Oklahoma Venture Forum relies on sponsorship to help fund the programs and quality content that we provide each month. OVF is also a great audience for promoting your company. 

We are about to begin the 34th session of the Oklahoma Venture Forum and we want to make sure that our guests and members can continue to enjoy venture pitch presentations and success stories from the founders of Oklahoma. 

This year we will explore:

• Venture Investing
• Electronic Vehicles
• Workflow and Marketing Software
• Bot SMS
• Agriculture Technology, and many other topics. 

You can see below that we have new opportunities to position your business in front of OVF Members and guests at our monthly online Power Lunches. Each lunch will have three breakout networking sessions that will offer an opportunity for company logo visibility and slogan mentions at a very economical rate.

In May we will host the OVF Awards recognizing the Venture of the Year, Most Promising New Business and Economic Impact Awards. This event offers a variety of levels of sponsorship options.

There are several choices for introducing your organization to OVF guests and members, while helping to support OVF!

• Networking Sponsor for Monthly Zoom Power Lunches $150.00 (24 available)
• Newsletter ad 2"x 3" (1 issues) $200.00
• Newsletter ad 2"x 3" Full Session $1,200.00
• Newsletter ad 2"x 6" Full Session $2,000.00
• Door Prize Sponsor $300.00
• Venture of the Year Recognition Sponsor $2,000.00
• Most Promising New Business Recognition Sponsor $2,000.00
• Economic Impact Recognition Sponsor $2,000.00
• Awards Event Title Sponsor $10,000.00
• Awards Event Table Sponsor $1,200.00 (4 available)
• OVF After Hours Sponsor $1,000.00 (TBA)

Click the More Information button to see additional information or to select your sponsorship now.

Best regards,
Oklahoma Venture Forum

Chairman's Perspective
Danny Slusarchuk
Standards IT

First, let me say thank you for evolving with Oklahoma Venture Forum.  Initially a significant challenge for our organization to lay on more technology.  As OVF moves to meet these new challenges they present new opportunities that we are quite excited about. 

How do we impact more Oklahoma businesses across the state?  How can we continue to provide the best economic content for our members?  What do we have to modify to keep networking relevant?  Tough questions.  Good thing we have a top-notch Board of Directors, a laser focused Executive Committee, and our Executive Director, Che’ to keep it all moving. 

With those questions and new challenges in mind here is what is exciting and some new stuff too.  First off, our membership kick-off will go down on August 27^that 5:30pm (virtual).  Invite someone!  Go do it now and don’t miss out on Nathanial Harding from Cortado Ventures speak.  He is all about moving the needle in Oklahoma.  Next up we will talk about renewable energy technologies in Oklahoma. We have David Jankowsky of Francis Renewable Energy of Tulsa, who will talk about their225Electronic Vehicle Fast Charging Stations, the third largest and most comprehensive charging station system in the nation, granting EV owners access points every 50 miles for recharging.  The September Pitch Presentation will be from Jared Boehs, CPL of HyQ Technologies out of Edmond. HyQ Technologies is a company focused on recycling produced water into distilled water and other valuable by-products through a market disrupting water recycling technology. This price-competitive, oilfield conscious alternative to disposal, increases capacity in place and delivers substantial volumes of fresh, distilled water for beneficial re-use.

OVF offers a lot of great live content, and with our virtual/hybrid events our programming can be accessed statewide. Virtual and hybrid events allow us to tailor content packages through membership levels.  Check out our new Founder/Entrepreneur and Incubator Level memberships.  OVF plays an important role in Oklahoma’s economic ecosystem, it offers support for innovation and entrepreneurship with critical industry networking, informative content, and recognition.  Join with the membership that works for you, invite other to do so as well.  Our organization has an incredible impact on the State, and through OVF we can all participate.

All the details are at OVF.ORG.

OVF Member Profile

Henry Dumas, Moore Norman Technology Center

Henry is passionate about helping business owners to stabilize and grow their businesses through one on one executive coaching. With over 30 years of private sector experience helping companies succeed in roles such as Sales Manager, Small Business Owner, Agency Manager, Chief Financial Officer, Public Accounting-Audit and Controller as well as certifications earned as Professional Certified Coach (ICF) and GrowthWheel Certified Business Advisor, he is well positioned to engage, enlighten and empower business owners.

