Transcript
Speaker: With every innovation you've heard about on this podcast, the science works, the prototype works, and the startups have often done pilots with brands and suppliers. But if you're familiar with the startup world, you'll know that along the road to commercialization, several startups tend to fall off the radar and sadly disappear into the abyss.
Speaker: This place has been referred to as the valley of death in the startup world. Today, we get to learn lessons and strategies from two incredible companies who are carefully navigating their way through this valley and finding their path to commercialization.
Speaker: Welcome back to the No Ordinary Cloth podcast, where we stitch together a rich tapestry of textile innovations, one episode at a time. I'm your host, Millie Tharakin, a textile innovator and researcher. And in this podcast, you get a glimpse into the future. We'll be shedding light on innovations bubbling up at the intersection of textiles, emerging technology, craft and sustainability.
Speaker: Join me as I sit down with the pioneers who are radically reimagining the very way we make, use and remake textiles. This is a special episode created in partnership with Fashion District London, a dynamic hub for fashion innovation in East London, supporting startups with innovation networks, affordable spaces, business guidance and investment opportunities.
Speaker: The radical changemakers joining us today are Luciano Caruso, the Chief Commercial Officer from EPOC Biodesign. EPOC uses AI-designed enzymes to turn mixed textile waste back into virgin-quality nylon.
Speaker: and We also have Chloe So, CEO and co-founder of Pulpitronics, a company that creates paper electronics. Yeah, you heard that right. It's paper electronics and it is fabulous. I can't wait to join our guest today.
Speaker: What I love about this conversation is that both companies are at exactly the same point in their journey. Their science works and now the world has to actually adopt their solution. But it's a completely different valley for each of them. They're at two different stages of commercialization. So the challenges they face are also different. So join me as we unpack how these companies are navigating their own tightrope walk across these valleys and what we can expect on the other side.
Speaker: Chloe and Luciana, a very warm welcome to the No Ordinary Cloud podcast. I'm absolutely thrilled to have you both with us today. i know this going to be one of the most popular episodes because this is a question every startup has to address. How do I move from pilot to commercial without breaking my company? You are living and breathing this question every day at the moment. So I can't think of a better guest lineup to help us answer that question and how to navigate this phase.
Speaker: And what I'm excited about today is that neither of you going to give me that polished after the fact version of your story. You're walking that tightrope right now, mid-crossing, doing the whole balancing act. So for the next hour, we're going to join you both on that tightrope and maybe get a sense of... what it's like ah to be walking that scary line and to learn from you. So let's go into the actual mess of it and what's hard right now, what nearly broke and what's carrying you across the value of death. Does that sound good?
Speaker: not too Not too grim? Okay, so let's start with some quick introductions. Firstly, Chloe, congratulations on winning the Women in Innovation 2026 award. It's fantastic news. I know how tough this competition is. It's a huge achievement and well-deserved. This is a news hot off the press. So I'm thrilled to share this with our audience as well. And Paw Patrol also won the Manufacturing Futures so Award in June, hosted by Fashion District London. So congratulations again. Looks like it's been a great summer for you. Chloe, give us a little introduction about your background and what you were up to before you started Paw Patrol. And also just tell us why you love to get out of bed and go to work every morning.
Speaker: Yeah, definitely. um Well, thanks so much for having me here. Excited for this conversation. um I'm Chloe. I'm one of the co-founders and CEO of Pulpitronics. And what we're doing at Pulpitronics is we're pioneering paper electronics.
Speaker: So essentially, we've come across this technology that has enabled us to turn paper into conductive circuits using a laser technology. And so we're trying to basically create metal-free RFID tags for the retail industry to help them make inventory management more efficient.
Speaker: um I can dive more into details on that later, but a little bit more about my background. So before Pulpitronics, I studied engineering as my undergrad um and also studied design and cognition. So I'm really interested in design and psychology and consumer products. But I've always been really frustrated that the more you create in consumer products, the more waste it creates for the world. After college, I ended up working for a VC startup accelerator in New York, helping founders in the consumer goods retail tech space find product market fit and go to market strategies.
Speaker: um So I've always been really fascinated and being surrounded by kind of consumer goods, retail tech innovation. But then I decided that I was really early in my career and I wanted to build again and explore the design and making side of things. So then I came over to the UK to do this master's in innovation design engineering, the dual degree between Imperial and the Royal College of Art.
Speaker: And so that's where kind of I continue to explore novel materials, sustainability, circularity concepts. And through our final year group project, we we developed Pulpitronics.
Speaker: And what gets you out of bed in the morning? i think it's all about being able to push advanced technology forward without compromising the planet. I think, again, it's really innovation really excites me. i think being able to push innovation forward at the same time without compromising the planet is key. So I think that's what really gets me out of bed. I think problem solving and building this is is really exciting for me.
Speaker: Paper electronics. Wow, there's something to unpack in a bit. We'll get back to you. Well, we have more hot off the press news again. Last week, Epoch Biodesign acquired a commercial scale facility in Spain. This is big news for the industry. So congratulations, Luciano, on this achievement. And as the chief commercial officer, you had a huge role in making this happen, which is very exciting. Also a big step forward for the company.
Speaker: We'll go into the acquisition a bit more later, but for now, tell us a little bit about your background and what have you been up to before you joined ePot? Thank you, Millie, and thanks for the congratulations. It's been um a wild couple of weeks since the announcement went out, but obviously for us, that was something we've been working on for many months. So it's great to have it secured and and be able to talk openly about it now.
Speaker: So my background before EPOC, I spent my career the last 25 years or so in the chemical and material space. usually with large companies working on commercializing new technologies, bringing new things to market.
Speaker: But more recently, I was working in the Bay Area doing some investment with LG Chem into materials, which I'm engaged with today. And, you know, I think similar to what you heard from Chloe, you know, the the drive to be part of something from the ground up.
Speaker: And unlike the years I spent in private equity, where you're working on something existing that you're looking to turn around or improve with a ah startup, I had the opportunity to to really be part of something from the early days and and shape how the the business was going to grow over time.
Speaker: So it's been wonderful to be part of Jacob's team at Epoch Biodesign. yeah, I look forward to telling you more about it. Fantastic. Okay, so before we get into the hard part of crossing that scary valley, i want our listeners to understand what each of you have built with your company. So Luciano, let's start with you. and let's start with the waste. So we produce something like 120 tons of textile waste a year, and less than 1% of that is actually recycled back into new fiber. And for Nylon 6-6 especially, it's the same story about 2 million tons waste every year, and then less than 1% recovered. So why is that number so stubbornly low? What is it about nylon that makes it so hard to recycle?
Speaker: I think what makes it hard to recycle is what makes it really desirable in the in the first place, which is that it's incredibly strong material. You know, nylon was actually the first synthetic fiber invented. it predates polyester by a long way. And, you know, it's remained strong all of these years because of, you know, the demand has been strong, I mean, because the the textile itself has got some properties which are just incredibly difficult to replicate.
Speaker: It's a fantastic fiber and one which we we think has got lots of future ahead of it. But as you say, the the fact that at the moment it cannot be recycled, especially at end of life, is is a challenge. Part of the reason why is its strength. Part of it is that nylon is rarely used in a very pure form. It's often blended.
Speaker: So you mix it with elastane and create some stretchy yoga pants or, you know, you reinforce it with glass fiber and make some some plastics in the automotive industry, things like that. Whenever you have blended materials, it always becomes a bit more challenging to to process at end of life.
Speaker: And ah especially with traditional technologies, mechanical recycling or chemical recycling, they they typically can't handle blended waste very well. You briefly mentioned the automotive industry as well. So nylons, mean but people tend to think, yeah, leggings, you know, a pair of yoga pants. Where else is nylon extensively used just to understand the scale of the material?
Speaker: Well, as you mentioned, there's millions of tons produced each year. Millions of tons is a huge amount when you think, you know, a car might weigh two tons. So, you know, if you think of millions of cars, that sort of gives you some sort of ah indication as to how much weight of nylon is produced each year. And half of it is used in apparel and half of it is used in automotive and industrial applications. So it's a lot more than you might think.
Speaker: Generally in nylon you refer to fibre applications, i.e. material applications, and then EP or EM, the engineered plastics, the hard plastics in other words, that it's used for. Within fibre, outside of apparel, it's often found in things like airbags or Tire cords, so the fiber that you impregnate with rubber to make tires, but also in conveyor belts. You wouldn't believe how many conveyor belts there are in the world and how big they are and in things like mining installations.
