A Special Thanks to Everyone on Our Journey to Nasdaq: CRKN

As anyone who has gotten a company off of the ground can attest, the journey of building Crown Electrokinetics has been a rollercoaster ride. In the past six years, there were enticing offers to sell the company. There were also times when we weren’t entirely sure that we’d survive. But now, we’re publicly-traded on Nasdaq, better capitalized and poised for the myriad opportunities ahead.

This journey began when I was running Marathon Patent Group (Nasdaq: MARA) and came upon an overlooked technology at Hewlett Packard that stopped me in my tracks. Since acquiring the underlying intellectual property, Crown has embarked on the inevitable quest of continual product interactions paired with painstaking customer discovery in order to identify the ideal path to market. While we’re still in the process of reaching full commercial scale, I can’t express the adequate level of gratitude for those who have helped us reach this important milestone. Please allow me to elaborate a little bit below.

Our Team

Thank you to our team, which has worked tirelessly for years on end. A special thanks to Tim Koch and Jim Douvikas, our founders, who forced me to see the value of their invention way back in 2014. To the core team of engineers in Corvallis, Oregon, Jim, Cassady, Lee, Palitha, Kham and Brad - these individuals have worked around the clock and even through wildfires and a smoke-filled lab to develop our technology for the world’s benefit. 

But just as important as our team, are the friends and family members of our team. The demanding work schedule has kept many, if not all, of our employees in our lab and offices, and away from their friends and family, myself included. It is never the intention of a start-up to usurp that much time away from an employee’s non-work life, but it inevitably happens. To all those who lost personal time with one of our employees, I want to thank you for your past support and for your support in the future, especially to my own family and friends. 

As a management team, we believe that it all starts with our people and our collective culture. We will continue to attract, hire, and retain the very best talent. Our team members are brought in to Crown not just for their professional acumen but also for their ability to improve the lives of their coworkers and of their local communities. Fundamentally, we want great people. We know that our clients and partners are best served every single day when we have the right people interfacing with them on behalf of Crown. And ultimately, only through our team’s devotion to our customers and our community can we best increase shareholder value over the long term.

Our Market  - demanding truly sustainable smart glass solutions

Thank you to the clients and partners that comprise our marketplace. The world has woken up to climate change. Companies and governments have mandated better solutions which have greatly intensified the demand for our technology, DynamticTint™. Yes, there is the functional utility that a person can control natural light entering the room through their glass, but HOW we get there as a society is critical because the creation of glass is an incredibly energy intensive process. Therefore, building owners must be able to retrofit their existing glass, not replace it entirely, in order to enjoy the benefits of smart glass without further harming the planet.

While many companies can make claims regarding sustainability and reducing carbon emissions, we believe that only a retrofittable solution is capable of setting a new standard. Not only should humans be able to manually adjust a window’s tint but we should also be able to enjoy smarter windows that automatically adjust to the sun’s ambient light (and heat), quickly transitioning with the help of solar power. Just as it will soon be wild to ponder a world before electric vehicles, it will soon be hard to imagine a building without smarter glass. 

Our Investors

Thank you to our new and existing investors as well as our research and development partners. You’ve shown such conviction in Crown at times that others simply haven’t, and we wouldn’t be here without your support. 

Going forward, part of the reason that we’ve gone through the arduous task of listing on Nasdaq is to provide all investors with the opportunity to share in our future growth, not just the typical venture funds or institutional investors. From your car to your house to your office, Crown’s DynamicTint™ has the ability to let you easily control a room’s lighting at the touch of a button. This can not only replace cumbersome window treatments but studies also show that natural lighting can enhance your mood and productivity. Therefore, we believe that this is a personal endeavor for all stakeholders, and even the smallest retail investor should be able to join Crown for the rest of our journey. 

Doug Croxall 

CEO & Chairman

Crown Electrokinetics