"I don't have a hillbilly coat," she replies girlishly.
The couple moved to Santa Rosa from San Francisco two years ago to escape soaring Russian Hill rents. Sharon chose their new place because, though a bit small, it overlooked a pasture where horses were kept. But then, eight months after they moved in, the horses disappeared and a developer broke ground on a new complex. In their early days in Santa Rosa, Sharon was ill and didn't work, straining the couple's finances. "We've had our struggles as a married little family here on essentially one income," Battaglia says. Still, Sharon is unfailingly supportive of his invention work.
We go outside and come to a large, executive-looking Chrysler that's painted jade green and upholstered in rich ebony leather. Battaglia's day job is managing a Thrifty rental-car office on the freeway that runs through the city. As a manager, he can get a good car for a special occasion like today's. We hop in and drive across town to a one-story office building. In the parking lot is a sandwich-board sign with the word "Inventors" above an arrow pointing to the entrance.
The meeting is already under way, and Schneider is busy stamping out any furtiveness. A Name-tag Nazi with the silky voice of a radio announcer, he compels participants to introduce themselves and their inventions. Each month ITM draws anywhere from 40 to 80 participants. The group's members are pretty diverse. There are farmers and athletic preppy types and women in business suits and people with foreign accents and even a few people with unkempt hair and long fingernails, thus reviving the old inventor stereotype. Battaglia points to two refined older gentlemen sitting in the front row and identifies them as millionaires. In contrast, another guy has endured two hours on a bus to attend. He has recently sold his car and hocked his wristwatch to raise research-and-development money. One man has a small child in tow -- I wonder if he has a weekend-custody deal.
Schneider introduces John Christensen, a longtime entrepreneur who has spoken to inventors groups in Sacramento, Santa Clara, and Paso Robles, and founded one of his own that meets in Manteca, Calif. Christensen is an elfin man in his fifties clad in a polo shirt bearing the logo of his company, Sandpiper Technologies Inc. His wife and collaborator, Ann, is in the audience. John has earned patents for anticounterfeiting technology, an indoor wind chime, and a camera used by wildlife biologists to see into the nests of endangered bird species.
Although a few of the older salts in the room occasionally interrupt Christensen's talk, everyone else is mesmerized. They nod when he says, "One percent of invention is invention -- any idiot can have a great idea. What matters is what you do with it." And they scribble in their pads when Christensen tells them how best to manage themselves. It's easy to become frustrated in a business world that often rejects innovation, he admits. "I recommend that you work on three projects at any given time. If you work on one project and focus on it, you lose perspective. If you work on two, you constantly ask yourself, 'Which one should I work on?' But if you have three going, the most wonderful thing usually happens: one of them turns out to be a success," he says. "And it's usually the one you least expect."
We break for lunch. Battaglia sidles up to me and says that the three-idea tip struck him as helpful. He has other ideas, he promises. But still, the geodesic athletic equipment -- well, he can't believe that it isn't a winner. "It's the best, most valuable idea I've ever had," he asserts.
LONELY ART'S CLUB: "When you don't know why you're not succeeding, it tears at your sense of right and wrong."
Back at his apartment after the meeting, Battaglia breaks out his files, which have been kept as faithfully as if they belonged to J. Edgar Hoover. They are jammed with the detritus of invention. Notes on napkins. Lists. Copies of correspondence. Market research in the form of the kind of candy-colored charts that appear in USA Today. His early drawings of helmets and knee pads are signed and dated by a witness, since Battaglia heard that taking such precautions was an effective way to prevent the theft of intellectual property.
The files reveal the many ways over the years that Battaglia has tried to get backing for his idea, which he refers to as Dometric Technology for marketing purposes. There is a 1997 letter to an incubator in San Jose, Calif., asking for design assistance, prototype development, and an introduction to a NASA testing facility. There is an application to the 1998 Discover magazine innovation awards, which failed to make the grade. And there are many letters to rich people. Battaglia has pitched his idea to Mark Cuban, the billionaire Internet entrepreneur who owns the Dallas Mavericks. He has pitched former quarterback Steve Young. He has pitched Dean Kamen, the celebrated inventor who unveiled the Segway Human Transporter on Good Morning America last year.
Another letter in Battaglia's files is addressed to Ted Leonsis, the wealthy AOL Time Warner executive who owns the Washington Capitals. Leonsis, though notoriously arrogant, didn't reject Battaglia out of hand. He never got the chance since Battaglia never mailed the letter. Why? "How much 'no' can you take?" he says, starting to sound like Henry Fonda in The Grapes of Wrath. "When you don't know why you're not succeeding, it tears at your sense of right and wrong."
