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Is Venture Capital Built to Break Founders?
1 Plays3 seconds ago
Most founders pitch VCs without understanding the math that decides their fate, and Amrit Chandan learned this the hard way after raising $19M for his battery startup Aceleron and losing it to a 24-hour boardroom ultimatum. This conversation breaks down the UK venture capital trap, the cap table mistakes that cost founders their companies, and the playbook he is using to build his next AI startup Lorefully to profitability with zero VC.
A Forbes 30 Under 30 climate tech founder whose family migrated from India to Kenya to the UK, Amrit Chandan co-founded Aceleron in 2016 to build the world's first serviceable lithium-ion battery, raising over $19M from Toyota Mobility 54, Mercia, and BGF across seven years before being forced out as CEO in June 2022. Aceleron entered administration in September 2023 and was acquired by Pune-based Advik Hi-Tech in April 2024, after which Amrit co-founded Lorefully, an AI knowledge intelligence platform that captures expert conversations at live events. The platform has captured 5.5 million words of expert knowledge in five months, runs with just six people, has taken zero institutional VC, and is on track for £500K in revenue and profitability this quarter.
In this conversation with host Akshay Datt, Amrit unpacks why UK venture capital structurally takes too much founder equity too early, the 24-hour ultimatum that ended his first company, why first-time hardware founders should license their IP instead of manufacturing, and how a free booth at InstallerSHOW unlocked £400K for the organiser and saved his second startup. The episode lands at a moment when European VC dilution dynamics and the climate tech funding squeeze are pushing more Indian founders to rethink the institutional capital playbook.
👉How Aceleron raised over $19M from Toyota Mobility 54, Mercia, and BGF to build serviceable lithium-ion batteries that could be repaired instead of thrown away
👉Why Amrit was given a 24-hour ultimatum to step down as CEO in June 2022, and what happened in the five weeks after when the investor pushing for his removal walked away
👉What UK venture capital does structurally that takes too much founder equity too early, and why he ended up at 15% ownership before Series B
👉How a free booth at InstallerSHOW 2025 unlocked over £400,000 in sponsor revenue for the organiser and saved his new company Lorefully
👉Why first-time hardware founders should license their intellectual property instead of trying to manufacture, based on Amrit's own $19M lesson
👉How Lorefully captures 5.5 million words of expert knowledge at trade shows using human facilitators and AI, on track for profitability with just six staff
#AmritChandan #Lorefully #Aceleron #FounderThesis #AkshayDatt #IndianFounders #UKStartups #ClimateTech #BatteryStartup #VentureCapital #CapTable #FounderDilution #HardwareStartups #AIstartups
Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the speaker, not necessarily the channel
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Transcript
Amrit Chandan's Entrepreneurial Journey
00:00:00
Speaker
The cap table to me is the villain in this story. Investors have agreed that you need to step aside as the leader of the business. If you don't agree to this change, they're not going to fund the business. But this is not a command. This has to be your choice. Amrit Chandan built a $19 million dollars battery startup backed by Toyota, lost it to his own board and started over. His new company, Lorefully, uses ai to capture expert knowledge at industry events and is already profitable. You thought commercializing this by actually selling batteries, you didn't want to just sell the process? Selling the intellectual property it would have been the the best thing to do with it. Imagine how much further ahead we would be as ah in a human race if we had access to all the genius of our predecessors.
Educational Path and Initial Ventures
00:00:40
Speaker
Amrit, welcome to the Founder Thesis podcast. You look like a Desi, but you don't talk like one. You talk like a Gora. Tell me, who is Amrit? Thanks, Akshay, for having me. So and my family were really fortunate to come to the UK.
00:00:56
Speaker
ah So but um my grandparents on both sides, my nanaji and my pitaji, they both came via Africa. So in the nineteen fifty s and 1960s, the UK government did a call for people to come and and work and in the factories in particular.
00:01:14
Speaker
And so they they came via Africa. So they... how How did the the Indian diaspora reach Africa? I've always been curious. so I mean, of course, we've all seen the movie Gandhi where there are Indians in South Africa, but you've come from a family which migrated to Africa. What what was the motivation for Indians to go to Africa?
