Steve Visco - PolyPlus - Part 3

Intro - 00:00:00: Welcome to The Biotech Startups Podcast by Excedr. Join us as we speak with first-time founders, experienced scientists, serial entrepreneurs, and biotech investors about the challenges and triumphs of running a biotech startup. Gain actionable insight into navigating the life sciences industry in each episode as we explore the business of science from precede to IPO with your host, Jon Chee. 

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Recap - 00:00:09: In our last episode, we spoke with Steve Visco about global competition, IP strategy, and patent litigation. If you missed it, be sure to go back and give it a listen. Today, we're excited to chat with Steve about scaling your startup, applying for grants, securing strategic corporate financing, and attracting and retaining top talent. So sit back, relax, and let's get started. 

Jon - 00:01:36: And so you obviously are still very focused on IP. But the early days was like generating IP, generating some licensing revenue. That was a good way to kind of bring in some cash. And I'm gonna imagine you also had to bring in some cash from other means. And I know you're very experienced with writing grants and I know you've secured a ton of grants.

Steve - 00:01:57: Yeah, we're kind of unusual that way. So yeah, largely because my experience at Lowance Berkeley and actually writing rather large grant proposals, PolyPlus became very adept at bringing in government contracts and government grants. So we grew the company with non-dilutive funding in a sense. The only danger with doing that is you wanna make sure you don't go in a direction that isn't where the focus of the company is. So that can be a problem. There are these grants called SBIR, some people call them SBIRs, Small Business Administration grants. And there are clearly companies who just live in those things. And they're $100,000 a pop. And so you can just keep doing these things. But that doesn't take the company in any particular direction typically. I think in our entire history, I think we took one of those. They're kind of a pain and a lot of paperwork. So we focused on, again, large granting organizations within the government where you can bring in $10 million programs, $5, $10 million programs, in some cases even larger. And then made sure that whatever money we're applying for was a battery technology that was either already on a path or that we were pretty confident would take us to the right place. And so, yeah, I mean, I think we probably were right in close to 100 million that way, with quite a bit of money. 

Jon - 00:03:18: I can imagine that you get pulled in a bunch of different directions when, it's like the DOE or the DOD have very different, they're like, we wanna do it this way. This is the project that we want done. How did you stay true to your North Star when working with these big orgs? 

Steve - 00:03:34: That's always a little tricky. It really is, but one of the problems, there's no way around this, right? Is anytime you get a government grant, two things are gonna happen. You're gonna have some level of reporting. So you're gonna be writing reports, status reports, and then you're gonna be audited, right? And a lot of small companies can't handle the auditing requirements because they're rather complex, right? So you're subject to government audits. They have to make sure that they're not seeing a bunch of BMWs in the parking lot. Yeah. Or a government grant. Yeah. They wanna make sure they know where the money's going. And there are obviously certain rules and regulations as to what you can charge and what you can't charge. So the auditing requirements can be burdensome and the reporting requirements are not trivial. And for all of these programs, depends on who the funding organization is, but like Department of Energy has a division RPE, which is like DARPA, but it's for energy. So they set a really high bar, right? They want transformational technology. So it's not incremental advances to existing technology. They want things that are gonna change the game. And as you're moving along the path and then reporting metrics and performance, if it looks like you're either kind of standing still, you're not kind of pushing the ball down the field, they can just say, okay, done. You know, yeah, yeah. They don't have to continue that grant. They can stop you. Whoa. Or if they detect any level of fraud, and I mean, in terms of reporting results, yeah, done. And they have stopped some of those awards. They've stopped them dead in their tracks. And I would say, that's why, I mean, fraud is obviously not tolerated with any of these organizations, but some are more careful in how they track all this stuff than others. But for sure, there are reporting requirements and those take time. Even if you've got money coming in from a group of investors, they may not have you reporting regularly, but they certainly wanna know what you're doing with their money.

Jon - 00:05:28: Totally.

Steve - 00:05:25: Just a different way of looking at progress.

Jon - 00:05:28: And are these grant, like to keep your North Star, can you negotiate with them? 

