last week. “There are consumers who aren’t satisfied with energy drinks. We’ve created this hybrid, innovative model. That’s what excites us most – the model. We combine sustainability with social responsibility, with a great business plan.”
And one of the key elements of Runa’s business model is their inclusion of Ecuadorians. In Ecuador, they’ve set up Fundación Runa and hired locals and farmers on as partners and board members.
Along with securing a supply of guayusa for Runa, that foundation will allow for further growth, MacCombie said. When the drink hits stores, he said, there will likely be interest in guayusa from other energy-drink makers. The foundation will allow for the licensing, importation and wholesaling of the product.
The rules of the Business Plan contest, established in 2000, require that the winners grow their businesses in Rhode Island, from which the energy drink will be distributed.
Runa principals have already invested seed funding that totals about $20,000. But it could cost as much as $500,000 to meet the in-store deadlines that the company has set for itself, MacCombie said. And the drink, which is sugar-free, is awaiting U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval. The Business Plan prize will “get things moving, which is huge. … It will have a major impact.”
For Runa Original and Runa Blue Jaguar, the company also has created mock-ups of the can designs, both of which are blue with dark leaves and carry a tagline, “Energy Without the Crash.”
For now MacCombie, who in December finished his coursework at Brown and will be awarded a diploma in marine biology this month, is planning for a few busy months setting up the supply chain for guayusa.
“We were in Ecuador for another few weeks in December and Tyler has been there ever since,” MacCombie said last week. “And I’ll probably be there full time this summer.”
In the Rhode Island Business Plan’s entrepreneur group, the winner was BioIntraface Inc., a “bioactive” and antimicrobial medical-device-coating company. That business, led by Dr. John D. Jarrell, president, and COO David Spenciner, has created a product intended to curb problems that stem from “external fixation.” That’s a process used to stabilize complex bone fractures with an external bracing system.
The problem, Jarrell said, is that in the spots where the bracing enters the skin there’s a poor “skin seal,” leading to a 67 percent infection rate and 6 percent failure rate. BioIntraface has created a nanotechnology coating material that will cut down on those infections and better seal the bracing to the skin, Jarrell said.
The company, which has at least one client, already has about $250,000 in pledged funding, Jarrell said last week. Each year in the U.S., there are 100,000 external bracings that cost $1.6 billion, according to BioIntraface’s business model. •