00:01:32
Speaker
I think it was access to opportunities and access to to jobs in particular. So there was a calling in particular, my my grandparents on both sides, they went to East Africa to Kenya and pedagogy worked in the postal service um and that
Building Acceleron and Early Success
00:01:50
Speaker
they were they were there sort of as a postmaster before they then came to the UK. So there was a further calling. They wanted people to come to the UK. So this was like in the colonial Raj, like there was that colonial Raj in Africa as well. And the jobs were there.
00:02:04
Speaker
Yeah. So this is just after independence in, in India. Um, so this was in, yeah, this was sort of late, late fifties. and then they, they went across to the UK, but yeah, the Kenya was still, uh, part of the, part of the empire.
00:02:21
Speaker
And what kind of work did they do in, know, once they landed in UK? So they they did whatever job they could find. So ah mostly it was factory work. um So they worked in in, and typically in sort of multiple jobs at the same time. So three three jobs. and um And I think at that time in the UK, because there were so few people,
00:02:42
Speaker
like us here, like communities would come together, stay with with each other. And slowly they brought the whole family over to the to the UK. So my my dad's generation, there are ah ah five brothers and then there are four
Challenges and Pivots at Acceleron
00:03:00
Speaker
sisters and ah my my my dad is one of the youngest in the in the family.
00:03:04
Speaker
and so they My dad was actually, my dad was born in India, but then came to the UK when he was two or three years old. ah But some of my some of my um My thaias, they were born in Africa and then came to the UK. And and what did your dad do? So your grandparents were in like factory jobs and like I would assume lower lower income strata. ah What about your dad?
00:03:32
Speaker
they They moved into um owning a shop and and sort of having a retail background. um My dad trained as an eye doctor, and so i as was an optometrist, and then worked...
00:03:44
Speaker
and worked then as ah as a, as ah had his own own practice for a long time, working as ah as an optometrist ah for yeah his whole career.
00:03:55
Speaker
Classic immigrant story. Yeah, it's it's really interesting because we see this, like did the there's ah there's ah there's a big swing. You have this highly entrepreneurial generation who left everything they knew. They left they left family, they left they but they moved to a country where they didn't speak the language, they look very different.
00:04:12
Speaker
And they took a huge risk in doing so. And then um you almost have ah ah and this is culturally not necessarily in instrument my family, but just as ah as a culture, it's something I find really fascinating.
00:04:24
Speaker
um You almost have a sort of loss of that entrepreneurial spirit because the elder generation said, well, actually we've done all the hard things so you don't have to. So train, become a professional.
00:04:35
Speaker
um and then make it better for the next generation. and then and then it's it's yeah they It's interesting because in the UK, there is a always this challenge that you hear within the within the capital giving communities, like the venture capital and the debt markets where they say, why are there not enough ethnic minority South Asian heritage businesses coming forward that we can fund? and Some of that is because i think there's generally
Leadership Changes and Reflections
00:05:00
Speaker
a ah cultural view about sort of debt as a whole. So lots of people say, don't don't ever take on debt, fund your business yourself.
00:05:07
Speaker
And then some of that is because think there are fewer businesses or have been fewer businesses, but I think that's swinging in the other direction now. So that that legacy it's ah is a very interesting one. I'm hugely grateful and it has driven everything that I've done to date because what i whatever I do, I always think my grandparents worked really hard to make it better for my parents' generation. My parents have worked really hard to make it better for us. So what am I doing for the next generation?
00:05:33
Speaker
ah You're a devout Sikh? That's right. Yeah. Okay. And ah like was it hard being devout in the UK? It's easy in a way because this is the only path we've ever known.
00:05:48
Speaker
um but it's hard in a way because the system is not designed for people who look very different. um And so I remember growing up, you know I've experienced racism in my life being here in the UK.
New Beginnings and Lorefully
00:06:01
Speaker
Even recently, like in the last couple of months, years, you know there there are still things that happen that that ah because I look different and because because i am different. I can tell you for sure as an example, actually,
00:06:13
Speaker
I go to the airport, I will or i will have a 100% chance of being checked in the random checks that they do. Okay. Okay. It has its advantages as well because because I do look so different. Like in a business context, I go to a meeting and chances are there are people who remember me because I've been there.