Henry believes the role of a coach is to partner with clients to capitalize on their strengths, elevate their thinking, expand their capacity and challenge the paradigms and mental models that may be getting in their way. Henry presents his clients with objective views of where and who they are and enables them to create and implement plans to take them where they need – and want – to be. By changing their thinking patterns, clients often find that they more effectively lead, build relationships, think strategically and communicate with others. Henry is an active listener and enthusiastic partner who listens for understanding, asks powerful questions, provides meaningful feedback and helps his clients to reframe their own thinking and behavioral patterns to achieve outstanding results.

Henry combines his broad and deep real-world business experience with the best coaching tools and methods available. He is action-oriented and shares his clients’ sense of urgency to deliver results. Henry is skilled at working with high-potential leaders who are at the top of their game and must be rapidly groomed for higher level positions as well as those who are technically skilled or strategically important but who need to be more effective with their bosses, peers or teams.

September 9th 

Pitch Presenter
Jared Boehs HyQ Technologies

HyQ Technologies is a waste water recycling equipment manufacturer and service provider focused on reclaiming waste water streams, such as oilfield produced water, into distilled water and a concentrated waste stream. HyQ’s mission is generating profit from waste while driving clean energy stewardship. The oil and gas industry is our initial target market, where U.S. produced water volumes surpass the crude oil market by four fold, at ~1.02 trillion gallons per year. Significant constraints exist across the industry with the volume of produced water to be disposed and the fresh water that is required for drilling and hydraulic fracturing operations.  HyQ directly answers these constraints. Produced water enters our process, is recycled, and exits as two separate byproducts: distilled water and a concentrated brine slurry. Reuse applications of the distilled water and concentrated slurry are implemented, and the remaining slurry is then disposed. Customer benefits include cost reductions in their waste stream, reduced environmental risk, deceased trucking of produced water, increased capacity (through concentration) for existing disposal wells, and positive environmental impact. Beneficial reuse of HyQ’s distilled water byproduct includes agriculture irrigation, aquifer recharge, surface discharge, and reuse through oil and gas operations to prevent further sourcing of fresh water. Waste stream byproducts for potential harvesting include salt, lithium, iodine, and other rare element extraction.

Our turn-key services will drive down operating expenses and provide long-term value to both our customers and the environment. HyQ differentiates from current industry treatment options by producing fresh distilled water, rather than treating to a clean brine, only to be used for hydraulic fracturing operations. In industry downturns, where traditional disposal is the only mechanism for handling and disposing produced water, HyQ provides an alternative. Beyond oil and gas, opportunities are ripe in treating landfill leachate, power plant blowdown, mining tailings, brackish water, reverse osmosis reject and more. Our unique, modular technology provides for a cost competitive and diverse market implementation strategy. We recognize the importance of technology validation; therefore, we performed lab testing in March 2019 and a successful field demonstration, on oilfield produced water, within the Arkoma Basin of Oklahoma in July and August 2019.

Jared has 16 years of experience in the land sector of the oil and gas industry.  Jared began his career as a field landman, transitioned to owning and operating a lease brokerage firm, and served as Land Manager for a small independent gaining experience drilling wells and managing minerals across the U.S.  Jared then moved on to found a mineral and land management firm.  He holds a Bachelor of Science in Agricultural Economics with a minor in Finance from Oklahoma State University and maintains certifications as a Certified Professional Landman (CPL) and a professional level Certified Minerals Manager (CMM).  His industry experience, coupled with 22+ years in production agriculture, provides a unique point of view on produced water management.

September 
Virtual Power Lunch Guest Speaker David Jankowsky with Francis Renewable Energy

Eliminating EV Range Anxiety in Oklahoma and Beyond

Written by Dennis Spielman

With origins in the solar-power industry, David Jankowsky saw a problem in the electric vehicle market. With billions going into EV technology, Jankowsky noticed little of that funding was going towards infrastructure. While Tesla Motors may have popularized the electric car and built their superchargers, they ’re all closed source.

“We know there ’s literally going to be hundreds of car manufacturers in the next five, ten years coming out with electric vehicles, and they would not be able to use the Tesla superchargers, so we solved that problem,” said Jankowsky.“We developed and installed universal chargers, so any car in the world can use them, including Tesla drivers. We solved the range-anxiety issue, meaning no one ’s going to buy a car if there ’s no infrastructure to fuel them if they ’re away from their home.”