Steve - 00:05:33: Yeah, no, no, I would say no. Once you sign up, you've signed up. That's why you have to be very careful in what you write in your proposed work, right? When you lay out a research plan for them, like you say we're gonna do XYZ over two years, you just have to make sure that, you know, every step of the way, all the things that you kind of laid out are exactly what you wanna be doing. And we've always done that. You know, we've always written our proposals that way. Like we might be sometimes a little bit too ambitious, like, oh, this is a lot harder than we thought, but they know it. You know, if they see that the things that you're doing are wildly difficult, they'll cut your slack on those things. Because that's the whole thing about blue sky type of development. Like when you're aiming like really high for a really difficult goal, funding agencies understand that, you know, you may not get 200% where you said you wanna get, but maybe get to 70%. They're not gonna stop you for that.

Jon - 00:06:26: Gotcha. And I guess, you know, if you were to like give tips to someone who's about to explore these government grants, like what would be like just like some core fundamental tips to writing good grants?

Steve - 00:06:40: Yeah and no, so, you know, it's kinda like, in a sense, it's not so different than pitching venture cap, right? In the sense that you had better be excited about what you're doing. You better be able to explain why it's important. Again, like, why should I care? That question. And how you're gonna execute. And then probably maybe above all those things, it's always about team, right? And the venture guys will push that a little bit harder because they know if they provide funding to a company to get something done, it's quite likely that you're gonna hit a speed bump, right? Like something's gonna go wrong. Now, if that was the only idea that you had in your head, then you're probably done, right? When you hit that speed bump. But if you've got a really solid team, strong people, there's gonna be a workaround. You're gonna say, okay, we hit the speed bump, but if we change XYZ and modify this and do that, it should work, right? And that really has a lot to do with the quality of the people that you're funding, you know, so. 

Jon - 00:07:42: So it really is not so. 

Steve - 00:07:45: It's not so different. 

Jon - 00:07:46: It's not so different. 

Steve - 00:07:46: The rules are a little different. And, you know, obviously storytelling, right? I've read plenty of grant proposals where I like, it's just painful. Like I don't wanna read them, right? They're just horrible, right? Don't fund these guys, you know? And every once in a blue moon, you read something and it's almost like reading a good novel. Page one, you kind of get an idea of what they're after. And then they kind of walk you through maybe other technologies that failed, why their approach is gonna pay off, how they're gonna do it, who the people are doing it, and you get to kind of a conclusion at the end. It's like, wow, I learned something and I actually enjoyed reading it. You're certainly in much better position than to get an award. And the other thing is I would say, you know, don't ask for too little. It's always better to ask too much.

Jon - 00:08:37: Will they come back with like a counter

Steve - 00:08:38: If they like what you propose, they'll come back with a counter. So I've had, you know, many experiences where you've asked for like 10X and they say, yeah, we love this proposal, but we only have 5X. And in some cases, after two years of doing that particular work, they gave us the other 5X. Wow. So that has happened, you know? And then you always can cut back the scope. So if you say it's gonna cost like, again, 10X dollars, and they say, we only have five, then you say, okay, but I'll have to cut back the scope, right? Cause otherwise it doesn't make any sense.

Jon - 00:09:10: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Steve - 00:09:11: And then you look like you're a liar. I like, well, I said it was gonna cost us so much money. I wanna do all of it for half the money. Something doesn't add up there.

Jon - 00:09:18: Yeah.

Steve - 00:09:19: You have to be prepared to scale it back and yet still do something worth doing.

Jon - 00:09:24: Interesting. And I love how, you know, I think as I was going through just like STEM training and like biochemistry, writing was really not emphasized, like very, very little. And like patenting, getting grants,

Steve - 00:09:41: Right.

Jon - 00:09:42: Pitching and writing grants. And then also, you know, pitching and writing, basically your pitch for the program.

Steve - 00:09:48: You're gonna walk you through that. I have one friend who teaches at Berkeley, who advises his students to take acting classes, you know? And their first response is like, what? You know, acting, like, so you want us to be frauds? And he's like, no, I want you to get comfortable talking in front of an audience that you don't know and getting them to engage with you and getting them excited about something. Because yeah, if you can't do that, you're gonna have a hard time raising money.

