The companies that we work with are very nascent, very young. They are start-ups and entrepreneurs. Many of them come from an academic background. They are trying to commercialize technologies that were developed by universities. Very often they have a great idea and they have enough to put some initial patents together and do a little bit of work, but at that point they're a bit stymied.
In clean tech there is often the need to do quite a bit of technical work that requires laboratories, people with expertise and analytical equipment. All of this is very expensive. People working one-off alone by themselves also aren't nearly as productive as people working in groups, so at GreenCentre Canada we provide that expertise. It's very much faster for the companies that are accessing it than trying to pull all these things together. They don't have the money. They also don't have the experience. They're focused on trying to run their businesses. We tend to help them figure out what it is they need in order to get over the hump so their technology becomes investable. That's what we do.
We have over 100 years of person experience in our lab, so it really makes a big difference when you apply that kind of knowledge to these problems.