Speaker: But beyond fiber, the plastic side is also important to the hard plastic side. So you find it in automotive in places like under the hood where you have engine components, battery trays, things like that.
Speaker: Nylon's got some great properties for these things. It's incredibly heat resistant and and the strength, as I mentioned, helps with light weighting, which is especially important with EVs these days as we're trying to make them lighter to accommodate the battery technology.
Speaker: Wow, so there's a lot of nylon around and a lot of ways to deal with. Jacob Nathan, the CEO of and founder of Epoch Biodesign, describes what you do as unbaking the cake. So help me understand this. How do AI design enzymes take a pile of waste fabric and turn it into nylon that's pretty much indistinguishable from virgin nylon?
Speaker: I think when people think of recycling, you know, it's important to distinguish between the technologies that can recycle a ah material. You've got mechanical recycling, which is more or less where you chop something up.
Speaker: And then you have chemical recycling, where you use typically some acids and and try to disassemble the product into its component parts. The problem with mechanical recycling is not only do you need a very pure feedstock stream, but you also have challenges with product quality afterwards in most cases.
Speaker: Chemical recycling, where there are routes to doing that with materials, it can be incredibly effective. It's often quite energy intensive. You need a lot of heat and a lot of pressure for a chemical recycling. And the harsh acids and chemicals which are used are always great for the environment.
Speaker: What EPOG Biodesign does is develop enzymes. These are like biological catalysts. So they're they're things which enable chemical reactions to take place, but made from biology. And the great thing about biology is it it works best at the temperature of life, which is more or less room temperature, body temperature. so We don't require the the heat that you typically find in chemical recycling. <unk> And because enzymes are super selective, as part of our process, we're able to treat mixed waste streams, which not only means that we can ah process a lot more material because there's a lot more blended nylon and other fibers out there than there are pure fibers, but also we can recover those other co-materials, which is sometimes a useful ah source of revenue, as well as being obviously ah a more complete recycling offer.
Speaker: And the quality that you get of the material is identical to the virgin products that went into it in the first place. So in the case of nylon, nylon is a polymer, which means that it's made from monomers. And we're able to produce monomers which are identical to the be oil-based feedstocks that went into them in the first place. Amazing. Sounds like the perfect solution. But what are the limitations of this technology? Are there any materials that it can't handle?
Speaker: I think the challenge with biological recycling and enzymatic recycling is is that process-wise, it's relatively straightforward, right? It's the designing of the enzyme, which is incredibly, incredibly difficult. And Jacob, who you mentioned earlier, has done an incredible job of building this team at EPOC, which is, of all of my years in industry, this is by far the most talented group of people I've ever had the privilege to work with. And they they just do amazing things every day. And with the equipment that we have today and with the AI technology that we have today, we were able to crunch a lot more data and ah design much more you know targeted specific enzymes, which are much more effective at doing the job.
Speaker: So the idea has been around a long time. i think we've long known that biology can do many things better than chemistry, but the technology to to actually make it happen hasn't always been there. And as I say, with the advent of AI, meaning that the quantity of data you can process is much higher, it's really just unlocked this possibility.
Speaker: To give you an idea, if you take an enzyme, it's kind of like a password where when you change components of it, there are so many different variations of how it can go. In fact, there are more variations of enzyme than there are atoms in the universe. So you can't possibly try them all. What you can do is is try a subset, try a limited number that you think might work and then iterate from there. And that's where the AI and the machine learning comes in because it gives us you know a more targeted approach to what we should be trying in the lab and and seeing how it works. So you're creating different enzymes for different mixes of fabric.
Speaker: You would have an enzyme that's targeted for a particular material. So in the case of nylon, nylon 6-6, you would have an enzyme that would work for that. And the idea is that the enzyme is very efficient at breaking down the material and leaving everything intact, but separating out the nylon from the other.
Speaker: And the output that you produce is pretty much drop in for a spinner or a manufacturer to just pick it up and make yarn out of. Is that right? That's correct. So that's, you mentioned earlier, the acquisition that we recently made, which was a 52,000 ton polymerization facility in Spain. That's given us the capability of re-polymerizing the building blocks of nylon that we we have created from recycling and um putting it into a polymer chip, which is the form that nylon has before it's made into a fiber. And so, yeah, we were able to work with yarn spinners in the industry or plastic compounders in plastic industry. And the product is identical, so they'll have no no trouble to move between the two, whether it's a conventional polymer or a recycled polymer. And in fact, the site that we've acquired has got 60 years experience making polymers and many of the staff that have decades individually. So they they're super experienced at producing very high quality polymers that go into fiber applications.
Speaker: And that's also been been critical to allowing us to drop the product into the market. Brilliant. Where are you actually now in terms of your capacity in tons? You have different types of capabilities right now. you have an R&D lab and you're just about opening a demonstration lab in London, which is, you know, a bigger scale. And then now you have this commercial plant that you've acquired in Spain. Can you give us a sense of the scale you're able to achieve at each of your facilities? And why is it important to have so many different facilities with different capabilities?
Speaker: It's a good question. I think, you know, is when we talk later about the topic that you've chosen them for today and the valley of death and what it means for startups and particularly, you know, deep tech or material startups, perhaps, I think that's one of the one of the key things, which is that unlike perhaps a software startup, for example, in a deep tech environment, you do need to have increasing size production facilities. You know you need to have ah a lab that develops a technology, a pilot that can prove it out at at greater scale. A pilot is going to look more like a lab than a commercial facility. And the idea behind having the next step up, a demo site, is that the demo site will look more like a commercial size facility.
Speaker: And then and at each at each stage, what you're doing is you're testing the technology and the process and the product that you're making. and But you're also de-risking you know the investment required to build increasing production capacity. And that's where you know this process is quite lengthy and and and obviously quite quite costly. And that's one of the challenges for the value of death, particularly with with deep tech material type startups.
Speaker: So how much are you able to process in each of your facility right now? So in a lab, you're just doing gram scale testing and development. um And that's why you need to progress to a pilot facility, which could be on site. For us, it's off site because we differentiate between what we're able to do in in our facility in London, where we have our headquarter office and lab versus a pilot facility has much greater ability to have larger reactors and better extraction of them and things like that.
Speaker: So we have a pilot facility where, you know, at that stage you can do kilogram scale batches and um and produce much larger quantities. For us, we will be, as you've you've mentioned earlier, we have a demo production site that will be finished later this year. We already have the building and the the construction is nearly complete for the inside of the building. And that will be in the hundreds of tons year scale.
Speaker: So from, it sounds like a lot, I mean, it sounds like a lot to me, hundreds of tons, but in an industry, producing millions, that's not going to have commercial impact. But what it will have is the ability for us to provide meaningful quantities to our partners so that rather than just creating a a prototype garment or or a one-off, we will be able to produce you know ah lines of product that will be on shelves for customers and really de-risk, which is another part, I guess, of the conversation today, the investment needed to build a commercial-sized facility, which is slated for three years after our demo goes online.
Speaker: The plant in Spain, what's the capacity there? The capacity of the plant in Spain is 52,000 tons year. That's the nameplate capacity. And that's going to be producing polymers, specifically nylon 6-6. So yeah, it's producing product right now and it will be supplying customers immediately. Obviously, initially conventional nylon that you know that it's been producing for years and years. And over time, we will transition the the production of the site to take more and more recycled feedstock into it. So the proportion of recycled products at the site will increase with with obvious step changes when new production sites come online for the recycling.
Speaker: Really exciting. I feel like you're moving so fast because I think we met back in 2025 June at Future Fabrics Expo in London. And you had just returned from California after working there for a decade to join EPOC, I think a couple of months ago as the Chief Commercial Officer. And you were hired literally to scale the technology. So... So as you've talked about where EPOC is right now, it's really exciting to see the impact of your work and how you've helped the company scale in just over a year. It's really impressive.
Speaker: So I'm going to come back to you with more questions on how you did it. But first, let's hear from Chloe. Chloe, thanks for your patience. The problem you're solving is at a very different stage of ah a garment's life. So your focus is on the little tag that most of us sort of just pull off our new jumper and bin it without a second thought. What's actually inside that... tag that we should be concerned about and how big is this problem when we add it all up?