Jon - 00:10:14: Yeah, I can only imagine. You're just like reading this proposal. You're just like, I can't get-

Steve - 00:10:19: Oh, I've read so many bad proposals. I've read just the most horrific things. You know, I don't even know what they're trying to do. Like what-

Jon - 00:10:27: Yeah, and that's a shame too, right? Because there's probably a bunch of great technology that just never sees the light of day because it can't be effectively communicated.

Steve - 00:10:35: Right, well, you know, you probably know the story about Donna, you know, Donna's great aunt, right? She won the Nobel Prize in medicine, but it took, you know, an extra 30 years for her to be recognized. And part of it was sexism, right? Because she was a female scientist at a time there weren't so many, but she also admits in her book that part of it is that she doesn't think she was a very effective communicator. She was not able to get across to her audience why what she was doing was so important and what the implications of her work was. So it was some of that as well. I mean, she still got the prize, but it was like 80 to go when she got it. Yeah, absolutely.

Jon - 00:11:11: And I was gonna say this, so like when you were starting Part of the List, you had these licensing revenue streams. Clearly you were like a big source.

Steve - 00:11:17: Yeah, we had angel funding to start, yeah, yeah

Jon - 00:11:19: After that angel funding was venture capital just, you know, off the table.

Steve - 00:11:23: Actually, you know, what happened with us was kind of interesting as we were working through the angel funding, we almost immediately went into a joint development agreement with a large chemical company that was interested in batteries and they were just paying our R&D expenses for like two years 

Jon - 00:11:38: Oh, wow.

Steve - 00:11:39: For some minor first right refusal to do something with some of our technology. So that was a pretty good deal for us. And then shortly after that, another chemical company came to us and cut a deal and, you know, investing into the company. So we actually did not, we've never taken venture. Now we have had strategic investments from a variety, but we've never actually taken venture capital.

Jon - 00:12:00: That's super interesting to me because like I think especially in California, which obviously the birthplace of Silicon Valley. Yeah, it's all venture. It's all venture. Yeah, and when it's you're completely surrounded by it, was it a conscious thing? It was like, we're not going down this path.

Steve - 00:12:14: I have to give credit to Rudy because Rudy was not a fan of venture. You know, he really wasn't. Our first CEO was not a fan of venture capital. So he much preferred to get strategic investors on board. You know, you give away far less equity that way. Obviously, you know, it's a little more complicated doing that. I mean, you know, venture brings certain things that can be helpful too, because quite often they'll have advisors. They'll be very adept at bringing in senior management to help the company. But Rudy was, you know, he certainly did not want that. So now of course, we're talking to all sorts of companies about potential investment. So, you know, strategy has changed a little bit, but in the early days, it kept us alive because, you know, venture capital, if they're going to fail, they want to fail fast, right? So for a young company, if you do bring in venture and they don't see sufficient progress, by the time the money's burned, you know, they'll sell the IP and dismantle the company very quickly. And a bunch of companies in the early days, when we set up that went that route, when we saw, I mean, probably the first 23 companies out of LBL all failed, right? I mean, you know, failure rates pretty high. You know, there are a few standing, but being the second company out of Longstreet Lab and now we're in the throes of starting to manufacture. So we're pretty unique.

Jon - 00:13:28: Now that you're looking to manufacture, it sounds like we need like large capital investments too. That's not a small sum.

Steve - 00:13:34: Although oddly enough, some of that manufacturing money did actually come in from very specialized government grants that support manufacturing, right? So, you know, the Biden administration is very proactive right now in battery tech and semiconductor tech, right? They want to pull a lot of this back into the US. I mean, you know, Europe's looking at the same type of stance as well. Like it's not a great situation to have all your batteries that are going into your cars coming from foreign countries, right? If you can avoid that, if you can stop that. So in the battery space, and I think also the semiconductor space right now, there are actually government grants and loans and things available to help companies start manufacturing. So one of our technologies is seawater battery. It runs on basically the cathode deposit electrodes of the ocean. You know, we've got a large government grant to support manufacturing. So that's ongoing right now, yeah.

