In his 20 years as a firefighter and emergency worker, Steve Nash has seen firefighters face extremely dangerous conditions. But perhaps none more dangerous than a large commercial building filled with toxic smoke and flame.

"I myself have been lost in a burning building," says Nash, whose day job is Battalion Chief for the Solon (Ohio) Fire Department. "It throws you into a panic. You have to calm yourself down and keep your wits about you."

A firefighter exiting a smoke-filled building would usually follow the hoseline back to safety. But Nash says firefighters can become disoriented and follow a hoseline the wrong way-with potentially disastrous results.

Nash had an idea for a kind of compass that could be aligned to the building orientation. No matter how bad visibility was at the site (the "fireground"), a quick glance at this compass clipped to his or her utility belt would orient a firefighter to the correct direction.

Nash and his business partner, marketer John Moore, got excited about the potential for a new product they called the FireGround Compass.

The pair formed a company called Halycon and created a business plan to develop this and other product ideas based on Nash's firefighting expertise. Nash serves as COO and VP of Development while Moore is President and CEO of the Chagrin Falls, Ohio-based company. Neither had any experience in developing, engineering and testing products, so they were stuck.

Nash luckily stumbled across a newspaper article about the Cuyahoga County New Product Development Loan Fund administered by MAGNET. Moore and Nash submitted their idea and won enough funding to try and see their product realized.