WAVE Board of Advisors

Chad Sorenson
Sologear

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Chad Sorenson is the president and a cofounder of Sologear, an early-stage consumer products manufacturer of proprietary solidified ethanol fuels. He invented Sologear’s founding product, the FlameDisk, which is a pie-shaped device that is used instead of charcoal within barbeque grills and provides instant heat, 45 minutes of cook time and rapid cool-down in a simple, compact profile. The FlameDisk retails for $5 and is being sold through many national retailers including Home Depot and Dick’s Sporting Goods. In 2008, it was selected at the DoItBest National Hardware show as the “Member’s Choice” New Product of the Year.

Within Sologear, Mr. Sorenson oversees all aspects of the business and is the lead technical visionary for new product development, intellectual property and process engineering. His core skills and experience are in identifying market opportunities, conceiving new product solutions and commercializing new products.

Prior to founding Sologear, Mr. Sorenson was the president and founder of Fluent Systems, an agricultural technology company that also resulted from a self-invention. After identifying a common problem during fertilizer application, he developed a two-module fluid monitoring system that could be used to provide missing information like current fluid level and application rate per acre to farmers. The product received the FinOvation “Best New Chemical Application Product” in 2004 from Farm Industry News. Fluent Systems was acquired by Raven Industries in 2003 for $1.5 million, less than two years after it was founded.

Prior to his entrepreneurial pursuits, Mr. Sorenson spent three years within the contract product design field working as a product engineer for Design Concepts, Inc. and four years within the iontophoretic drug delivery field working for Alza Corporation.

Mr. Sorenson has been recognized with numerous awards including winning first place in the Schoofs Prize for Creativity, infoUSA and Burrill Business Plan Competitions, and Tong Prototyping Award. He is a former Vilas Graduate Fellow. InBusiness Magazine recently honored his young business leadership as one of its “Forty Under Forty” recipients.

Mr. Sorenson is a frequent guest lecturer at the University of Wisconsin and teaches a special course to aspiring student entrepreneurs on the commercialization of inventions. For the past four years, he has judged the annual Innovation Days Competition and sponsors the Sorenson Design Notebook Award.

Mr. Sorenson holds a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering, and an MBA in Entrepreneurship from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.