The Francis EV Charging Network solved range anxiety in Oklahoma by having a charging station every 50 miles. One could travel from Broken Bow to Guymon in their electric car. Jankowsky notes that one may have to drive 10 to 20 miles out of the way to access a charger because they currently don ’t have enough in Oklahoma. The first phase of the network features 225 fast-charging stations across 109 strategically located sites in Oklahoma, including small towns.

“We’ve done a lot of rural development, and we basically said, ‘We’ll bring a charger here, pay for everything, and it ’s going to cause basically drivers that have been stuck on the highways at the travel stops at the gas stations, they ’re going to have to come into your town to charge, and by the way, they ’re going to be captive there for about 60 minutes,’” said Jankowsky.“When we go to the travel stops on the highways, no one wants to wait 60 minutes to charge their car, so that ’s where we ’ve put in super-duper chargers, we got to call them something at some point, they can charge cars in seven to nine or 10 minutes. That ’s very much equivalent to current gas stations.”

The public infrastructure for EVs is not going to look the same when compared to gas. Jankowsky sees electric stations being more“ubiquitous” as they ’ll be able to go everywhere and anywhere. When people are at the office, shopping for groceries, or eating a meal, there ’ll be a charger.

“There won ’t be like six chargers on one corner, and six chargers on another corner like you see in the gas space, and there ’s a variety of reasons for that,” said Jankowsky.“It ’s not going to develop the same way gas stations developed because quite simply, you don ’t need as many out there as you do gas pumps because people can charge their car at home typically at night, which is where about 90% of the charging is going to take place.”

As a startup in Oklahoma, Jankowsky finds people are surprised to learn they we able to install 225 superchargers across the state.

“That ’s never been done before,” said Jankowsky.“Our largest competitors are definitely not doing 250 charging stations a year, and I mean, we ’re just one data point, but Oklahoma really has, and I preach this to everyone that will listen, we have this unique ability or position where we could be the EV capital of the world, both in terms of the technology, so there ’s a lot of technology in these chargers, it ’s mostly software-based technology, we have the manufacturing capabilities to do it here.”

Looking forward to the future, Francis Energy is expanding into 30 states to build the network out from Oklahoma. There are also plans to upgrade existing stations, which they ’ll continue to do until Oklahoma can take care of every car on the road. In addition to the expansions, they ’re working on an app.

Like competitors, the app will allow users to find stations, initiate a charge, offer a discount, and more. One feature Jankowsky explained is that people will be able to stay in their car and connect to a free wifi hotspot while they wait for a delivery. Stations are separately addressed, allowing orders to come directly to that charging station.

“There are so many cool things that we can do with the software that ’s in the chargers themselves to create this great user experience,” said Jankowsky.“It ’s not perfected yet, and so some of our concern is we have drivers out there that are using our stations that might not be having the best experience, and we want to let people know, ‘Hey, this is new. This is novel. We ’re working on the bugs, we ’re working on the kinks, but it ’s going to be great, just stay patient with us, and then here ’s what we ’re doing to help the user experience.’”

David Jankowsky will be speaking at the Oklahoma Venture Forum Power Lunch on Wednesday, September 9th, 2020. Be sure to register for the online ZOOM event to learn more about Francis Renewable Energy, hear a Pitch Presentation by HyQ Technologies, and to network with entrepreneurs an innovators in Oklahoma. Read more about the September Pitch Presenter below. 

OVF is always looking from early startup companies to come and give their elevator pitch to our members and guests. We are currently holding virtual/hybrid events and welcome Pitch Presenters from anywhere in Oklahoma.

Applications can be downloaded from the OVF website using the link below.

Apply Here

Are you interested in access to Oklahoma Venture Forum? The value is multi-leveled.

Would you like to hear what other founders and entrepreneurs in Oklahoma are up to?  Would you like to present your pitch to OVF members and guests?

OVF membership is made of startups, venture investors, colleges, incubators, accelerators, and service professionals, all of whom share a common interest in economic growth for Oklahoma.

Each month we host a Virtual Power Lunch. These events host a main speaker and an early stage startup in similar industries, providing opportunities for venture investing, connecting through networking and learning.

Our new programming offers a unique chance to host Pitch Presenters from all over Oklahoma. Are you ready?  We encourage a well versed presentation and slides are always welcome. Pitch Presenters have 10 minutes to pitch and 5 for Q&A. There is a link below for Pitch Presenters to submit an application. You can also see who has pitched at OVF.