Speaker: Yeah, so RFID technology has been heavily used in inventory management for stock counting, auto checkout processes, anti-theft. So it's really have been an instrumental technology to help people basically be able to um find things from an item level standpoint. But like you said, what people don't realize is that this technology is embedded in that clothing hang tag. And as consumers, we buy the tag, we cut the tag off, we throw it away. So what's actually in there is that in order for this technology to work, you need a metal antenna. There's a microchip that's made of silicon. um This microchip stores product data. So that's how, you know, when you put the product in the auto checkup process, that's how it knows kind of what the product is like magic, right?
Speaker: This RFID tag has a metal antenna, a microchip, layers of adhesives, and they're often embedded in these clothing price tags, so you don't realize it's there. So from a consumer standpoint, again, you don't you just think it's magic. You don't actually know what's happening. So it's actually quite resource intensive to create. um And also, most of these tags are only there for a really short lifespan, right?
Speaker: It's actually becoming a more increasingly a bigger problem because everyone wants this technology. It's amazing at what it is it does. And so right now, around 45 billion RFID tags are being thrown away every year. People don't realize that. And with more and more demand for wanting new clothes and fast fashion, you know, as much as we're trying to move away from fast fashion, it's unfortunately still happening. But it's even less about fast fashion and like the scale of it. But really, this technology is helpful for like,
Speaker: efficiency of supply chain and efficiency of um inventory management. So I think regardless of who we're targeting in kind of that retail space, this technology is here to stay. So we kind of need a more, a better solution for it. And so growing market, growing pain points for a lot of people.
Speaker: It's not just for the fashion industry, right? The RFID tags are used across ah retail generally everywhere. So that's that's a lot of RFID tags that we are just throwing in the bin. Even if we kind of had a very focused effort to capture all the RFID tags um that we use and throw, it's not very easy to recycle this, is it? Even if we got hold of them. Why is it so hard?
Speaker: Yeah, I think this is this is a lot of gray area right now. um We've heard from different people, different sources, um different companies make different claims. And i think overall, it's just quite confusing. So some retailers are telling us that the metal antenna is actually affecting the recycling processes. So jamming processes and the repulping process. making it quite inefficient or actually kind affecting the processes. So that's not good. You've also heard that some ecotags that are bit better, they still contain metals.
Speaker: They're only recyclable in certain recycling plants. So again, it's not universal at all. Yeah, there's a lot happening. I think people clearly see this as an issue, but they haven't quite figured it out. Like, what's the best approach? You know, there are some tags looking at, can we make the adhesives a little bit you know more biocompatible? Or can we make the adhesives separate the components better for better recycling? So people are tackling it at different parts. But fundamentally, the reason why it's so inefficient to recycle is because it's made up of different materials, right? Like you have the metal, you have the glues, you have the silicon microchip, you have the paper or the plastic substrate. So just introducing all these different variables and factors and material components just fundamentally makes the recycling process trickier. And if they can't separate it and recycle it in ah in an easy, efficient way, they're just going to incinerate it, right? So then it's a lose-lose for everyone. Absolutely. So we have a really complex problem here, but your answer is so beautifully simple. You turn paper itself into an antenna. um That sounds like magic. It is a bit of magic, I think. So there's no metal, no chip. How does this actually work? Help us understand the technology a little bit.
Speaker: Let me clarify, there is still a microchip. So what we're doing is we're but replacing that metal antenna. So again, we're reducing kind of CO2 footprint from that standpoint. we're We're saving and preserving more metals, more rare earth minerals. We're reducing supply chain shipping from all of that. So what we're essentially doing is we turn paper into a conductive circuit using a laser. So the laser basically lasers and antenna geometry on. The reason why we still have a microchip is so that it can work with existing infrastructure across all industry today. There is, you know emerging research. We have thought about this of creating a completely chipless and metal free, you know, RFID tag, but the world's not ready for it now. In order for us to use a chipless or go into the chipless kind of concept, you do need new readers. You need new infrastructure. And given that the infrastructure piece is,
Speaker: quite a big hassle. And we know that as a startup, no one's going to change infrastructure for a tiny little startup like us. So, you know, as our V1 product, we decided to work with what's existing out there, but still provide a TAG that is so much better than what's out there today.
Speaker: Our TAG is metal free, but it still has that microchip. And essentially it can cut CO2 emissions by 60%. It reduces cost as well by 30%. And overall, we're reducing materials. we're simplifying that manufacturing process um and enabling the end product to be paper recyclable.
Speaker: That sounds beautiful. When I was doing a bit of research about you and the company, I came across your design philosophy, which is subtraction. It's got a little extra S in there. Yeah. Tell me a bit about that.
Speaker: Yeah, I guess during our time at ah RCA, you know, we've kind of learned about a lot of different kind of concepts and in design and how you think about design. And I think one of the core things that came to us was, again, we want to push advanced technology, we want to put it push advanced electronics forward without compromising the planet, right? That's always been really core to us as we were thinking about the solution. And ah one of the tutors kind of introduced this concept of subtraction, which is the concept of adding value through the removal of material rather than adding more things. And i think that's just like so beautiful. And and it's exactly kind of what we're doing, right? We're like trying to push technology. We're creating our fighty tags through not adding a metal antenna, but actually removing or converting the carbon in the paper into something that's more conductive. so that's kind of the concept and kind of the design philosophy that kind of is core to pulpitronics today. and that's something, you know, as we're again, pushing RNG, it's like, okay, rather than just adding more chemicals and adding more things into whatever formulations we're thinking about, how can we actually take a step back, look at nature, see what's existing out there already, and then kind of come up with a more holistic solution for everyone, I guess.
Speaker: Absolutely. And your co-founder, Barnas, hopefully I said his name right. um He said, we're simplifying over-engineered technology from a nature perspective. So it's really trying to always look at how you can simplify further rather than adding more.
Speaker: Where are you now with scale? where In today's term, what can you produce and and to what scale? Yeah, we're we're nothing like where EPOC is at. I am dreaming of that day. But yeah, massive congrats to you guys. That's huge that you guys that are able to kind of get to that stage and very, very inspiring. Gives us hope.
Speaker: So we're very much at the other end. So we've been around for a couple years. That's mostly been spent on R&D. So one of the key things that we are trying to do with our RFID tags is to make sure we can match current performance levels of existing RFID tags. One thing to remember is that our carbon and material is never going to be as conductive as metals, which means that there may be some level of performance um you know compromising that we might have to do. But again, because we're quite strong in our R&D team, there's different levers and different factors of the tag that you can work to kind of make up for kind of that loss in performance. But even with our metal-free RFID tags, we can scan up to three and a half, four meters already, which already opens up a massive kind of opportunity in the space.
Speaker: So we've been focusing a lot on kind of R&D in the last couple of years. And finally, we've now have, you know really strong kind of engineers on the team working We've finally been able to create functional prototypes um that we've actually now sampled with a few really big retailers and customers. But obviously small sampling, you know, it's mostly like technical validation. so we're at that stage now. And in order for us to kind of take that next step into actually getting into the stores and doing like proper trials and like the hundreds or the thousands, we're now actually building our first pilot line. So we've just bought a new industrial laser machine, it's in the office. Now we're looking to kind of bring on a few other sets of machinery kind of build that automated line. Because right now it's like, sure, we have this massive industrial machine, but another big part of the process is actually adding that microchip. And that process is called, it requires like a pick and place machine to like literally pick up the microchip and place the microchip on. And that's semi-automated. So we don't have that industrial space yet. So it's kind of, we're at this, I guess, stage where we have a very fast machine, but the bottleneck is still kind of capped at kind of that manual level. So we're kind of able to produce tags and maybe like 50 tags a day kind of situation. So very, very small volumes compared to some, you industry players are producing millions a day, right? So we've got a long way to go But again, yeah, that's kind of where we're at scaling up lab scale to kind of the first pilot line.
Speaker: Nice. And I understand that you got the tags independently benchmarked by third party labs. and Why was that important for you? And how do you navigate conversations with brands, you know, who quickly say, what is the range? Oh, it's not as much as what we have right now. And that could become a barrier to adoption.