Jon - 00:14:28: Yeah, I think like companies that are, you know, for life sciences, a lot of it is Boston and California.

Steve - 00:14:34: Yeah, right.

Jon - 00:14:35: It's just like you raise venture, you do it. And I think, you know, not to knock venture because I think you're right, like venture is great for a lot of reasons. There's pros and cons to everything, but I think

Steve - 00:14:45: That's right.

Jon - 00:14:45: It's incredibly important for founders to know their options.

Steve - 00:14:49: Right, I think that's the right way to phrase it. You know, that there's more than one way to do this, right? Because I think for a lot of young companies coming out of academia or, you know, from whatever corner of the world they're starting, I think people don't really think venture is it. Like you gotta go venture cap and then you get started. Obviously there are angel investors. Those are not gonna be as large a check, but they're not gonna be so restrictive in terms of control of the company. But the venture guys typically wanna get control pretty quickly, right? Angel investors don't do that, right? They typically don't want that. You know, obviously if you can get government grants, I mean, there's none of that. They don't take equity at all. So yeah, I think it's important to know that there are multiple ways to get things rolling. It's not just, you know, venture and that's it.

Jon - 00:15:34: And you mentioned your kind of like strategic investments like from industry, were they just knocking on the door? You know, for example, like if I'm starting a company I'm like, all right, how do I go make a big corporate interested in me and want to, you know provide me with resource? How do you do that?

Steve - 00:15:51: You want them coming to you, right? Cause it's always tough if you're knocking on their door cause a lot of people are knocking on their door.

Jon - 00:15:57: Yeah.

Steve - 00:15:58: There's really kind of two ways I would say they come to mind. One is the conference circuit, right? So, you know, you give a spectacular talk at a conference you will almost always get approached by strategic afterwards cause they're looking for ideas all the time. But if you look at, you know, most of these big conferences you know, two thirds of the audience are non-speakers. They're not speakers, right? And quite often they're corporate types that are scouts. They're scouting for talent, they're scouting for technology. So that's one way to do it. And the other of course is like a press release. If you can do that in the right way and get into the right journals or newspapers, that can create a lot of attention as well. So beyond that, I don't know, but I would say, you know in general is always a better situation to have them asking you if they can get involved versus the opposite, right? Which is tough.

Jon - 00:16:51: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Doing it cold sounds absolutely so hard, so hard. And so I'm kind of contrasting the kind of when you get a grant, you are making sure you do the scope of work the timeline, everything upfront, because that is what the government is going to basically fund you on and hold you to it and audit you for that.

Steve - 00:17:10: Yeah, there's another part of it as well. And there's probably no way around that. It's pretty rare. If you're applying for government grant, it's difficult if nobody knows your name, right? That is difficult, right? Because particularly if you're asking for like a big check so credentials clearly help them. They're going to look at, you know, where did you go to school? Who are you? What have you done? How many publications do you have? Those things are going to count. But sometimes it'll just take a few tries for those people to kind of get to know who you are. Giving talks at conferences will help there as well, because the government guys go to those conferences too.

Jon - 00:17:47: So it's like a double whammy.

Steve - 00:17:48: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. You can imagine nobody wants to spend money, you know, and have it end up being kind of a waste. If the person that that program manager works for says, why did you give these guys $5 million? It's like, this is garbage, right? Did bad work. You know, if it's Harvard, MIT, Caltech, you're going to say, I mean, it's for God's sakes, it's MIT. This guy's got 10,000 papers. So they have cover, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's just a lot easier, right? So those guys already have an advantage, right? That doesn't mean that a young person without exactly those credentials can't get money, but it does mean that they're going to have to do something to satisfy those kinds of questions that the reviewer is going to have. Why you? Why should I trust this particular company to do a good job on this work? There are different ways to do that. In some cases, like if it's the Department of Energy and they're launching a new program, many of those times they do that, they have a period of time where you can actually meet with them in their offices and talk to them. Then they get a sense of who you are, how clever you are. Now once they've actually put out the call for funding, that's almost always a quiet, you're not allowed, they can't talk to you. Right?

