Andrea Rossi on Business Plans, Philosophy

Many thanks to E-Cat World reader Renzo for this excellent translation of a part of Andrea Rossi’s discussion at the Pordenone meeting on October 12th. This is a very interesting explanation by Rossi of his business strategy and his guiding philosophy regarding commercialization of his invention. The original Italian transcript can be found here on the 22passi.blogspot.come site. Th

“So, yes… your speech is logical, the problem is complex… because first of all we can do the steps according to our legs, so the investments that we can do are the investments that we can do with our own money. I refused holdings until today because … because maybe all of you saw the movie about Mattei, the one with Volontè, it came out when I was twenty… and the famous phrase of Mattei is “when a dog joins forces with the hounds, he ends up being pushed aside and eventually the bowl is only in the hands of the hounds.”

“So – as you can see – it may be that our business strategy is not as naive as it may seem, because we must keep in mind that our financial development must be such as not to depend on entities that could not only put us aside, but even suppress the technology itself, because the problems in this area are much more complex than it seems. I have said it before, when I was asked the question about the possibility of applying this technology to large power stations etc., I said what I was told, I did not say what I think … [Applause of those present].

“And when I say that we have received ten thousand requests, but in the meantime we begin to provide only a few hundred, it is because we do not know who the rest are … meanwhile, we begin to do this with our own means. The projections of the business plan that we made are such that the profits from the sale of the first plants should have an exponential growth as to ensure that other requests can be safely met. If at this time we went to look for funding for the necessary funds to immediately build ten thousand plants, we would inevitably have a debt that could be toxic. You know, loans are like whiskey, a glass is good, two-liters kill the liver.

“So I want to have funding only if I am very sure that I can return that money anytime I can legally be required, because otherwise this could cause the consequences that we have said before. So the business model that we have chosen is a very aggressive model within the limits of safety to remain in control of the technology. We are keeping to this premise in all the world where we operate … in the United States we have made an extremely important deal… but we have to maintain this philosophy not only in our interest, I think, but also in the interest of the technology, because – look – to the point where we are, I say with absolute sincerity that I have had proposals such that I could say “ok , I will sell everything, take the money and with the money I make a life for me, my children, my children’s children and the children’s children of my children … and then for the others it’s their own business!” [laughs] We chose instead of attending the development of this creature [he points to the Hot-cat] in order to be quite sure that it will grow up and graduate. [applause of those present]”

Andrea Rossi with Hot Cat. (Source: 22passi.blogspot.com)