Speaker: Yeah, I guess firstly on kind of the the third party benchmarking, i mean, it's super important, right? Like we're bringing an entirely new product to the market. I think the industry is so used to having certain standards and certifications and whatnot. And a lot of the big brands who kind of use our Friday tags want those certifications. And I think being able to to have our tags third party tested also builds trust and credibility. And also allows us to just compare where do we stand in the market today, right? i think at being a startup, you have to be resource efficient. A lot of the testing equipment is quite expensive. So some of the testing, say like our testing chamber, our anacote chamber, we built in-house.
Speaker: So again, this third-party testing allows be resource efficient. us to kind of compare our results of internal testing versus external state of the art testing. So the good news is through kind of the third party testing, we were able to validate that actually we built a really good anticoag chamber, has really, really good kind of accuracy and and performance metrics. That gives us, again, confidence that, you know, what we're testing in-house is going to be the same as what we're testing out, you know, externally. So that gives us a lot of the confidence. and I think when we're navigating conversations with brands, they all know that we're a startup. So I think they give us a little bit of flexibility and kindness, which is really nice. I think, you know, it's mostly like they tell different brands have different approaches, right? Some brands are like, we need you to hit these metrics. Otherwise we aren't able to actually test in store. Whereas some are like, well, okay, well you're already at two, three meters. That's pretty good. Like let's try and test and learn and see kind of, where you are. So again, it's for us to kind of make that decision of like, okay, do we want this stricter customer to be the key anchor person? Or do we want to work with someone who's a bit more flexible, who can actually give a little bit of leeway and and grace and have us and work with us?
Speaker: both have their pros and cons. And I think we know where the benchmark is at. So the North Star is very easy, very clear. We need to hit certain metrics in order for us to actually expand into the market. But right now, as we're kind of trying to get more commercial traction and whatnot, it's very much finding the partners who are eager to kind of work with us and um meet kind of our our thresholds. But the good news is that In reality, like where we are at technically wise, we're decent already. So for example, just to give you some sense in the retail retail shop, um what we've learned is that inventory managers really need one meter, max two meters of scanning distance to basically do their checks. They really want to double that for accuracy purposes or say if they want to have RFID readers in the back room or the storeroom or the warehouse, that's when kind of the the range really matters a little bit more. But if you're doing in-store checks, it's very much kind of you you are fine with the one to two meter mark. I think what we've learned on a whole is that industry players want somewhere between like three to four meters of scanning distance, which we kind of just are there already. So for us, the North Shore is like, let's push it a bit further to give everyone confidence. But at the same time, we work with kind of smaller boutiques or SMEs or people who are more eco-conscious, we'll be able to kind of, they'll be able to kind of give and compromise a little bit, perhaps
Speaker: It's always helpful to have brands that are willing to walk that journey with you, isn't it? I'm sure EPOC has had some friendly brands as well, who gives you that room to and space to try something, make mistakes and learn together. We need more of them. So we're going to pivot to the heart of this episode, which is all about crossing the valley of death.
Speaker: Both of you have technology that work. This has been proven. And it's technology that solves a big problem, which is a great start. But this is also exactly the point where historically several innovations and companies get stuck or just sort of die. So I want to spend the bulk of our time here to unpack this a bit.
Speaker: Starting with you, Luciano, when you hear the phrase valley of death, what what does that actually mean for your company? And what is the specific gap you're trying to get across? And how are you doing this? Sorry, that's three questions in one.
Speaker: I think the concept of the value of death is not unique EPOC or deep tech startups or and in general, whenever you're a technology startup, there's a period of time from which you have ah developed some technology to when you're you know generating sufficient profits to be able to be self-sufficient as an organization, right? And during that time, you know, you need to continue to pay staff to pay the rates on the the buildings that you're in and to to keep the lights on.
Speaker: that That period of time in startups is usually funded with venture capital investments or investment from elsewhere. And so to to to me, at least, I think i think of the valley of death as that period between, you know, when your your revenue isn't quite covering the burn rate, the amount, you know, the amount of money that you're spending to keep the business going.
Speaker: And therefore, you're having to to continually go out for further investment to cover the the shortage of your, um you know, your income. And ah it's a challenge.
Speaker: Maybe the only way to to get around it is to address those two things, right? What can you do to help with your company's ability to generate investment capital or to um to increase the revenue quicker and profit that comes with it?
Speaker: So for EPOC, what does that mean? What are the steps that you're taking to cross close that gap really between, as again, what Jacob said, the science works and what is, you know, and this is what manufacturers will adopt. And that gap is huge. And your role is specifically to close that gap. How are you doing this for EPOC?
Speaker: Well, Jacob says our science does work, but you you have to prove it. So I think the first thing that you can do to de-risk is to prove the technology is ah is capable of doing what you you say it can. So there's some technology milestones, the commitments that you make to...
Speaker: your your investors and partners and backers that you're working towards. And over time, by continually meeting or exceeding those targets, you give people confidence that the business is ah less risky, that you're able to deliver on on what you say you can do and the commitments that you make. So the the initial stages for sure are much more technology focused. Can you set milestones and deliver on those technology development milestones? After that, I think you start to move into a production environment and being able to prove that you can scale and produce larger quantities is key.
Speaker: I don't know how many of your listeners will be familiar with scale up challenges, but, you know, in many cases, it's not just a situation where you just make more or make bigger. There are inherently different operational challenges that you face when you start to produce in larger quantities. And and that's a challenge. So beyond naturally being able to to do that successfully.
Speaker: is another way that you can de-risk the business. And by doing so, every time you de-risk the business, you you just make it easier for people to trust you and to either invest in your company or to you know to partner with you for future you know offtake or supply.
Speaker: And that's probably the last one as well, which is that there is there's technical risk inherent with businesses, but there's also commercial risk too. And by hitting commercial milestones, whether it's off-take agreements or JDA, and maybe in the earlier days, these are ways that you can prove that the customer wants what you're producing and is is able to work with you in terms of your product, but also your go-to-market strategy. The technology proves you can do it. Maybe the the production proves that you can scale it. And and then the commercial milestones prove that your customers are going to want it and it will be viable.
Speaker: Absolutely. um Chloe, I believe you have a very different valley to cross or your challenge is quite different. What does the valley of death mean for your company? What is that gap that you're trying to close and how are you doing this?
Speaker: I think the valley of death to us means that, yeah, we have a great science product. It works, you know, in the lab scale, but then we're unable to actually get market adoption. I think it's as simple as that.
Speaker: We die kind of somewhere in between. I think there's, yeah, so there's very similarly, there's a bit of tech de-risking we need to do. think scaling is going to be the biggest for us. And then, you know, not, and then obviously kind of dying in between with not enough funding kind of get there. So I think for us, kind of the key things that we're trying to focus on right is getting first kind of orders, getting first traction, being able to kind of get commercial traction and being able to then kind of prove repeated customers is kind of like the one big thing that will, I know is kind of the key investor metric that they will be looking for in our next round. So being able to kind of already de-risk the funding drying up problem by doing that. And then also just making sure, yeah, there is demand for our product, right? think one of the key things is RFID in the retail space is somewhat saturated. People have their preferred suppliers they're working with already. How does a new tiny incumbent kind of break the market, right? So then it's also then strategically kind of trying to figure out how we are positioning ourselves kind amongst this big market situation. Do we go for more, do we actually not go for retail and actually go for a new industry completely kind carve out our niche? Or do we kind of work with kind these bigger brands and actually partner with them? So I think there's kind of like a navigating way of kind of finding our of true kind of customer and kind of defining our product market fit a little bit better.
Speaker: but yeah, so I think those are kind of like just key areas. Like there's obviously tech we need to do risk, but then it's really, I think for us now thinking carefully about the commercial side of like, Who and where and how are we going to get to those metrics that we want? And then lastly, it's actually the big thing is around manufacturing, right? So like I said earlier, I think it's 50 tags a day. That's nothing. So, you know, how do we then kind of scale up?
