Promising New startups

Welcome to America's Most Promising Startups, an ongoing series profiling new companies from across the country that embody the creativity and resiliency common among today's entrepreneurs. Based on suggestions from our readers and staffers, we'll be adding more profiles on a regular basis, so check back often. Our goal is to showcase promising companies before they become household names.

Pancakes from a Spray Can

Batter Blaster

Founders:

Sean O'Connor and Nate Steck

Sean O'Connor opened his first restaurant in San Francisco shortly before the dot-com bust. As business tanked, O'Connor, who had grown up in a restaurant family and studied hospitality management, retooled his concept, turning the full-service establishment into a bar and laying off most of his staff. For fun, he spent a lot of time in the kitchen, playing around with various gizmos.

A failed experiment making beignets with a whipped-cream charger sparked an idea: Why not put pancake batter in spray cans and market them to consumers? In 2005, he teamed up with Nate Steck, a food manufacturing wizard, and raised $1.5 million to create the line and buy manufacturing equipment. Last year, San Francisco's Batter Blaster and its 16 employees squeezed out $9 million in sales, retailing the cans for $5 a pop in over 10, 000 stores across the country, including Costco and Whole Foods. O'Connor, 37, and Steck, 40, plan to reinvest the 30% of their gross revenue into marketing and hope to double sales in 2009.

Domes for Homes

InterShelter

Founder: Don Kubley

Don Kubley says he is "as mechanical as a stump." But that hasn't stopped the fourth-generation Alaskan from developing a business around a nifty piece of engineering: a portable building that looks like an igloo (with a door and windows) and can be assembled by hand. Kubley says pieces of his InterShelter dome fit together like fish scales and can be stacked in the back of a pickup truck, a noteworthy quality for customers looking to

transport units to hard-to-reach locations. The standard 314-sq.-ft. structure retails for $12, 500 and is available from dealers in a dozen countries as well as online, at intershelter.com. Kubley, 56, credits architect Craig Chamberlain, a former student of geodesic dome inventor R. Buckminster Fuller, with dreaming up the design and says he bought the rights to commercialize it two years ago. After a protracted search, Kubley recently found a manufacturer in Idaho to build kits. So far, Kubley, a former consultant who says he ran a fleet of charter boats out of Juneau for 20 years, has raised $250, 000 from friends and family. Though 2008, revenue was only around $140, 000. Kubley says he is negotiating with the U.S. military and Afghan authorities and projects up to $5 million in sales in 2009.