00:06:32
Speaker
um But then, yeah, it the it's hazards it has its advantages for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So growing up, did you want to do entrepreneurship or what was the aim?
00:06:44
Speaker
This is the interesting thing, actually. I think seeing how hard my parents worked and seeing how hard hard my grandparents worked, I always thought the career for me was going to be something professional, um something perhaps in ah in a corporate job. I think at one point I was interested in in and law and becoming a lawyer.
00:06:59
Speaker
um And so I did not have a desire to do entrepreneurship. And I ended up the the the journey of how I got here. So I did my undergraduate degree in chemistry.
00:07:13
Speaker
And then at the end of that process, i worked I'd worked really hard to achieve my to achieve my degree. And i managed to I managed to get a first class honors degree um from the University of Birmingham. I think I was tough in my top in my class.
00:07:29
Speaker
um But the global financial crash happened. And I remember applying for jobs and and the way the system works in the UK, you have these graduate training schemes you have these graduate training schemes And I found the process of applying to be so inhumane, a complete lack of humanity because you you have to put all of your information into these online forms and you have to answer so essay style questions.
00:07:56
Speaker
And then you get you do you do all of this effort. And then at the end of it, they say, ah you if we're interested in your application, you'll hear from us in two weeks. Otherwise assume it's not going to progress. anymore So you don't even get the courtesy of ah of an email or a message to say,
00:08:13
Speaker
Sorry, it's not not going to work. And I found that process so, ah yeah, as I say, inhumane. Then after sort of doing, i I did one application and I said, this is not the path for me. I'm going to work out my own path.
00:08:30
Speaker
And then i i had an offer for doing a PhD. um So I went into into that in chemical engineering. And this was in the topic of of hydrogen technologies, and which at the time we thought it was going to be the future and and certainly will have a part to play in the energy transition.
00:08:47
Speaker
And while I was doing that, I decided wanted to try um my hand at sort of entrepreneurship. there was ah There was a grant from the university. So they gave, I think it was like 500 pound amount of money. And they said, um use this money, see if you can start a company, what can you do with it? So myself and one of my PhD friends, I'm still very good friends with today, Scott.
00:09:12
Speaker
We ended up starting a small consultancy on the back of our research. And we want some we want some clients doing that and and got a taste for what that entrepreneurship that entrepreneurial journey was like. So that was my first foray in. And that was sipping from the poisoned chalice of knowing what that knowing what that freedom is like and knowing what that what what it that that sort of the dopamine of of making a sale and making a difference in the world.
00:09:40
Speaker
You did not want to scale that like that, like that wasn't something which excited you, just continuing to do that consulting gig for a business. It was a really interesting option.
00:09:51
Speaker
um i think so i be i the the same thing The other thing that happened around that time, we had a UN scientist who came to our research group and he told us that the world was beyond saving.
00:10:03
Speaker
So he gave this bleak talk and he said, the world is gone. He said, there's no point, don't even try. he said, just just live live your life as you want to live it and you know it's all going to end anyway.
00:10:14
Speaker
And it was so sad to hear this, that I, again, i think that that sort of but what what can I do for the next generation? I knew that I wanted to dedicate my life to trying to make a bigger difference in the world.
00:10:26
Speaker
And so the consulting work was interesting and we won some big projects and things were moving. um But I felt like I wanted to do something bigger. And then the other part was my co-founder in that, Scott. He was awarded a an opportunity to work in University of California, Davis, where he joined the Institute for Transportation Studies. And and and he's still there today. He's now, I think, assistant director or associate director of the of the whole institution, which is fantastic. like He's really gone on a meteoric rise.
00:11:03
Speaker
But it meant that continuing on the business together would have been really difficult. And so we'd agreed before he went out there, we'd said, well, we'll try it and see if we can continue working together.
00:11:14
Speaker
But if it if it turns out it doesn't work, then we'll part ways as as friends and the business will know wrap it up and move on to to other things.
00:11:24
Speaker
And that's also at the what what ended up happening because he was he was doing so well there and getting so involved in the the research. he just It made sense for him to carry on doing that work. And so that led that left the opportunity to to find something else. so it was around that time I was then given the opportunity to work at the Center of Excellence in in Hydrogen Technologies as ah as a consultant.