Speaker: I mean, we have plans to maybe the kind of the bigger vision long term plan is like using licensing as the way to kind of scale up. So actually, another key, I think this is a value add that we can bring is that because our manufacturing is simpler than conventional RFID tag manufacturing, we can potentially license our solution by integrating these laser heads directly into manufacturing lines of say like packaging companies or label manufacturers and you create our fatty tags right then and there and so this licensing model could be a way for us to kind of scale faster so that we don't have to find every single end customer but we kind of find these people who are in a way distributors for us and kind of partner with them so lots of kind of ideas but kind of the next year or so is really then let's prove and de-risk all those things at the same time
Speaker: I love that you're exploring different business models and licensing is something you're thinking about as well. I mean, like every startup, ah you've had some tough moments as well with yours. And I understand that you went through a phase where you had some interest, commercial interest for your tags, but you couldn't physically make enough of them um that were needed. And you had to kind of pull your R&D engineers off of the lab and and get them to hand build these sample batches. Take me through that time. What did it actually feel like? Did it come close to being a bit of an existential question there about where you are as a company? um I think luckily, think I would say that I think this partner was probably someone that was a bit more, they were definitely friendly. um And so in a way that it was a lot of just internal pressure to want to get it perfect, to want to get it on time, to want to be able to kind of, in a way, also kind of test the team, stress test the team as a whole. so I think it was more internal pressure than the external. I think we've been lucky that a lot of our partners have been very patient with us and being able to kind of move deadlines a little bit and whatnot.
Speaker: But at the same time, it's like we need to be professional. You know, if we say that we have a deadline we need to hit and we're going to execute, it like that's just something that we need to do. So I think from a team's perspective, it was very much just like, in in a good healthy way like trauma bonding I think we all got really close we got much closer kind of you know being able to just like get together and like get all the samples out to what we need um and so that was that was fun in a way you know we just kind of you know ah but for the manual parts we were able to chit chat and actually like get to know each other even more but very much um in the back of my mind it was like we need to hurry up like just kind of nitpick on everyone's process is there anything we can move faster and and whatnot so very much it was like on the day just like trying to figure out and put fires out put many fires large fires out on the day but we managed so it was good
Speaker: And I think five years down the line, when you're a really successful company, i feel like these are the stories that you'll really remember because there's times like this when the team comes together and pull through times like these that, yeah, that's where the essence of the company really lies. Luciana, for... Epoch, the bottleneck, isn't so much demand. It's building the industrial capacity to serve it. And you've taken huge steps towards that. Again, just to quote Jacob, you know, he talks about venture capital being too dilutive when you're trying to kind of build industrial facilities. And if you ask for project finance, you know, people just say good luck because they're not willing to take that kind of risk. But you've sat on both sides of that table, right? With your previous experience with LG Chem and others, where you were the one negotiating investments and off-take agreements with startups.
Speaker: Why do big companies hesitate when startups come up and they make these pitches and presentations? And what actually makes them commit? Or what made you commit when you were on the other side of the table?
Speaker: I mean, that is the $50,000 question, I I could say.
Speaker: I think, you know, to everybody out there that's fundraising, they'll know how difficult it is. And I don't think I have any silver bullets to that one. But what I can say is that, you know, it was interesting being on the other side of the the table, so to speak, working with a strategic investor at LG Chem, because, you know, I was able to see the decision making, as you said, and understand a little more about what goes into it.
Speaker: You know, I will say that, for example, one thing that we often think about in the startup world is that if you can prove that you can take a technology from the lab to a pilot production and show some some scalability, that so long as it's got a line of sight to some some financial ah viability that people will want to invest because, you know, you've proven the technology and you've proven that it can scale up. There are a lot of other things when you're impacting supply chains in big industries. And Chloe mentioned this earlier about needing to needing needing to operate in a way that allows your customers not to change much about how they go about their business. So what I mean is, you know, in ah in a company like LG, for example, they they will be conscious of the fact that in isolation, maybe a technology startup could scale their technology. But if it would require other changes to the value chain, you know, that that could be multi-million or sometimes multi-billion dollar investments into production facilities around the world. And those may not be desirable. So the the benefit has to go beyond your area of development and also you know benefit the whole machine, so to speak.
Speaker: And so thinking about being a drop-in solution, not just from a technology standpoint, but also from ah a commercial standpoint, that means, for example, let's say you produce a product that is identical to a product that somebody's already using, but you change how they have to go about buying it.
Speaker: that That could be a problem. That could change their suppliers, it could change their order quantities, it could create some inefficiencies that dilutes or dilutes your value or or increases the cost somewhere else.
Speaker: ah That's a great example. Thank you. Well, last week, you did something quite unusual for a venture backed startup. So instead of building a plant, you bought one in Spain with 60 people already working there with great expertise. Walk me through that decision. How did you kind of decide that is the big one we need to go after?
Speaker: Yeah, you know, you mentioned that you and I spoke ah just over a year ago now, and think at that time EPOC was around 30 people, and now we're about 120. Wow. 60 of which we we we kind of adopted in this acquisition. So, you know, there's been a lot of organic growth, but there's been ah a step change recently, and and in headcount terms alone, that that definitely has changed the profile of the company quite substantially. Wow. We're super proud to have them on on board. They're an amazing team.
Speaker: But as you mentioned, yeah, 60 people joining as part of that acquisition. You know, the decision to do so, you know, first of all, we we always planned to produce a polymer. The decision on um the site in Blanes was a combination of opportunistic. The site came up available and was a fraction of the cost of building it ourselves.
Speaker: And the fact that, you know, as as our company's evolved and discussions with partners has evolved, we've realized that um it's helpful to have some flexibility in terms of how we go about production of polymer.
Speaker: It will greatly simplify supply chains by having polymer production in-house for us. You know, we'll be able to work very closely with our customers' supply chains and give us the ability to to be vertically integrated all the way from waste through, you know, the the recycling process all the way to polymer chips and and having nylon to sell. We think that there is an opportunity in Europe, in the West more broadly, to take on assets like what we have done in Spain, where they've maybe struggled in recent years from increased energy prices and and challenging economic and conditions because, you know, they...
Speaker: They haven't been able to decouple themselves from the the oil feedstock and the volatilities that come with that. and by by having our technology to kind of change the fundamental economics of the site, we think that we are able to make a real difference to these production facilities and and make them and not just viable, but incredibly profitable. And and that's what we intend to do.
Speaker: You just mentioned you inherited 60 people from at this new factory who have decades of experience. How are you bringing that into a young deep tech startup culture?
Speaker: And how do you see this new phase of epoch changing the culture of the company as well? Another a good question. Yeah, like we sometimes talk about startups like they're completely different animals, you know, and for sure there's some there's some unique unique aspects of working for a startup.
Speaker: But fundamentally, we're all out there trying to produce a product or a service that people want. and um we're trying to solve a ah problem in the world. I think that marrying different experiences together and and different different skills and characteristics is super important. There are some people in Epoch that have never worked anywhere other than a startup, and there are some people like myself who spent decades in industry, and and we all bring different different backgrounds and skill sets.
Speaker: It's been fun. We had our first Spanish all hands meeting last week or two weeks ago. You know, many of them are super excited now to be in a very dynamic environment where things are changing quite rapidly. But yeah, there will be some adjustment required, I'm sure, as well for for them to be working for a different category of company for sure.
Speaker: Chloe, you mentioned how you're building your first automated production line and again, hiring staff, building up the capabilities. What are some of the sort of hurdles that you're facing at this stage? Is it just financing or is it finding the right skills, finding the right machines? Where where the problems?
Speaker: Yeah, it's definitely definitely a little bit of everything, right? I think... We are able, we're actually in the process right now of closing our fundraising round. So um at least it's like, again, it's not done yet. So fingers crossed, but hopefully by the time this airs, we are done and dusted and we have fresh capital. going. So that basically gives us a lot of kind of empowerment and just confidence that we can hire and we can grow and and whatnot, right? So we're very much in the process of hiring, I think, for other roles, mostly around kind of production, manufacturing, software. So really helping that automation kind of go forward. i think talent is always...
Speaker: There's a lot of good talent in London. So that's a good thing. But being able to make sure that they also are not too technical, but they also get the sort of vibe. Like i think that's finding that balance is a bit tricky. And then as a team now, we are very technically strong. So again, balancing people who are more just pure science and just pure technical versus someone who's maybe a bit more generalist can kind of hop from one team to another. We're kind of at a stage now that we're actually like looking at the team from a holistic standpoint and not just like, these are the critical technical skills that we need. So kind of a little bit more like future planning and again, kind of growing the team as kind of a collective rather than just individual pieces of the puzzle. So that's been a fun kind of interesting challenge. And then just, I think one of the core things of the scale up is actually the production line, right? So making sure that we have good relationships with the people we're actually buying these machines from. um Shoma, my co-founder and I were actually heading out to China for RFID conference, but at the same time we're mixing it and adding in, you know, some site visits to different factories to kind of like build that relationship with people as well.