Jon - 00:19:03: Got it.

Steve - 00:19:04: After that, no. But prior to that occurrence of launching of some kind of a call for proposals, there's usually a period of time where you can go and visit with them and sit down. Most of those guys will enjoy that, right? They like meeting with young scientists and hearing their ideas, but they don't have a whole lot of time. So it has to be pretty focused. It's like kind of like the elevator pitch. You really have to get them excited about some new idea.

Jon - 00:19:28: Absolutely. And in contrast, when you have interest from a corporate, like is it a similar process where you scope out the work? Like how much are you in the driver's seat? The one in PolyPlus is working with a big corporate. Are you able to choose your North Star or is there like an act of negotiation?

Steve - 00:19:44: You are, you know, probably because they're engaging with you because they like the star you've chosen, right? Like you've made some kind of presentation or they've heard about you from someone. And so they're already excited. You know, they think that, you know, you're doing this really groundbreaking work. So usually you're already kind of in the driver's seat. And after that, it's just a question of how much money they're gonna give you, for how long, you know, and what are the milestones gonna be.

Jon - 00:20:10: Yep. 

Steve - 00:20:11: That gets tricky, right? So you're gonna have to map out some kind of metrics so they can measure as you're moving through this program, your progress and then report back to their bosses that, yeah, they're doing great work. The technology is moving along. This is a good investment.

Jon - 00:20:26: You know, it sounds like with these corporates that are, you know, collaborating with you, there's probably a ton of difference between like a US corporate and let's say an international corporate. Is that something where you just need to learn the business culture?

Steve - 00:20:39: Yeah, it's trial by fire. I don't think you can. I don't think you can really necessarily prepare. I would say in general, this is speaking very generally, the Japanese are very skeptical because they know that Americans tend to exaggerate. And so they're very methodical, you know, in kind of doing diligence to ascertain whether or not they really believe what you're saying and see if there's a good match. And also, in general, they're extremely good engineers. They're very modest, pretty easy to deal with, but slow. They usually work by consensus. And then some of the Korean Companies we've worked with are, I would say, more aggressive. In some cases can make decisions very quickly, but, you know, they can be on your ass when you're going through the program. They can be really tough. You know, they're pretty tough managers. So, like, you know, there are cultural differences certainly between those. And we've worked with European companies. European companies, I think, in general, are pretty similar to the way American companies work, with some exceptions. Like, you know, obviously not all European countries have this kind of entrepreneurial bench, right? Like, you don't see a lot of startups in Germany. It's pretty rare. I think in the UK, maybe a bit more common, but there's no place quite like the US or particularly California. We have so many young scientists and engineers coming out of universities starting companies very quickly. Other than, I think Israel would be the other example. They have a very high entrepreneurial start rate, very close to what California does per capita, but we haven't done any deals with Israeli venture. But we have certainly worked with strategics in Japan and Korea and Europe, and they're all slightly different.

Jon - 00:22:24: Yeah, it really sounds like you just have to do it.

Steve - 00:22:25: Yeah, and if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. You know, that certainly can happen. 

Jon - 00:22:30: I think it's like, you just gotta be truthful to yourself to know when there's a fit or not and not force it. That's right. I was curious, as you're continuing to expand relationships, grant, all of these elements have built up such a wealth of experience, and as you build your team, I mean, you're in an innovative field. How do you keep the team creative and innovative without having all this previous experience weigh you down? Or not weigh you down, but you gotta question the status quo. How are you keeping an innovative company culture?

