Page 206 - MY STORY

hammer from behind his back and wallops the coated

sample, ceramic side up with as much power as he can
muster. The ceramic coating did not spall off or show
damage, but the titanium sheet substrate had a dent in it

from the hammer blow. After the audience came down
from the ceiling Dave calmly proceeded with his pitch.

After the meeting, we had an informal meeting with a
couple of key government customers, who wanted know
if we would be willing to support a contractor (one of our

competitors) with our survivable ceramic coating on a
missile program that was having trouble in this area. We

were not sure our management would give us permission
to do this, but we had already lost this sucker, so this
would not put us in a competitive situation.

After presenting the government’s case to our
management, we got approval to explore the opportunity

after a lot of flak got shot in the air. The future customer
claimed that this was a “build to print” program and
required no development, therefore he expected us to bid

the program to deliver hardware as a fixed price endeavor.
We agonized over this and decided to bid fixed price with
a pretty big multiplier on the value. We were to build