Speaker: That's again, fun, new challenge for us. And then just making sure that the suppliers, you know, we have a good supply chain happening because like at the end of the day, we are producing a product and we don't have the raw materials sorted. That's going to really affect kind of everything that happens. Right. So, um, yeah, so it's a bit of everything I would say, but yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. Well, I want to talk a bit more now about some of the partners who have walked the journey with you. So for you, Chloe, you've got Sustainable Ventures an h and H&M Foundation on board with you, and you've done some pilots with some brands and others. um How much does having these names attached to Popatronics actually change what's possible and what is the leverage they give you?
Speaker: Yeah, definitely. So I think for us, like, again, we've been very lucky that, you know, we're not a typical uni spin out, you know, we own the all ah all the IP, you know, Imperial Royal College of Art, they don't own anything. But again, because their enterprise networks are so strong, we've been able to actually leverage that. So Imperial has a massive enterprise lab, ah RCA has their own innovation lab as well. So we've been able to kind of leverage their networks. And there's some very deep deep pocket people in in these university kind of networks. So that's been really beneficial for us. So we kind of think about our communities from various kind of, I guess, segments. So we have the academics who kind of help with the research, pushing the boundaries, helping with like testing facilities, all of that. And then we have kind of more like industry partners and then we have like the customer partners. So like industry partners, I would say they're more like accelerator programs. So like you mentioned, sustainable ventures,
Speaker: You know, there's a few others that we've been working with. We've been part of different ecosystems. So we've been, we've won a few of the Soundtender awards. So we've been part of that Soundtender X100 kind of ecosystem. We've been also part Tata. We won Tata's like pitch competition. So we've also been part of that ecosystem. So each of these kind of wins, they all like are like manufacturing futures, for example, right? Like all of these has really helped kind of broaden our network in our community to really help give us kind of what we need. And right now, I think with these industry partners, we've been able to get a lot of help from like a commercial go-to-market strategy standpoint. We've gotten some branding sessions. We've gotten so a lot of legal help.
Speaker: pro bono legal help. So all these little, i guess, yeah, ecosystem every single ecosystem partner has just really helped us in our journey. And then definitely now kind of doubling down on kind of the commercial partners. These are the people can actually can actually help us adopt the product and actually push us out the door. so This is kind of how we think about like about it, you know, academic, public, private sectors coming together to kind of help us get get out the door. So, yeah, we're very grateful for every single one of them. And we definitely could not have been, could not get to where we are today without any of their help.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm really glad you highlighted the importance of ecosystem partners. We had Fashion for Good, Fashion District, Mills Fabrica. They've all been sort of really key for so many startups to give them a leg up. Yeah, and we need it. Yeah.
Speaker: Luciano, you've got Inditex and Lululemon as both investors and customers and many other partners. I think you've got an MOU with Invista, who's a big chemical company. Why are these partnerships important and, you know, what's the leverage they've given you?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, as Chloe said, I think we're incredibly grateful to all of our backers and supporters that have helped us on the way. you know, for us, it's a mixture of um financial, venture capital and some strategic investors who have ah an interest to see companies like ours with technology that we're trying to develop be successful because it's important to them as well. You mentioned Intertex and Lululemon, obviously, in the apparel industry. they They're users of nylon and other synthetics and they...
Speaker: They are you know really keen to have a ah technology that can foster more recycling. It's been great to work with them. They give us insights into the industry. They're able to help us along with the early development work. And as you say, they hopefully will all all become customers and and use lots of our material that we produce in years to come.
Speaker: On the financial side, you know the backing and the support that we get from the board, which are often financial VCs, is is really helpful and useful too. We go to them for advice during board meetings and also outside of. And, you know, they've all been incredibly helpful to us along the way.
Speaker: Growth is a wonderful thing, right? That's what we all want for all of these businesses. um But growth can also mean things start to break. Luciano, now that your team has grown, your facilities have gone beyond the shores of England, what broke or nearly broke in the process of um your company growing?
Speaker: ah My energy levels. um Fair enough.
Speaker: No, we're we're um just like everybody. We go through busy periods, but I think the excitement keeps us going. And, you know, what broke? Nothing's broken. um But, you know, we have challenges. Everybody does. um we We work on cutting edge science where there are no research papers that you can turn to because we've already surpassed the research that's been carried out in these areas in institutions. And, you know, that sounds a very bold thing to say, but with The resources that we have in the building that you can see on the video here behind me, these guys here are are doing things for the first time and going way further than people have gone before.
Speaker: And when you do science like that and then you take it into a production operational environment, you learn as you as you go Fortunately, we've hired people who are not just great scientists, but people who are fantastic on the operations side who have done this before. um Our recent hire of Beau a CTO from Genomatica, she comes with some fantastic experience about taking science similar to this and and really increasing production sizes and working with licensees and so on. So I think it's a combination of...
Speaker: anticipating the challenges and, you know, making sure that you're you're ready to to move to the next stage, but also being ready to make changes to the process as you need to when you're scaling up.
Speaker: How about you, Chloe? Well, I was going to say nothing's, I mean, I was going to say either nothing's broken, right? Like similar to what you were saying, Luciana, like we're just evolving and kind of fixing things and making things better. But at the same time, I'm like, well, it's already broken. And what we're trying to do is actually to fix the solution and find a better solution, right? Yeah, but i think I think it's it's really...
Speaker: Maybe it's also kind of like, you know, entrepreneurs not wanting to admit that things are broken or things are going wrong, really. um but or it's the optimistic way of literally just thinking about how, you know, we just want to make things better and we're going fix and it's just a challenge and like nothing's ever going to go that wrong. I think for us, it's it's very much... sometimes it's around just like not being able to predict like the R&D time you know for example like we've been hovering around two to three meters for a while when are we going to make that hit that breakthrough of getting to that third next meter right and you kind of plan as best as you can and you're like hey
Speaker: It might be this quarter. But then if it doesn't, right, then technically that's broken or you don't hit it. And that's like quite a low. But then again, it's like, oh, you've actually cracked the next day. You can't really predict that. And I think that's kind of like one of the tough parts in R&D is that that then kind of really adjusts your entire kind of milestone planning. It affects kind of how you have to work with your customers and and kind of continue to keep them engaged. So I think we've had a lot of moments where like, you know, R&D maybe didn't go as well as we wanted to, or the timelines didn't fit kind of when we wanted to. And we've had to shift kind of some of those external milestones.
Speaker: So I would say it's more like yeah fitting and kind of seeing what that puzzle looks like and making it and you know say like, we know we can't get there. What are then the little steps we can then show and prove to kind of keep people engaged and keep showing progress? So I think nothing's ever fully broken. It's just a matter like how you frame it and how do you then tackle it?
Speaker: Brilliant. I love that. Both of your companies, you know, are great examples of innovators in the UK. You've presented at several conferences and expos and the young startups, the upcoming startups. But now you have to be reliable suppliers and that's a completely different kind of company. What keeps you up at night now that didn't two years ago? What's that sort of burning issue that you're facing it in the process of being a reliable supplier?
Speaker: Luciana? It definitely is a transition going from a startup that is a manufacturing product to one that is, right? Because at that point, you need to ah you need to acknowledge that you have customers and commitments. And I think Chloe talked about this earlier, which is, you know, stretch goals are great, but you need to be delivering on commitments, especially in a production environment and developing a relationship that's based on trust. That's very important as a new supplier into the industry,
Speaker: you know've At Epoch, we've tried to make it an an easier transition, as easy as possible, by working with customers on smaller batches to start with, to you know walk them through a journey whereby we can demonstrate with proof of concepts, which is a fairly low touch. you know we we just... can prove in in a lab scale that the technology works and then we provide them with some increased amounts of material later and we try to work with their existing suppliers without changing much of the the supply chain at all. Recognizing the fact that the company we exist for our our customers and stakeholders and and that's something which changes when you're in production mode and then making it as smooth as a transition for new customers, if a new to become a new supplier to customers as possible.
Speaker: Right. And Chloe? I think for me, there's two main things. So one for us is like, we're kind of, yeah, pivoting from that lab scale to kind of a smaller production batch. And I think that's what keeps me up at night. I'm like, ah the RFID world is a volumes game. If we can't hit those millions of numbers, where we can't compete and that's it, right? So then...