Steve - 00:23:03: Yeah, that's tricky. Yeah, it's definitely tricky. I would say recruiting and retaining talent is tough, right? Probably because there's so much happening in California. So you always have this kind of sucking noise just outside the door, right? Yeah. And we've had that happen. So, you know, you bring young talent in the battery space. Look, there are no real universities that teach battery tech. I think San Jose State maybe has a master's program in battery manufacturing and engineering. And typically the disciplines for battery tech are gonna be material science and engineering, mechanical engineering, electrochemistry, chemistry, maybe physics, that would be a bit unusual. So you bring in these new people and they come from a variety of disciplines. They're all gonna have to be trained. An example would be like a mechanical engineer. Well, mechanical engineers typically are pretty comfortable with plastics and metals and ceramics and 3D printing for structures, but they're not gonna understand which organic liquids corrode which plastics, right? Yeah. And which materials cannot be in contact with one another because they're gonna react. I mean, so you get into these cross-disciplinary areas that the only way you're gonna get that experience is by working at a company. Now, once you've worked at a company like Polyplus or a company like Polyplus for a couple of years, you probably have a skillset that's in pretty damn high demand. And so that's the big problem is because of LinkedIn and other recruiting organizations. People figure out who's working for you and they say, wow, here's a guy who's worked in the battery space, mechanical engineer for two years, let's get him. And it happens all the time. So you can't really avoid that. That's just part and parcel of the scene. But the prime people here who work in innovation, who come up with the new ideas, that team has been together for more than 20 years. And I think that's partly because we all work together well, we all like one another, it's been an exciting time. So yeah, you could go to a different company, but it would take a while to build that kind of team, the team that we've built here. So that certainly helps retain top level talent, but it's always gonna be an issue. There's no way around that. Farmers probably exactly the same, but right now in the battery space, there aren't enough people to go around. So everybody's poaching from everybody else. It's a constant battle. 

Jon - 00:25:28: Yeah, I can imagine. And I mean, it sounds like it's a very multidisciplinary approach. So like, the PolyPlus Bootcamp, it basically makes you like a warrior.

Steve - 00:25:39: Like it makes you like that. People trained here learn a lot, right? They become quite adept at a number of things. There's no substitute for that. So obviously the way we do things in our technology is different from a lot of the other battery technologies that are out there. And it has its own idiosyncrasies that, we have to train our people to deal with. And that may be true of some other technologies as well, but for sure, I would say, people don't really become productive for a year to two years.

Jon - 00:26:10: Oh, wow.

Steve - 00:26:10: In fact, you're losing productivity. When you make a new hire, that will slow you down. No, I mean, it'd be very rare for someone to come into a, other than maybe people who are working on production lines that have already done that kind of stuff, but in innovation, where you're developing new technologies, taking on new challenges all the time, it'd be extremely rare to have someone come in from the get-go and be productive. So that's where you also have to be careful because you hire too many people right off the bat, you'll be doing nothing but training and not making much progress. It can be a huge time sink.

Jon - 00:26:44: It kind of runs a little, I mean, obviously in like 2021, 2022 is a different year, but 2021 is just like, it's as if a startup's company's job to just hire. And it kind of seems like the PolyPlus way is a little bit more methodical, and less just like a shotgun approach where we're just like bringing everyone in.

Steve - 00:27:02: I mean, I'd say on the technician level, you can kind of take maybe more of a shotgun approach because you need techs, they're gonna be coming and going, but the difficulty there is that, there's some very large companies that have hired a lot of battery techs, and so it's difficult to find them. It's just difficult. We've had cases where we have five people lined up for interviews and they just don't show up because who knows why, right? They just, they got an offer, and they're here to call you to tell you that they're not coming in. It's kind of the Wild West that way. Everybody's hiring now, so this is a little bit crazy. 

Jon - 00:27:36: Obviously battery technology and its importance is just like, it's booming, so I'm gonna guess, like in recent years, hiring talent is becoming even more difficult.

Steve - 00:27:45: I mean, certainly you can hire, there are companies obviously you can hire. You can hire headhunters to go out there, but you'll pay a premium for that. So we try to avoid that. At some point we'll have to. We're gonna start manufacturing almost certainly in the state of Indiana, and you've got Purdue Engineering there, and Vincen, which is like a two years mechanical engineering degree. So they've got a lot of local talent there. So talent pool is good. These are people that have grown up working on tractors, so they have good hand skills. They're not afraid to tackle kind of complicated problems. So I think that'll be a little easier for us in terms of manufacturing, but California has become, yeah, tricky because there are a lot of battery companies right now. There are a number of startups and they've all been hiring. So everybody's kind of poaching from one another.

