Visionary Builds Electric Motors

Serial entrepreneur Ron Pretlac has developed video optical transmitters, provided web services for large corporations and created a technology to improve breast cancer detection. Now the Valley resident is developing electric motors as the founder and CEO of Westlake Village-based GreenTech Motors Corp., a startup company that recently snagged Boeing Co. as a partner. The firm will design, manufacture and market several electric engine models using technology that was developed by Boeing at its Phantom Works site in Seal Beach, Pretlac said, declining to disclose the financial terms of the deal. Pretlac has a track record for timing his entrepreneurial ventures to market-driven trends. In a previous venture, for example, he caught the wave of the switch from analog to digital media distribution; in another he entered the Web 1.0 tech bubble. With GreenTech Motors, Pretlac is plugging into the energy conservation movement. “We are in a race for energy efficiency,” Pretlac said. “It’s catching that wave again.” Company officials say the GreenTech motor potentially can be used to power a number of devices, including heating and air conditioning units, oil and water pumps, washing machines and other consumer goods. One prototype currently is being tested. He and others with the company say GreenTech is well-positioned to commercialize Boeing’s design. For one, electric motors are outside the core business of Boeing, which is a powerhouse manufacturer of military and passenger aircraft. Second, GreenTech is small and nimble compared to Boeing, which can be slow to respond to market demands because of its behemoth corporate structure. “They (Boeing) have this incredible (intellectual property) sitting there that could be leveraged and used,” said Burnet Brown, the vice president of marketing and sales at GreenTech Motors. Pretlac is just the person to bring value to Boeing, he said. “He is able to inspire through leadership by example.” Path of entrepreneurship A former college and semi-pro hockey player and coach, Pretlac entered the business world rather than pursue a professional career. He became a sales manager with Xerox in the Midwest and moved to California with his family in 1980. After a stint at a fiber optics company, Pretlac started his own firm, A.D. Optics, in the late 1980s. The company developed a transmitter that news stations used to make their cameras more mobile and fiber optic modems for the U.S. Navy that connected to multiple work stations. Pretlac sold A.D. Optics for an undisclosed amount to a private investor who moved the company out of California. He followed up with Westlake Village-based Net Value. The company was an early entrant into the online space as an Internet service provider and web application developer. Clients included J.D. Power and Associates, Xerox and a Christian radio station. In the late 1990s, Net Value created an online market research database for Xerox and an online credit card payment platform that enabled others to purchase the data, said Vince Vaccarelli, the retired research director for Xerox. At the time, the online world was in its infancy and there was no model to follow for such technology, said Vaccarelli, a Westlake Village resident. “Ron showed tremendous vision and tremendous determination, which are important ingredients in an entrepreneur,” he said. Pretlac exited Net Value by selling off its hardware and software assets. He says he put too much time into Net Value for little reward. “I never made any money out of it,” Pretlac said. “I should have taken the software and sold it to individual users and corporations. But I blew it by listening to other people.” As the tech bubble of the ‘90s burst, Pretlac co-founded iMammogram, a medical imaging company that digitized X-rays to better detect breast cancer. Actress and comedienne Whoopi Goldberg became the company’s spokesperson and made an appearance on behalf of the company. Pretlac left iMammogram following the appointment of a new chief executive in 2000. He said iMammogram was a losing proposition on the financial side. It was a calculated risk that entrepreneurs often take, Pretlac said. The company is no longer in business. Looking ahead After working at several area high-tech manufacturing companies, Pretlac joined W2 Energy Development Corp., a wind energy company based in Santa Barbara. It was a short stay. Pretlac said he had disagreements with his business partner over the direction of the company and was fired from his unpaid position. But he left W2 Energy with a new focus: creating electric motors and generators. Alternative energy, in this case wind, was only half of a solution if there was no way to store the power that was created and efficiently distribute it, Pretlac said. In spring 2009, by chance or coincidence, a Boeing employee from Seal Beach contacted him to express an interest in W2 Energy’s work. By that time Pretlac already had left the company and started GreenTech Motors. Boeing, meanwhile, was working on its own electric motor technology. The two companies explored a potential partnership, and after a year of discussions and proposals, reached a worldwide licensing agreement. A Boeing spokesperson confirmed the deal; however the company declined to discuss it further. Pretlac says GreenTech is likely his final career stop. “You need to turn it over to a younger person with a different education and experience,” he said. “That is someone who can take it to the next level with expansion of the product line.” For Pretlac, the satisfaction of launching a new business — complete with the challenges of solving problems and the excitement of discovering new technologies — has trumped any financial windfall that has come with his success over the decades. He says he can’t begin to calculate how much he’s invested in his entrepreneurial ventures. But a return on that investment can be calculated in different ways, Pretlac said. For him, the return is having a sense of accomplishment about doing the best he could under any circumstances. When things didn’t go as expected, Pretlac says he revisited a lesson from his hockey days: It’s not how many times you get knocked down. It’s how many times you get back up.