This document provides 3 tales of Roger Voisinet starting companies in the 1970s without modern technology. It summarizes his experience starting a company called Louis Ethan, Ltd. in Montreal, Canada in 1973 that manufactured office furniture. However, the company failed when the Bank of Montreal called their note. Voisinet then started Environmental Sciences Corporation in Canada focused on improving indoor air quality. He later moved the company to Charlottesville, Virginia and started another solar energy company called Virginia Solar Contracting Services, which built several notable solar energy projects in the late 1970s and 1980s.

1. Roger L. Voisinet
post TOMTOM Festival thoughts
For Professor Douglas Muir, Darden Graduate School of Business
The University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia
May 31, 2016
Entrepreneurship in the Analog Era
3 tales of start ups without the 1's and 0's..
In the 1970's we used the word entrepreneur sparingly even though many of us considered
ourselves risk-takers. We knew what it meant, but in those days one could not start a company
with a laptop in your pajamas from your living room. In the 70’s capital was scarce,
communications were slow and ideas traveled at the speed of letters and phone calls (with the
kind of phones that had cords and antennas). And it doesn’t seem that long ago.
The first three companies I started between 1973 and 1980 were in two different countries.
These efforts taught me many lessons and served me very well in the subsequent stages of my
careers. At the very least they make for a good story. And if I can alleviate anyone’s suffering via
sharing these tales then it will be time well spent for all of us. The last of the three lead me to
Charlottesville and Darden Business School but let's start at the beginning.
After my first year at the Institute of Environmental Sciences (our country’s first
inter-disciplinary environmental studies program) at Miami University (Ohio), I traveled to the
Soviet Union on a peace mission whose objective was "to prevent thermonuclear war between
our two countries". The organization was called the Citizens Exchange Corp and it looks like we
did a pretty good job. When I returned home I received a rather cryptic message from someone
in New York City. That someone was a visionary businessman named Skip Sagar who had just
bought a bankrupt office furniture factory in the suburbs of Montreal (in order to acquire the

2. patent to a "knock-down" desk design that would save energy in shipment. (see desk image) But
he was really interested in changing the world. We spoke and he told me to come on up to
Montreal and start a new job and life in Quebec.
There were 120 employees from 24 different countries at our start up and we worked night
and day for two years to turn the company around. We were called Louis Ethan, Ltd. (see color
caricature of our group) in Canada and DesignCraft in the US.

3. We also created a parallel company, The Organization of Planning Teams International.
OPTi helped build Paolo Soleri’s experimental city in the desert of Arizona called Arcosanti, (see
color photo below) and we built simple, solar appliances for the United Nations with Brace
Research Institute of McGil University. (see photo below from the UN conference in 1976,
Habitat in Vancouver) Other collaborations were with the New Alchemy Institute, the New
Games Foundation, the Solar Energy Industries Association (see black and white cover June 1975
below), the City of Regina,
Saskatchewan (see black and white
drawing below), Buckminster Fuller ,
GreenPeace and it’s first boat the
Rainbow Warrior, Hazel Henderson
and her Princeton Center for
Alternative Futures and Zomeworks
Corporation. But one does not start
a company in a social or political
vacuum. About the time our eclectic
and ambitious group
was taking on the task of
resurrecting a French-Canadian company, Rene Levesque was elected Premier of the Province of
Quebec and his main goal was to have Quebec secede from the Commonwealth of Canada and

4. become an independent
country. Ironically, the same day we closed on a large order from Nigeria and another one from
Quebec City, the Bank of Montreal (which had relocated to Toronto by then out of fear of a
successful election by the Parti Quebecois) called our note. Before the bankers locked us all out of
our factory and offices, I escaped out the back door with a chair I had just made. Driving
downtown in my little VW in one of the many snow storms of the winter, I realized I

5. was jobless, friendless and now country less. There was no legal reason for my staying in Canada
and all my co-workers scattered to parts unknown. Rick from California committed suicide. Of

6. course, no one received any unemployment or back pay as promised. The work we had started
in the urban planning, solar and the office design field was now lost.
Canada was and is an intellectually stimulating place and I remember learning from friends
about bio feedback, (see 1975 black and white clipping of colleagues who are still in business
today) holograms and air ionization.
I met a German fellow, Jeurgen Peutter, who made negative ion generators in his living
room. I became one of his first distributors and with another ex-pat we started Environmental
Sciences Corporation. Our focus was on improving indoor environments. (see image of negative
ion story) Juergen started Bionaire corporation in 1977 and you can buy his air purifiers now at

