Before he turned 35 years old, Blake Fuller of Sarasota had already made his first fortune, developing a race car battery made with lithium cells that helps NASCAR teams shave weight off their cars.
Now, Fuller is developing a new niche market that could turn his little company into a superstar — wearable power.
His GO PUCK lithium battery power units can be worn on a belt or thrown in a purse. A GO PUCK 5X, which can charge an iPhone five times, sells for about $80. Need a mount with which to snap a GO PUCK to a GoPro camera or some other gizmo with a camera mount? Twenty bucks.
Q. How did you get here?
A. What I had done in the past was design very lightweight batteries for racing vehicles. When you switch over to Go Puck, the experience designing those batteries translates very very well. In a race car you have vibration, you have a need for safety and you have a wide range of temperatures, you have incredible impacts. Reliability is something that can never be compromised.
Q. What does the name mean?
A. PUCK stands for Portable USB Charging Kit.
Q. Many people are now walking around with two three digital devices that means charging. Tablets, phones, fitness watches. What’s the potential?
A. Their exponential growth and benefit also creates an exponential demand for power. As that happens, those devices need to become untethered from the wall.
Q. Do people really need portable power that much?
A. We are in the muscle car era for mobile devices. A lot of them run for even less than an hour. My iPhone 5S, if you are running some heavy-duty apps and you’ve got other apps open, you have a situation where you are “foot to the floor.”