Jon - 00:28:28: Are your core hiring talent pools out of like university hotbeds? 

Steve - 00:28:32: Yeah, these are mostly people that are, well, they may have recently graduated, but it's a combination of, we obviously advertise. We have positions available. In some cases, people know about PolyPlus. They come to us looking for something, but in general, it's pretty easy to find PhDs. They're actually easier to find than technicians, right? And expensive, right? So you have to be careful who you're hiring, but the technician pool is actually, even though they're probably in total, a lot of them, everybody needs them, right? Everybody needs these people who do assembly and do repetitive tasks. Not everybody has got the mental makeup for doing, obviously repetitive tasks can get boring, but if you don't do them reproducibly, then you've got big problems, right? Absolutely. If two batteries aren't performing the same, it's either something has gone funny with the chemistry or the guy that put them together screwed up.

Jon - 00:29:25: Oh man.

Steve - 00:29:26: You want to know which one it is.

Jon - 00:29:28: Absolutely. And you've mentioned that you're going to be manufacturing soon. So what's in store for PolyPlus in like the next year?

Steve - 00:29:34: Yeah. Well, even that's obviously a very different DNA, right? It's a different type of person in a way. So we have a strategic investor that's done a lot of large scale manufacturing. So we'll tap into their expertise in that area. But you know, there's all the ISO certification that has to happen. Obviously, you have to build up the manufacturing team. We're going to need a general manager and any battery manufacturing plant is going to need a drive. There's certain equipment, right, that you have to have like dry rooms, which basically dehumidify the air. So lithium metal, which is sensitive to moisture, doesn't get contaminated. So the whole host of kind of infrastructural problems and then bringing in the team and growing that team at the right rate and then certification. So you start building those batteries. They have to be certified, tested. Yeah, there's a whole lot that has to happen.

Jon - 00:30:23: That's exciting stuff, though. Are you making a bunch of trips to Indiana right now?

Steve - 00:30:27: I've made a bunch of them. Yes. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yes. Also located at a building. You know, Indiana is very pro business. They have low energy costs, a skilled talent pool. So they definitely check all the boxes and they're nice people. They've been super, I would say, you know, more than outgoing and trying to recruit PolyPlus to manufacture there. So I now know a bunch of the locals. They had a meeting with the governor. So you know

Jon - 00:30:51: wow, that's amazing.

Steve - 00:30:52: In California, it's a little tough.

Jon - 00:30:55: Yeah, no, I mean, it sounds like a California is like it is tough. 

Steve - 00:30:58: Well, it's very entrepreneurial, right? You've got a lot of innovative, creative, high energy people. That part is all good. It's a good place to innovate, but very few people manufacture here.

Jon - 00:31:08: Yeah. Well, Steve, I just have two more closing questions and thank you for your time. And so the first question I have is if you could give advice to your 21 year old self, what would it be?

Steve - 00:31:19: Wow, that's a tough one. Yeah, you know, it's probably going to be something a little cheesy, like all your dream. And what I mean by that is not that it's a specific, you know, not for me, it wasn't a very specific thing. Like I want to grow a battery company. I mean, certainly not. It was not that. But, you know, each step of the way, I was moving in a direction that was exciting. Right. So, you know, I actually had a number of offers from industrial players early on in my career, but they just they didn't excite me. They want things that I wanted to do. And so I kind of chose the more uncharted path, right, where it wasn't clear where it was going to lead. And then you just hope that you make good decisions as you move along that path. And then, you know, in my case, it worked out very well because we ended up launching a company and we've done the same within the company. Right. We've launched a bunch of really wild kind of technologies that are now getting ready to pay off. So I think, you know, it's not maybe succinct, but I think you just have to move in a direction that you feel is a good match for what you want to do in life. It's going to keep you excited. I mean, the best kind of job is the job that you want to go to every day. That truly resonates. You can end up in that situation where, you know, every day is exciting, every day something new. There are challenges around every corner. If you like that kind of thing, and entrepreneurs usually do, then that will pay off.