00:11:49
Speaker
but And it was because of that entrepreneurial experience I got to do that. I was given the job there. And that's where I met the co-founder of Acceleron, my first startup. So this is Carlton.
00:12:01
Speaker
He's from Barbados, ah another part of the empire. We had that shared experience of i you know the the legacy of the British Raj, um and the British empire. And we both, Acceleron started out as a lunchtime conversation.
00:12:18
Speaker
I said to Carlton, I want to start a company. i i I know that working for another employer long-term is not for me. And he said the same thing. He said, I also want to to start something.
00:12:30
Speaker
And then he had been working around batteries. He was a really big enthusiast of batteries, still is a big enthusiast of batteries. And he'd been doing his own electric bike conversions in his in his student flat.
00:12:44
Speaker
And he said, I think there's something interesting in this technology. And then we started a process. So we met for the first time in September of 2015. And then in October, November 2015, we said, that there is something here, we should explore it more.
00:13:01
Speaker
And the way we started, we we didn't have any money. to put to this, we didn't have any resource. So we started out by finding as many different competitions as we could and entering them.
00:13:16
Speaker
Like business plan competitions? Business plan competitions, awards, um conference awards, anything we could find. We were just sitting, this is before the days of of AI, so it was a case of manually checking everything, writing these applications, going for the interviews, doing the whole process. And we were doing that for two reasons, one or three reasons. One, because we didn't have any resource and we wanted to get, and some of these some of these competitions had had cash prizes.
00:13:46
Speaker
um Two, because it was an opportunity to test the idea and improve the idea because each time the idea was being put in front of experienced judges. And three, because we wanted to raise the profile of the idea as well and what we were doing so that it would make it easier to launch.
00:14:04
Speaker
What was the idea? So the idea was all... ah we Carlton had invented this technology, which was how you assemble battery cells together into a module.
00:14:16
Speaker
So um he had he had come up with this way that was using really simple technology because he wanted it to be simple. And he was originally applying this to his electric bike. So he had a normal bike and he was converting it to electric.
00:14:27
Speaker
and he was And we started out by using battery cells that ah that were considered waste. So these are lithium-ion battery cells that were no longer sort of, they'd been used once.
00:14:38
Speaker
It didn't really have much of an application and we were we were taking those and testing them and using them. And so we we had this this framework of the technology and that's what that's where it started out.
00:14:50
Speaker
what what is I'm still not sure what's special about the product. You're saying that you had a simple to assemble battery. Is that what's special?
00:15:01
Speaker
Yeah, so you ah the way lithium battery modules are assembled, they use lots of permanent techniques. So spot welding, they use adhesive, they use structural elements.
00:15:12
Speaker
And what that means is they are incredibly difficult to take apart once you've assembled it. The analogy I used to use a lot is imagine you're driving down the road in your car, and let's say the tire bursts and you have a flat tire.
00:15:29
Speaker
Imagine if that tire and the wheel was welded to the car and you could not repair the car. You had to throw the whole car away, even though it was just the tire that stopped working.
00:15:42
Speaker
like It doesn't make any sense to do that. But this is what happens in batteries. and Lithium modules are made with these permanent techniques. You have ah an array of cells, lots of cells, and it's just a few of these that maybe don't work as well.
00:15:57
Speaker
But because the whole thing is... and just a single block, you can't get into that without destroying it. And so the that what was unique about what we had was it was a compression technology using simple nuts and bolts.
00:16:13
Speaker
And we were able to we were able to um take components out, put them back in service and maintain these modules over time. and This would only work for higher capacity batteries, which are made of 50, 100 cells. So the the smallest module we ever made was um around 50 watt hours. So relatively small.
00:16:36
Speaker
And how many cells? That would have been about maybe 20, 30 cells. Yeah. dirty cells and then we And then the largest system we ever made was 150 kilowatt hour ah system. So this was this would have been enough to power like an industrial unit um with with with power. So it was higher power sort of application. So it was like a server rack.
