Class 4 - Sales and Marketing

Instructor: Kitty Li, President, LIK Group

Kitty Li is the President of LIK Group which she founded in 2003. Her company serves real estate developers and architectural design firms. Prior to her pursuit as an entrepreneur, Ms. Li worked as a commercial real estate developer in China and Canada for over 10 years. She was one of the founding members in a real estate development firm which built the first shopping center in China in the early 1990s.

Ms. Li holds MBA and BA degrees. She is a native Chinese, lived in Switzerland and Canada, now settles in Massachusetts with her husband. In her spare time, she spends many volunteering hours at Boston Society of Architects (BSA) and the Commonwealth Institute and serves as the General Manager of New England Chinese Information and Networking Association (NECINA). 

Speaker: Dr. Kedar P. Gupta, Cofounder, GT Equipment

Dr. Kedar P. Gupta is a cofounder of GT Equipment Technologies, Inc., now called GT Solar. He served as its CEO and Chairman till December 31, 2006 when he retired to pursue his other personal dreams. GT Solar is one of the fastest growing small businesses in New England. The company designs, manufactures, and installs complete turnkey photovoltaic lines to customers all over the world. 

GT Solar started with a mere $1,000 investment from personal savings. Most of the funds for the working capital as well as for the growth have been acquired through customer advances, a very unique way to run a company. The company exceeded growth expectations from the start averaging over a 40% growth rate per year and continues to prosper even in a down turned economy because of its ability to expand into the global marketplace. A well respected, global leader, GTi won the SBA’s Award for Exporter of the Year for 2002, and it is projected that over 80% of GT Solar business will continue to be exported. 

Dr. Gupta is well recognized for his entrepreneurship. He has authored many technical publications and has been awarded numerous patents. In 1998 he received both the New Hampshire High Tech Council Entrepreneur of the Year Award and was a New England finalist for the prestigious Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. In addition, under the leadership of Dr. Gupta, GTi was ranked by Business NH Magazine in 1998 as the fastest growing privately held company in New Hampshire. In 2000 GTi won awards in both the New England Technology Fast 50 and the Deloitte & Touche Technology Fast 500, a ranking of the 50 fastest growing technologies in New England and the 500 fastest growing technologies in the U.S., respectively. Vastly increased sales to Europe and Asia have earned GTi its two latest awards -- NH Exporter of the Year, given by the U.S. Small Business Administration in 2002, and the National Small Business Environmental Exporter of the Year awarded to GTi in April 2005 by the Export-Import Bank of the United States. His most recent recognition was given by Mass High Tech as “Star Business Person” for the Energy Area. His new dream involves helping small NH companies especially with the export of their products. 

Speaker: Michael Lu, Chairman and CEO, BioDefense

Michael Lu – As the founder and CEO of BioDefense, Mr. Lu continues to serve as the Company’s visionary and driving force in commercializing the Mail Defender® and bringing the product to the mass market. Prior to establishing BioDefense, Mr. Lu was the founder, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President of two successful start-ups, Medical OnLine, Inc. in Lexington, Massachusetts and Laser Medical Corporation in Burlington, Massachusetts. Through both of these ventures, Mr. Lu was instrumental in developing the initial products, closing multi-million dollar U.S. and international sales transactions, creating profitable operations and directly investing and raising more than $70 million in investment capital. Mr. Lu started his career at Siemens as a systems software engineer and then went on to become a senior systems engineer in the Computer Engineering Advanced Development Division of Honeywell Corporation. Mr. Lu has obtained three U.S. patents, as well as a number of international patents. His research focused on computer imaging and graph processing as well as speech and vision recognition, radiology, magnetic resonance imaging, advanced x-ray, CT and nuclear imaging. Mr. Lu received a B.S. from the University of Massachusetts, earned straight A’s from Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate school, and further earned two graduate degrees in Robotics Engineering and Computer Science, both from Harvard University.


Dr. Gupta talked about how he started his company with only $1,000.