Speaker: kind of planning the foundation of how this can grow bigger and how do we duplicate and quadruple it. That's definitely something that keeps me up at night. And then the other aspect is because our fighty tags exist, that's holding us at a very high kind of benchmark level already. And so then making sure that whatever we're doing on the R&D side, we're able to kind of match that or, you know, either match that or at the same time, some of the features in existing RFID tags might be too much. So then how do you then work with the brands to actually be like, hey, do you really need this? Or we actually have a product that's a bit more simple, it has better eco credentials, it's a bit cheaper. do you need that that level of, I guess, what's the word, performance? Do you really need that level of performance? So again, kind of having that conversation because it's very easy for your brands to be like, I just want the best. I just want the best and keep pushing it. And what we've seen a lot with a lot of these certification bodies is that they will just keep adding features onto kind of the RFID standards and the RFID industry. But again, it's like what we've also learned from industry people is that, do we really need all these standards you know so then it's like kind of balancing that and and figuring kind of how to navigate the space right you've both spoken so openly and honestly about the journey so far and I really appreciate that how about we look forward now where do you see your companies in the next five to eight years where would you want it to be what's the vision Chloe
Speaker: Yeah, the vision, it's quite simple. I think because RFID tags exist in the world, we just want to replace them and provide the world with better RFID tags. But i think we're so much more than that, though. Like, I think with the technology, um what we're doing, again, is paper electronics. We're not just creating metal-free RFID tags. So I think from an R&D and innovation standpoint, our technology can not only push boundaries on the material side of things, so we can go into bioplastics, we can go to biobased materials, we can go into coconut shells like cork, cotton. There's a lot of different areas we can kind of push from that standpoint. And then there's also massive new industries we can go into. So obviously retail is a big one, but there's so much opportunity in the packaging space, for example.
Speaker: um And that's kind of where we see our licensing packaging kind of going in that direction in the future, but also healthcare. Everyone wants item level tracking. So there's a lot of opportunity there. And then from a product standpoint, RFID is an umbrella term. You have all these sub products like NFC tags that you use your phone to tap. You have HF tags. You have what we're currently using for inventory, UHF tags. So there's so much going on there. So I think as a company, i think what we're trying to do is to eliminate e-waste and by pushing kind of the Zedbanch technology further by creating paper electronics. So I think really excited for kind of how the next couple of years pan out. Hopefully we get our scaling to where we want it to be. and But at the same time, we're very excited to kind of expand into other things other than RFID tags.
Speaker: I love that. That is such a big vision. And there's so many opportunities, as you said, beyond just the RFID tags. And Luciano, what's the vision for Epoch over the next five to eight years? five to eight years. Well, that seems like a lifetime.
Speaker: ah You know, look... we We sometimes talk about our achievements very quickly and pass over the fact that there's ah dozens of people that have been in this company for years making this happen and putting in an extremely high degree of work, you know personal sacrifices to get to this point.
Speaker: And I think one of the things that's kept them going is the drive not only to develop the science, many of them are keen scientists, but they're also, you know, the the desire to have an impact to make a difference. And so they're not going to be satisfied that they've made something work in a lab.
Speaker: They won't be happy until they've actually made a tangible impact on what is a very important sustainability issue. So I think, you know, for us, we won't be happy unless in that sort of time time horizon, five to eight years, we are having a major impact on the way that the world's materials are made. know We've talked about PA66, nylon 66 that is In five to eight years, we will have ah multiple production facilities up and running by then.
Speaker: And we will be hopefully taking a chunk out of the the oil-based products that are currently on the market, having a circular solution for customers that's you know significantly less emissions driven and has a solution for end of life materials and and being a a real alternative in the industry for this important material that we frankly couldn't live without. It's not just that you'd run out of yoga pants, you wouldn't have any tires on your car and cars don't go very well without tires.
Speaker: We will have multiple production facilities, but beyond Nylon 6.6, also the platform technology that we've got is able to work with alternative ah polymers as well. So in that sort of time horizon, I would expect us to be making inroads into other materials as well.
Speaker: I love that you're both focused on the impact that you want to make in these industries, which where the problem just seems so big and overwhelming right now. But it's wonderful to have champions like yourselves who are working hard day and night to to make that impact. I'm looking forward to that.
Speaker: Brilliant. So we're going to step out of this sort of company mode a little bit now, just to quickly get to know you as as just people, um not as CEOs and CCOs and any of that. Take off that hat. And Chloe, tell us a bit about yourself. You grew up in Hong Kong, you studied in the US and now you're building a company in London. But take us back to when you were a teenager. did you enjoy doing over a weekend? Or was there a sports team that you were part of or a hobby that you loved when you were a young girl? Yeah, I grew up in Hong Kong until I was 13 and then went to the U.S. for school. So when I was in Hong Kong, I don't know how much you know about Hong Kong, but it's like,
Speaker: Super, super busy, bustling skyscraper city, but a lot of people don't realize there's also a lot nature there's a lot of greenery. So actually on the weekends, I have an older sister, younger brother, so we're a family of five. We'd always go out to nature to actually go on hikes and just like be one with nature. So that's something that I would do kind of um every Sunday. We'd go play some tennis and then go for a walk, go hiking. Hong Kong is a very mountainous. So they are these are like trucks. So they were always, those would be really fun. And then lots of family time. So my mom's a great cook. So um really, I miss her home cooking food, um being here in London or having been abroad for so long. So that's definitely something. Yeah. Being sporty, active na and being in nature. i played squash in uni. they don did I. Yeah. Well, we should, we should. I don't anymore. i don't anymore. I still try to play once a week, actually. really? yeah Okay. And a hat, what keeps me sane, i guess. So it's like playing sports and staying active um and cooking as well now. So, yeah. Lovely. i mean, you've lived in several different countries now. um How have these different cultures shaped who you are today?
Speaker: Yeah, I think it's very much a very tough question. It's very like, I need to think internally a lot. I think in a way it's definitely made me just a very international person. I try to perceive the world with um not a lot of bias, even though, I mean, of course, ah still I'm very biased, but like I try to really listen to people. And I think that's something my upbringing has allowed me to do because the more you listen, the more you absorb, and that's how you can build a better product or be a better person. And like having to, having moved to different, you know, going to college, going to high school, like meeting people, you need to like listen to people in order to like, yeah, figure yourself out, I guess. So I think,
Speaker: Being able to adapt to different cities as well has also been kind of, I think it has definitely influenced kind of being a founder as well, being that, having that adaptable skill. But I have also realized that having lived in all these cities, I'm definitely a city girl who likes nature.
Speaker: I think that I've actually moved from hong Kong, which I think is probably the most hectic and then New York and then now London. I'm like, wow, London is so sleepy, so slow. Yeah. um which some people find the exact opposite, right? So um it's, yeah. So I think it's a really good place for me to be in into also, i also, I don't have as many friends in the UK than in the US, right? So it's a very good place for me to just also focus, lock in, build what I'm doing and have this great ecosystem here.
Speaker: Nice. Luciana, how about yourself? Where did you grow up and what were you like as a young boy? Very similar to how I am now, just maybe less stressed. I grew up in the UK, just north of London, and worked here immediately after...
Speaker: I graduated from university, but I worked for a global company, Dutch chemical company at the time, and had the opportunity to to to do a two-year assignment to the US, which I was a bit skeptical of. I wasn't sure if I wanted to do two years, seemed like an awful long time to be away. So I i tried to negotiate one year and was talked into doing two. And then 20 years later, I was still in the US. So that's that's how that one went. But yeah, 20 years living in the US in different places, about five years in Texas, five in New York, and then the balance in California, North and South, before moving back to the the UK shortly before I met you last year. so um
Speaker: only back in Europe for um going on two years now. And But it's it's been it's been fun to be back, you know, strange in a way because everything seems so familiar, but you also feel a little bit foreign in some ways. You don't recognize some of the cars on the road and, you know, people are celebrating like Black Friday here, but not Thanksgiving. And that suddenly didn't happen before I left. So I'm not sure. yeah um yeah How does your experience in the States, how does that influence you and who you are today and how you do business? Yeah. It's a great question.
Speaker: And I always think it's very easy to to to have these observations about others, sometimes more than yourself, right? It certainly influenced who I am. I can see it when i when I interact with people that I grew up with and how we've maybe learned different skills, diverged in our thoughts by spending time abroad.