00:16:59
Speaker
Okay. And this process, ah was it scalable? ah Could you use this process to manufacture tens of thousands of batteries? Yes. yes we we we um We were able to produce about an a megawatt hour worth of batteries a day um on a manual assembly line. We did not get to automation, so that was that would have been the next stage in the journey, but we yeah, it was absolutely scalable.
00:17:27
Speaker
And you thought of commercializing this by actually selling batteries? You didn't want to just sell the process? So this is where this is where the naivety of ah of a first-time founder comes in, Akshayes, because we We didn't know what we didn't know and there there weren't really people around us to advise us at the time.
00:17:46
Speaker
So both Carlton and I thought, well, we've made this thing. We should we should make products and sell products. And that was actually one of the... I think that was a very challenging thing to do.
00:18:00
Speaker
Very challenging thing to do. the The smart thing with the power of having been through it and knowing knowing what I know now, Absolutely. Selling the process, selling the intellectual property, it would have been the the best thing to do with it um instead of trying to do it all ourselves.
00:18:17
Speaker
So yeah, take me through the story. I interrupted you. You started going for these competitions where there was an opportunity to earn cash. Yes, that's right. um And so we we went through, we went and did these competitions. We started winning winning competitions and and that led to us being able to start funding the business. And then i think the big, big first break was that we applied for a research grant from the UK government.
00:18:45
Speaker
And we were we were successful in winning that. So that was our first major project um that was valued at, I think, something like 250,000 for us over, say, a 12 to 18 months period.
00:18:59
Speaker
And that meant we were able to really refine some of the technology, the process, everything as well. um And so that that was it. And then we raised our first So we we incorporated the company in August of 2016 so that we won the grant, then we incorporated the company.
00:19:14
Speaker
um And then we raised our first pre-seed investment round in late 2017, so about a year later. And that was minuscule amount of money in today's terms. But at the time, we thought, wow, we've raised a lot of money.
00:19:30
Speaker
That was £150,000.
00:19:33
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's very scary. For a hardware business, especially. Yeah, nay yeah, yeah, yeah. so we So we did that and then um over the course of the whole journey, so we did this for about seven years.
00:19:48
Speaker
Yeah, investors... Did not tell you sell the IP. Why do you want to sell batteries? Like they bought into your vision that we will be a battery manufacturing powerhouse, whatever. Like, I don't know what what are the big brands there, but like in India, you have Amara Raja or and whatever. like ah so So that's what you were thinking of. So the the plan at the time back then, the proposition was we we hadn't even thought about manufacturing first life products.
00:20:19
Speaker
So back then we were we were manufacturing and working with Second Life products. So we were we were actually, the the the scope was, can we partner with recycling companies and these organizations it sort of who deal with the end of life?
00:20:33
Speaker
um So it wasn't even a question of, licensing IP because it was so, and we were so far away from the manufacturing process at that point. um That came to light later. So we did have advice on that later. um And that, yeah, without wanting to spoil the story too much, that was ultimately where we where we ended up.
00:20:52
Speaker
You were recycling this. So a battery is basically a bunch of cells which are combined together electronically as well as physically. ah and ah So when the battery reaches end of life, aren't the cells inside ah useless? You're talking of lithium ion cells, I'm assuming. So ah wouldn't you need to like extract that lithium ion and do that whole recycling of lithium ion from that cell that whatever that whole process is there? But I don't think it doesn't sound like that's what you were doing.
00:21:32
Speaker
No, so we were not going into the cell itself ah to access the chemistry. But what we were doing is we were testing the cells and categorizing them. So the cells which had 90% of their life still left, they're useful for a certain application. The ones that had 60% of their life left, they're useful for a certain application. So you start categorizing. And there are some who absolutely need be recycled that way. They need to be recycled.
00:22:00
Speaker
they need to be recycled Yeah, but our thesis was if you can extend the useful life of the battery, you give it a much better opportunity to pay back all of the energy that's gone into the production and ultimately the recycling process. Because certainly at that point in time, the best like the material recovery process, they use a process called pyrometallurgic processes. So this is where they heat the battery up.
00:22:28
Speaker
to molten temperatures and they they melt it all down and whatever comes out at the bottom of it the ah the reactor is what you recover. And it's that process is only economic if you have precious metals in the in there in the battery, like nickel, like cobalt.