You don't have to be a member to pitch, but if you are interested in becoming a member and want to take advantage of the member benefits and networking opportunities please review the member option via the link below. 

Founder/Entrepreneur Membership: This membership would belong to the founder/entrepreneur. It is a more economical option that allows access to 5 virtual Power Lunches with networking per year. Members would also have access to the other additional benefits of membership like member to member discounts, newsletters, online forum, podcasts and entrepreneurial event updates. The member to member discounts alone are extremely beneficial for new ventures.

Incubator Access Membership: This membership belongs to the incubator. It allows for 2 designated members.  This membership allows the incubator to air monthly OVF program events to a group of incubator participants during the scheduled event time, or allows the incubator to provide individual opportunities to watch recorded OVF programs onsite eat their facility. This membership has a value proposition offering clients access to quality content, networking, and pitch practice opportunities. This membership allows for 2 designated members and 2 guests to attend the annual OVF awards in May. 

Learn more about OVF membership at our Member Kickoff on August 27^th, 2020. This virtual event will explore the new aspects of OVF and our change in programming. We will also offer three breakout sessions for networking, and our guest speaker will be Nathaniel Harding from Cortado Ventures, a $10MM venture capital fund focused on Oklahoma startups. Read More https://cortado.ventures

If you have questions about membership options or the renewal process, I hope that you will reach out to me, I am always happy to help.

Thank you in advance for your time. I hope this opportunity is as exciting for you as it is for Oklahoma Venture Forum.

Attend     Learn More   Who has Pitched to OVF?

Incubators, offer your clients a bird's eye view of Oklahoma's business ecosystem. 

We encourage your participation in Oklahoma's oldest, most dedicated economic ecosystem. Your clients will gain knowledge from other founders and successful professionals. We also want to hear from your founders and entrepreneurs encourage them to submit a pitch application so that they might present their pitch to OVF members and guests.

OVF membership is made of entrepreneurs, venture investors, colleges, incubators, startups, accelerators, and service professionals, all of whom share a common interest in economic growth for Oklahoma.

Each month we host a Virtual Power Lunch. These events incorporate a main speaker and an early stage startup in similar industries. This programming offers great advantages, observance of what other startups are doing around OK, industry specific networking, and potential venture investing opportunities. 

Our new programming offers a unique chance to host Pitch Presenters from all over Oklahoma. Maybe you have someone in mind already? We encourage a well versed presentation and slides are always welcome. Pitch Presenters have 10 minutes to pitch and 5 for Q&A. There is a link below for Pitch Presenters to submit an application. 

If you are interested in becoming a member or if you have a client who might benefit from a pitch experience and networking opportunities please review the member options we are offering this session. 

Incubator Access Membership: This membership belongs to the incubator. It allows for 2 designated members. This membership allows the incubator to air monthly OVF program events to a group of incubator participants during the scheduled event time, or allows the incubator to provide individual opportunities to watch recorded OVF programs onsite eat their facility. This membership has a value proposition offering clients access to quality content, networking, and pitch practice opportunities. This membership allows for 2 designated members and 2 guests to attend the annual OVF awards in May. 

Founder/Entrepreneur Membership: This membership would belong to the founder/entrepreneur. It is a more economical option that allows access to 5 virtual Power Lunches with networking per year. Members would also have access to the other additional benefits of membership like member to member discounts, newsletters, online forum, podcasts and entrepreneurial event updates. The member to member discounts alone are extremely beneficial for new ventures.

Learn more about OVF membership at our Member Kickoff on August 27^th, 2020. This virtual event will explore the new aspects of OVF and our change in programming. We will also offer three breakout sessions for networking, and our guest speaker will be Nathaniel Harding from Cortado Ventures, a $10MM venture capital fund focused on Oklahoma startups. Read More https://cortado.ventures

If you have questions about membership options or the renewal process, I hope that you will reach out to me, I am always happy to help.

Thank you in advance for your time. I hope this opportunity is as exciting for you as it is for Oklahoma Venture Forum.

Member Kick Off     Membership Options 

Who has pitched to OVF?

Oklahoma's Venture Forum

OVF is happy to announce our new online forum.

Inquire and receive answers to your questions about business planning, venture investing, policy, startup mentoring, and a variety of business and economic curiosities. 