Speaker: I think on a very positive sense, you know, the US culture, and not just from startups, but for general business life is a very positive, um you know, get out there and and go get it. You can do this kind of attitude. And we, In the U.S., we yeah we were very um ambitious and very driven to to succeed.
Speaker: I think the attitudes to failing in the U.S. are perhaps different than what I was used to when I was growing up in Europe. You know, the the stigma or not attached to failing. I think in in the U.S., you're almost stigmatized for not trying rather than for failing. And so that encourages you to maybe take advantage.
Speaker: take risks and to try and push yourself to try and do things. And and ultimately, that's how you realize that things maybe aren't as difficult as you thought they'd be. tried to bring some of that back with me. But yeah, it was a fantastic chapter of my life, I guess.
Speaker: This a question I ask all my guests. As you know, textiles isn't just something that's functional for us. It's something that's so intimate and close to us and and textiles is everywhere. And I really believe that textiles has the power to fulfill our senses and our soul. Is there a piece of garment or a piece of textiles that hold deep and personal value for each of you? Something that you hold on something that's got personal story connected to it?
Speaker: Chloe? I'm trying really hard to think. it could be a a sweatshirt you wore during squash or something and it is a s sweatshirt it's actually ah it's a hoodie it's a hoodie so little bit different but I think yeah this hoodie i would wear on the airplane it would it was my airplane outfit and maybe it just like gave me comfort you know like as a teenager kid you know i traveled between Hong Kong and the US quite often um to go to school. And I think maybe that just gave me that sense of comfort. you know i just remember I'd always wear it. I would hood up, don't try it. Nobody talked to me. And like I think i really I really liked my time on the airplane because it was like the time where I have, I don't need to interact with anyone. There's no like social media, no wifi, at least back then.
Speaker: now I'm like, oh, why are you bringing wifi on the plane? You're interrupting my piece, right? But I think it's very much, yeah my Zen peaceful time. And I think that the sweatshirt or the hoodie that I wore kind of gave me that comfort and that snuggle peace while I was kind of alone in this like travel zone.
Speaker: Getting ready mentally either to sort of get back to your life. Yeah. Or it's like, I miss home and this is like the my little snuggle hoodie that makes me feel comfort, I guess. Yeah. I really relate to that. I went to boarding school in a different country to where my parents were living. So I had to do this trip as well. And i know what you're talking about. yeah Luciano, would you have anything that holds personal value?
Speaker: Yes. Yes, my my grandmother in Italy loves to knit, especially especially as she's got older. she's She's knitted for a long time now and she she continues to knit. She can't do the dark yarns anymore. eyesight doesn't allow her to do that, but she continues to knit today. And just about anything she knits for me gets treated very carefully in my household. It's very special.
Speaker: What was the last thing that she, but the most recent thing, I should say, that she knipped for you? Yeah, we did get to a point where I have too many scarves. yeah The most recent thing she knitted for me was actually a knitted pillowcase.
Speaker: We moved into a new home when we moved to London. So I had her knit a 12 by 12 pillowcase. Sweet. Very sweet. Looking back now, just some reflections.
Speaker: If you strip it all back, everything, what is the one thing that is helping you kind of stick to this journey and carry on and get through those hard times? Is it the technology, the money, the partners, the team or something maybe less obvious?
Speaker: Chloe, what? I think for me, like, i think it's a bit of everything. i think part of me, there's just this like inner fire that I want to make this work. I want to be able to like, you know, really be able to commercialize paper electronics and be the first to do that. So I think, you know, no one's done this in the world. So it'd be like pretty damn cool to be the first to do that. And I think obviously it comes with a lot of the impact side. I think for me, finding meaning in what I do is what really also motivates and drives me. So I think that's very much what keeps me going every day.
Speaker: lucno Having worked in big companies where you can do some pretty amazing things that sometimes get lost in the in in the grander scheme of business. I think what's what I'm looking forward to at EPOC is delivering something that has our fingerprints as a collective team on it and and has a real impact into the materials we use day to day.
Speaker: um There are people listening in who are exactly where you were maybe a couple of years ago. and They've got their science that works, they've done the pilot and they're trying to scale now. What would be some recommendations you could for them, Chloe?
Speaker: i would say really understand your customer pain points. I think developing those customers from day one really helps build a better product because the insights can basically drive kind of r and g direction. so I think definitely understand and have good relationships with potential customers.
Speaker: Excellent. Luciana? You can't fix everything by working harder. and There isn't enough hours in the day. so you need to be very focused and efficient and prioritized well. The last question that we have um here is, the valley of death is where many good ideas in our industry quietly die. In one sentence each, what's the one thing you wish someone had told you before you started walking into this? Chloe?
Speaker: Maybe they haven't told me yet. Okay. Yeah. and Or maybe I'm just like blindly going straight ahead into the flames and it's OK. Thank you. Yeah, that that absolutely makes sense. And probably what a lot of founders would say as well. um How about you, Luciano?
Speaker: I don't know. i think I'm very selective with the advice I take because you you listen to too many people and you never go anywhere. I think plenty of people have given me very good advice. I'm not sure what they could have given me that they didn't.
Speaker: If I can, sorry, if I can just add maybe, so I think one piece of advice that has really, i guess, helped me, and this is not like startup specific, but i think it's just like life in general. And that I think it's really helped me get to where I am today is basically being, it's being super comfortable in the uncomfortable. And I think that's every day as a startup founder, you're doing something new, you're doing something different. It's a bit scary. But being able to just be like, I got this, I'm comfortable in this unknown world. i think it has really helped me being can grow as a founder. But more importantly, I think I just have have this, I guess, personality or this trait where I'm like, i can do anything. you know, like whether it's like blindly or with some guidance. And I think being able to just like go for it. i think that piece of advice has really just helped me kind of throughout the years. Being comfortable with the uncomfortable.
Speaker: That is the secret right there to surviving the valley of death. I absolutely love it. And the perfect note for us to end on. Chloe and Luciano, you were brilliant.
Speaker: Thank you for sharing so openly about both the highs and lows of the scaling phase of your companies. You both have the vision, passion and mindset that one needs to solve the big challenges we face today.
Speaker: There's a lot here for other startups who are maybe a few steps behind you to learn from. And I'm sure the listeners were taking notes. We're all cheering you on and looking forward to seeing you scale into successful businesses that have a global impact.
Speaker: Wishing you all the best. Thank you again, Luciano and Chloe. Thank you, Mili. Great. Thanks so much for having. It was such a fun conversation.
Speaker: What an inspiring conversation. i learned so much today and I hope you did too. Both Chloe and Luciano shared so honestly about their journey. There was nothing polished about it. It was raw and real. It was fascinating to hear side by side how these two very different companies were walking their own tight ropes across two very different valleys.
Speaker: I love their passion and commitment to this journey and their deep desire to have a huge impact on our planet. I thought Luciana summed up what every startup needs to do. Prove the science, then prove you can make more of it, then prove someone will pay for it. At each step, you're earning trust to move forward to the next step.
Speaker: If I had to leave you with one line, it'll be Chloe's. Being comfortable in the uncomfortable. That's the key to getting across the valley of death in just five words.
Speaker: If you're stuck somewhere between it works and someone wants to buy it. I hope this episode shed light on the road ahead and left you filled with hope and ideas for your own journey.
Speaker: I love that they highlighted the importance of community and being part of ecosystems. We can often think that funding is a solution to all our problems, but funding alone doesn't get you across that valley.
Speaker: People do. We have a whole episode on the power of ecosystems. So check it out. It's episode 20, where we discuss this in a lot more depth with key ecosystem builders such as Mills Fabrica, Fashion for Good and Fashion District, who play such a critical role in enabling startups to take their ideas and turn them into successful businesses. I'll add links to this episode in the show notes below.
Speaker: Thank you so much for listening. If this episode gave you something to think about, share it with someone who's walking the tightrope right now. I'm sure they'll appreciate it. A review from you would mean the world to me and it'll also help others discover this podcast. And if you've enjoyed this episode, consider buying me a coffee using the link below in the show notes. It helps fuel those late night editing sessions as I bring you these stories.
Speaker: Thank you for joining me today. Don't forget to subscribe for more conversations at the intersection of textiles, emerging technology, craft and sustainability. Until next time, I'm Millie Tharakin reminding you that there's no such thing as ordinary cloth.
Speaker: Every thread tells a story.
