Rob:  Well too often some of the very best entrepreneurial ideas are slow to get off the ground because of one thing, the lack of money.  Funding is crucial to turning an idea into an enterprise.  And, as our Betiel Michaels shows us, that search for capital is what brought inventors and investors together at the annual Bricktown Capital Conference in Oklahoma City.
Betiel:  Pitching ideas is the name of this game; ask any entrepreneur and they’ll tell you, having a good idea is great, but you need money to make it happen.  Tom Friedemann with the Francis Tuttle Technology Center says it’s an issue his students struggle with.
Tom Friedeman:  So many times students have these great ideas; they don’t have any inhibitions as to what’s keeping them from doing that, and usually it’s capital that keeps them from realizing a dream, so it’s just absolutely critical.
Betiel:  Here at the Bricktown Capital Conference entrepreneurs from both the private and university sector were all astir as they gave their best elevator pitch to investors who sat listening and waiting for a good idea.
Betiel:  Business plans ranged from start-ups to established companies that want to take it to the next level.
If they’re entrepreneurs, they usually have a tendency to stay in Oklahoma and we all know what small business, what kind of impact they have on our economic development in this state.
Betiel:  P J Bennett is the CEO of a small business that he runs out of Tulsa.
Male Voice:  Right now we’re looking for about a half a million dollar investment.
P J Bennett:  ActionCam is the next generation of aerial camera systems available to the marketplace.  We supply systems directly to the networks for use in broadcast television sports, entertainment, and film production.
Betiel:  And like many business ideas, the motivation behind starting up the company P J says was believing he could do things better than his competitor.
P J:  Well, it got started because I saw a market need while working at SkyCam where we weren’t able to provide the camera systems, the speed, and the agility and the stability that the networks were looking for; so I developed a new system called ActionCam to meet that market demand.
Betiel:  And meeting a demand is what it’s all about, especially in the world of elevator pitches.