Jon - 00:32:43: Yeah. And I was going to say, like, as you reminded me of your story of like, when you had to fight a lawsuit, like right out the gate, like, if you didn't like what you were doing, you could have easily thrown in the towel. 

Steve - 00:32:53: Oh, yeah.

Jon - 00:32:54: There's like a certain amount of following your passion allows you to like get through really tough times.

Steve - 00:32:58: Yeah. Yeah. Precisely.

Jon - 00:32:59: Yeah. That really, really resonates with me. And my last closing question, are there any kind of like shout outs you want to give for anyone that supported you along the way? 

Steve - 00:33:08: Yeah, I would probably be, well, Donna, I mean yeah, of course. Hi, Donna. And, you know, Rudy was a very instrumental force in the evolution of PolyPlus, because, you know, I'm a child of the 60s. So it was a Vietnam War protest. There was a lot of rebellion against the status quo and capitalism. When I first entered kind of the academic sphere, I definitely had a distrust of business, you know, and businessmen and thought that most of these people were just purely motivated by greed and avarice and, you know, so I didn't have a high opinion of that class of person. And Rudy changed that very much. So, you know, Rudy Hurwich was a really kind of a phenomenal human being. He was actually on Richard Nixon's enemies list.

Jon - 00:34:01: Oh, what?

Steve - 00:34:02: That was one of his proud achievements, actually. Why is that? That's what I was proud of you, is because back when the Vietnam War was being protested, and most people looked at that as just, it was academia, right? All these college students going out and protesting. But Rudy in the Bay Area was organizing businessmen to fight against what was happening there. And when he passed away some years ago, and when he did, there was a memorial for Rudy. There must have been 400 people in that room. And a good number of those people stood up and described how he either saved their company or encouraged them to follow some entrepreneurial dream that they had and helped them build a company. That was like one after the end. I would never have known those stories if I hadn't gone to his memorial. So, you know, there are some very good people engaged in building companies. And I certainly didn't know that, you know, when I was a kid. Probably would have thought the opposite. So you can kind of have your cake and eat it too that way. You can do the right thing, build a good company, work with good people and end up feeling quite satisfied when you look back on it all. So that is distinctly possible, can be done, but you have to be very disciplined in your approach to how you do these things so you can feel good about all of it.

Jon - 00:35:27: Absolutely. And I couldn't agree more. I think everything you described about Rudy and what I've learned thus far about Rudy, it sounds like I would have gotten along with him really well.

Steve - 00:35:36: Absolutely. Yeah. At some point you should look him up. He was on the cover of Time magazine when they started Dimo. So.

Jon - 00:35:42: Wow, that's amazing.

Steve - 00:35:44: Yeah, really.

Jon - 00:35:46: Oh man. Well, Steve, thank you again for your time. I really appreciate it. Maybe next time we'll do like a specific deep dive into like the nitty gritty of like tech transfer or you know, double click on something. But thanks again. I'd love to have you on whenever and appreciate it.

Steve - 00:36:03: Sounds good. All right.

Outro - 00:36:08: That's all for today's episode of the Biotech Startups Podcast. We hope you enjoyed our three-part series of conversations with Steve Visco. Be sure to tune into our next series where we will be chatting with James Evans, co-founder and CEO of Phenovista Biosciences. James is an industry-leading expert in Fluorescence Imaging and Informatics, and has been heavily influenced in the commercialization of life science research for technology platforms and drug discovery. 

Final outro: The Biotech Startups Podcast is brought to you by Excedr. Don't want to miss an episode? Make sure to search for Biotech Startups podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and click subscribe. To learn more about our leasing program, visit our website, www.excedr.com. We provide research labs with equipment leases on founder-friendly terms to support a path to exceptional outcomes. On behalf of the team here at Excedr, thanks for listening.