Knowing what you don't know
Ever dread an early morning class? Well, morning classes may actually be a good thing! Lexi, Co-founder of Lumos Energy Strips noted that their start-up idea came from an early morning pharmaceutical technology class that just so happened to be at 8:30am. This class taught her about different absorption rates and how nutrients are absorbed in your body. She learned that it takes about 45mins to 1.5 hours to fully feel the effect of orally eating or drinking something. In contrast, it takes not even minutes to feel the effects of something that dissolves in your mouth. In this case here, we are talking about caffeine.
If you rolled out of bed, grabbed a coffee and ran to class, you wouldn’t feel the effects of the caffeine till late into the class. That is why Lexi and her co-founders have created caffeine strips that dissolve in your mouth so that you will be awake for class or work almost right away! They recently launched their product online and will be going to different campuses across Ontario to educate students about their product—stay tuned!! To make this possible, they have received funding through school pitch competitions where you can get non-equity financing and Lexi mentioned this is the smart way to go! This essentially means no strings attached. They placed in a number of competitions, including the Canadian Business Model Competition.
To get to where she is today, Lexi’s entrepreneurial journey began during her time studying chemical engineering at Queens University. She humbly noted that a fellow colleague, Heather Evans, introduced her to the start-up world. She noted that Heather mentioned how amazing the Queens Innovation Connector Summer Initiative (QICSI) was, which actually pays you to start your own company. This really minimizes the risk of starting a company, especially for students in university. It lasts all summer and commences with a 2-week boot camp that teaches you the fundamentals of business and then you make a team out of the people in the program. This is actually where she met her 3 other co-founders!
During this summer program, her and her co-founder at the time had an “aha moment.” They were working hard during an intensive weekend where they had to create a theoretical venture. Their criteria they gave themselves included making something memorable and making something with drones (they were all the rage). They had 48 hrs to create the strategy, marketing, financials and they had to stay up really late. At that point, her partner had already mentioned the energy strips idea and they really could’ve used them that weekend! They ended up creating the product in the lab and have now been working with a manufacturer to scale it up. She noted, it was pretty cool being able to create something like this from scratch.
Now, Lexi just participated in the Next 36 program! Lexi noted she has been loving it because she has always been interested in commerce aside from her engineering. She noted they have a number of professors coming from all over and now she has an extreme interest in international trade because of Professor Marc Busch from Georgetown University. She noted they also go through lots of case studies of start-ups that are now successful. For example, at the time Amazon was starting out, it wasn’t clear whether they would be successful…and look at them today!
Some of the challenges they have been going through are all to do with execution. She noted she’s had a huge learning curve. She noted that some say the hardest challenge is knowing what you don’t know and so at this point, she thinks that she’s nailed that down. To help her through these challenges she has had many mentors. Her dad owns his own practise and she noted it was amazing growing up to see how he could control his own life, and as a kid, she interpreted this as taking a 3-day weekend when he wanted. He really instilled that you could really make a real difference and this really influenced her even though she didn’t really know what an entrepreneur was. Lexi noted she knew she wanted to be her own boss and she’s been loving it! However, she has also learned that no one will be as hard on you as yourself, so she has had the best and worst boss because of it. Other mentors include Jon Hantho, who they met at the beginning of the Next 36 program. She noted that people are extremely nice and always answer positively when they’ve reached-out. Everyone who has gone through this journey knows how difficult it is and feels responsible to help others.
Through this whirlwind of a journey, Lexi stays grounded by surrounding herself with really great people, and her parents are very supportive. When something isn’t going well she will call her parents, who put everything into perspective, and even takes a weekend trip back home to Montreal once in a while. Then there are her peers in the Next 36 program, who are part of different teams but provide a great group of people to be surrounded by; she said that’s the best part of the program. She noted there is only one other company who is making consumer packaged goods in this program, but even though the companies are all in different industries, there are so many parallels.
Get to know Lexi!
Nerdy moment: When she was 14, she lived in Paris for 2-3 months through a school exchange program. When she brought it up to her parents they said no way, and directly after that she sat down, created a PowerPoint presentation on how it would be a great learning experience and essentially created a pitch to her parents…she’s been pitching since early!
If she wrote a book: She would call it The Other Side of the Table, which would be a book explaining how to go through negotiations properly and how to leverage what the value is to the other person rather than the other person simply explaining their value. She also loves to read, mainly on such topics as business or biographies…check-out her book list!
If she has any free time: She likes to hang-out with friends. She also watches the Mindy Project and really anything available on Netflix.
Favorite place she has travelled: At least so far, she noted Barcelona is an amazing booming city so close to the beach and Interlacken, Switzerland where there is so much skiing and hiking.
Motivated by: For Lexi, it is the promise of success. She definitely likes to challenge herself and that is why she chose to study engineering. Her strongest motivator is defeating the challenge in something so recognizably difficult.
Wish knew prior to starting her entrepreneurial journey: She noted there are a lot of really small things like doing your research properly, or knowing things aren’t as hard as you think they are.
Lexi has some great advice! Start now. Don’t wait. Don’t push it off to tomorrow. She noted that Heather told her to start something off as a project and develop a passion for it, then at that point, you can decide whether you want to dedicate at least a few years to it. Test the waters and see if there is a market. Don’t be afraid to reach-out to people.
Thank you so much for reading this post about Lumos Energy Strips. If you would like to learn more about what Lexi and her Co-founders are doing, please check them out at their website. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach-out to me.