7. Bed Bath and Beyond. In 2008 the Government of Canada appointed Juergen to serve as the
Chair of Sustainable Development Technology for Canada.
One day we met a man at a Dowsing conference whose name was Bob Monroe. Bob was
an amazing guy for many reasons. Some knew him as the producer of the radio show, The
Shadow in the 1950's. Others knew him as the author of his best selling book, Journeys Out of
the Body. Bob moved to Charlottesville to start the Monroe Institute in Nelson County. The
Monroe Institute was and still is focused on studying the effects of sound on human
consciousness. Bob invested $90,000 in Environmental Sciences Corporation. My partner, now
deceased, was in charge of setting up offices here at the Boars Head. I was finishing up business
in Montreal and the last to leave and join everyone in my new home in Central Virginia. As I was
driving down in my new Volvo GT, I went to our
second office on US 29 where the Nature Conservancy
is today. I arrived expecting to see everyone and get
right to work but instead I found the office empty save
for two policemen. They asked me my name and when
I told them they showed me a brochure with my name
on the back. They said "there are thousands of these
brochures scattered up and down Garth Road all the
way to Sugar Hollow" and "you have to go and pick up
this litter immediately". I knew nothing of Garth Road
but soon found out by spending my first day in my new

8. hometown picking up litter with my name on it for miles along one of Virginia's most scenic
roads. Our young company had grown so fast it crashed from mis-management by my partner
while I was in Canada. So here I was again: jobless, friendless but at least not country less. All I
really possessed was a large and very fresh car loan and the determination to find a way to stay
in this new place. I realized I wanted to stay in this state where the cardinal was the official bird,
girls had flowers in their hair and most importantly the only snow was what I could see on the
distant Blue Ridge Mountains.
So I relied on my solar background and made a point of getting to know everyone and
anyone who had the remotest connection to solar or wind energy or construction. This lead to a
start-up solar manufacturing company and we manufactured solar panels where the current NBC
TV headquarters are on East Market Street and then moved to a second facility where T and N
Printing is today. But I ended up leaving this company to start a rival and we named it Virginia
Solar Contracting Services over drinks at the C and O. I had $75 and Dave Watkins, my partner,
had $1,000. I went to the original Virginia National Bank and the loan officer loved what we
were doing. He proclaimed "you can have any amount of money you want; just sign here." My
Volvo was collateral and the interest rate was 24.5%. It was 1980. A year later I had a home
mortgage at 16%. So here we were starting up a company few knew anything about, no one
needed, while being saddled with debts that most everyone would now consider usurious. Our
offices were on the downtown mall next to Miller’s and we moved in just as they were laying the
bricks over old Main Street to create the pedestrian mall.
But we landed a contract to build the world's first solar heated and powered railroad depot
from Southern Railway Corporation and it’s Green Light for Innovation Program. This building
can be found today just west of Wild Wings on Main Street along the RR tracks. (see color photo
below)

9. We also built the largest solar system in the country funded by HUD (see black and white
photo above) and we created, designed and built the first power purchase agreement which
allowed for the solar heating of the Waynesboro YMCA pool. We had hundreds of residential
and commercial customers all over Virginia including many from Darden and UVa.
Before email, Facebook and web sites and when Teilhard de Chardin’s Noosphere was just
forming around the globe (‘the organized layer of intelligence surrounding the planet” and the
earliest reference to an internet) I had to rely on marketing methods that involved little to no
capital. I did manage to get on the internet in 1977 via a crude modem connected to PLANET
an ISP in Menlo Park, CA courtesy of a former Harvard Fellow and someone who turned out to
be one of America’s most wanted criminals (but that is another story). I knocked on doors, house
to house, in Ednam Forest which lead to this job-the first solar heated McDonald’s in Virginia. (or

10. maybe anywhere; see black and white photo below)
I taught myself to write professional press releases and this skill led to a full page story in the
local Daily Progress on Virginia Solar and it’s projects.
Professor emeritus Lou Rader of Darden Business School was one of our 4 investors in
Virginia Solar. We supervised a few students who used our company as a focus of study and
research. This was my first connection to Darden. (see at the end of this essay Lou’s famous
Rader’s Rules of Business which every student in the 70’s had to memorize)
Dave and I believed that everyone could be an artist regardless of what field they were in.
To prove the point, I curated a popular art show at the original Second Street Gallery entitled
“Art in Business and Industry” (see photo of page 1 of exhibit brochure)

11. In 1985 the federal and state solar investment tax credits were expiring and despite our best
lobbying efforts, the weak leaders in Congress never renewed them in any form. America lost it's
leadership position in this important new field of solar energy and I was jobless again but at least
not friendless or country less. I was making progress it seemed and I even paid off all of my high
interest loans.
Although none of these three companies made it past their 5th anniversary, I regarded all
of them as a success. Through it all, I learned what every risk-taker learns in one way or
another:
...every YES is born upon the back of a dozen NOS....
The Chinese have another way of saying this....in the 4,000 year old Book of Changes also
called the I Ching, one finds....
....Perseverance Furthers.....

12. Somewhere in the middle of the Virginia Solar days, Dave and I bought the very first
Macintosh computer over on Ivy Road at the Apple dealer. The Mac seemed to be born of the
same DNA as the solar industry. I also invested $500 in Apple stock in those early days when
Apple was struggling but I felt it was the right thing to do.
Today that $500 has grown into the price of a TESLA...
it seems Perseverance does Further.....