OVF members can subscribe, follow and create topics for discussion.Once you have subscribed you will receive notifications when some one has asked a question or your topic has been answered.

If you are not an OVF member you will see the topics and the discussions, to comment or inquire you will need an OVF membership.

Forum

Hello,

I hope that you are healthy and doing well!

I haven’t spoken to many of you since our OVF Awards, and I want to assure you that our incoming Chairman Danny Slusarchuk, our dedicated Board of Directors and the Executive Committee and I, have all been extremely busy determining what is next for OVF.

COVID-19 has obliged us to closely examine OVF’s important role in diversifying Oklahoma’s economy. OVF develops Oklahoma’s economic ecosystem providing quality content, venture investment opportunity, pitch presentation practice, industry specific networking. OVF recognizes the achievements of successful Oklahoma companies. Our members include entrepreneurs, colleges, incubators, accelerators, venture investors, service professionals, and just about every other person who is interested in the advancement of small business in Oklahoma.

Impressive isn’t it?

It truly is impressive when you consider all the things that OVF does to connect, teach, and recognize. OVF offers purposeful networking for leaders of commerce. OVF programs create awareness of business opportunities and trends, and OVF annual awards spotlights outstanding Oklahoma success stories.

The world has changed significantly during the pandemic, and organizations like OVF continue to work towards diversifying Oklahoma's economy. OVF must continue to encourage and identify the importance of entrepreneurship in our state. We cannot do that without you, our members, and friends.

The OVF Board, Executive Committee and sub-committees have been virtually meeting often during the last several weeks looking for the best solution for our 33-year-old economic ecosystem. We could see from the annual surveys that the top three membership values of OVF are quality content in main speakers, investment opportunities in Pitch Presenters, and industry specific networking. With those core values in mind, we coordinated new programming for the 2020-2021 session that will deliver these three valued aspects of OVF to our members and friends safely!

The OVF 2020-2021 Session monthly Power Lunches will be delivered via Zoom. Since you will not be commuting to and parking at the meetings, we will be adding additional networking time. Each event will have three networking breakout sessions with randomly selected groups in each session.  This will ensure maximum networking opportunities. Each event will have a Pitch Presentation by a company in a growth stage, and a Main Speaker who will share success experiences, exit stories or other educational subject matter just like our in-person events in the past. These events will also be uploaded to our website for later viewing by members. Our online event programming also allows for three sponsorship opportunities.  If you are looking for a great way to introduce your company to OVF members and guests, this is a cost-effective way to say hello!

Your needs and your health are most important to us. We will continue to have virtual events until we can meet in-person safely. When we can meet safely, we will add after-hours networking events in open air locations. Face-to face meetings are important, and with our new programming layout we hope to double the number of after-hours events. If you have locations in mind, please share them with me.

While discussing how to proceed safely, we realized that our new programming would allow for statewide membership expansion. We have wanted to do this for a long time and have not been able to (do so successfully) for a variety of reasons. Virtual meetings have also revealed another opportunity for OVF - with the option of streaming and recorded events we will now be able to offer Incubator and Founder memberships that better suite their needs.

Wouldn't it be an amazing for small businesses, investors, incubators, colleges, and founders from all over Oklahoman to be able to access OVF’s quality content, potential venture investment opportunities, or the opportunity to pitch without driving to OKC? The COVID-19 situation has been disastrous for so many small businesses, founders, and citizens. OVF is very fortunate to have the ability to pivot and ensure our organization will continue to operate in its next 33 years as Oklahoma’s economic ecosystem.  

We have also launched our online forum, please subscribe to it and use it to seek out information, share information, or to engage directly with OVF. There are so many (NEW) benefits to OVF membership. I hope that you have time to visit the website and see all of the new tools available to you as an OVF member or friend. 

“Stay resilient, maintain the “Oklahoma Standard” and invite a guest to our upcoming membership drive.  This will be incredibly important for the success of these new offerings to succeed.  So please reach into your network. Find someone who you think would benefit from the many facets of the OVF economic ecosystem and all the new ways we are serving Oklahoma and let’s grow!  When OVF grows, your state and local communities grow.”

~2020-2021 Oklahoma Venture Forum Chairman, Danny Slusarchuk

Regards,
Ché Loessberg
Oklahoma Venture Forum
Executive Director