00:22:46
Speaker
like manganese. like these are These are precious metals which make it an economic process. It does not work for a majority of batteries which are lithium ion phosphate, so that's the other major chemistry in these batteries. So that becomes a huge, huge challenge. And then you've got another type of recycling, which is hydrometallurgical processes. This is where they typically wash the they they break the battery down, they shred it, and then they wash it in in various sort of acids and they leach out all of the different chemicals in order to to split it apart. So these are really energy intense processes.
00:23:18
Speaker
and And we thought if we could extend and really make sure that these cells have been used to their full extent, then it makes a big difference. I remember I read a study from Volvo where they said a battery which is um which is charged on your typical grid takes about 80,000 kilometers to pay back.
00:23:42
Speaker
If it's charged on a coal heavy grid, you have to drive that that vehicle for 150,000 kilometers before it pays back. If you charge it just purely on a renewable energy grid, then it's 30,000 kilometers.
00:23:56
Speaker
and And so like, if you can if you can keep these modules in going for a much longer period of time, then it it makes a big difference to how much carbon they're able to pay back versus what's been put into the process.
00:24:10
Speaker
So that was our that was our thinking at the time. One question here. ah the you know India had this culture of recycling. I'm using the term lightly, but um you word ah if your shoes were torn, you would go to the mochi and he would stitch your shoes and then they would be passed on to your brother who would also wear them.
00:24:34
Speaker
ah which ah is no longer there because of China, I would say like you shoes are cheap. You can just go and get a new pair. There are shoes for every price range. And similarly, wouldn't China be supplying cheap batteries that you, the the economics of trying to extract the cells and then test each cell and then put them together again in a high level,
00:25:02
Speaker
um high labor cost country like the UK, how would that work? Yeah, so the ah um the cost of first-life sales have decreased significantly over time, um for sure.
00:25:15
Speaker
And the cost of doing the testing... So at that time, the the sales were costlier, so therefore there was still that economic... The economic benefit made sense, but but this is where we start in the story. It shifted away from just reuse to, well, what if we make first-life modules ourselves?
00:25:32
Speaker
And what part of that reason was also because the other challenge we found is that you can't ship second life, end of life batteries around easily. It's a very difficult thing to do.
00:25:47
Speaker
and And this is where, like if you work with a waste recycler, so we all love bureaucracy actually. So in the UK, if a battery is considered end of life, if it's considered a waste product, it has to go through a series of paperwork Ultimately, that that is it's all designed around the battery ah being recycled and materials being recovered. It's not designed for, we're going to take it out of the waste stream, we're going to reuse it, and then we're going to do something else with it. And so the paperwork for that just doesn't exist. The process of that doesn't exist. like and then i remember i remember hearing from an automotive company where they said, oh, if we need to send a battery that is from a vehicle, an EV, that is not working anymore, if we need to send it somewhere else in the world,
00:26:32
Speaker
We send it as a whole vehicle rather than taking the battery out and sending it as a separate thing because the paperwork involved is so much more difficult to get around than if we just if we just sent it as ah as a damaged vehicle.
00:26:47
Speaker
um So imagine they're shipping whole vehicles just to move the battery back because the battery the battery back is is too dangerous to move by, or considered to be too dangerous, even though reality it's not necessarily the case.
00:27:00
Speaker
And so, yeah, this is this is where we so said, well, actually, if we if we build modules using our assembly technology, which is made with brand new cells, and and then we own the battery module through its whole life,
00:27:16
Speaker
we can extract so much more value from each of the cells than we end up having to buy someone else's cells and then reuse them.
00:27:27
Speaker
So we we calculated that for a given unit of cells, we could extract 10 times more value from that group of cells compared to a conventional spot welded battery approach.
00:27:43
Speaker
Because we have this ability to reuse and keep on using it again and again. And we don't have to go through this costly process of of of battery, like the paperwork and the processes to to recover them from the waste stream.
00:27:57
Speaker
Got it. Okay. Okay. Okay. And when did this pivot happen to first use from end of life? So this this this happened in 2019. Okay. This after the 150K that you had raised.
00:28:13
Speaker
was after the hundred and fifty k And then we, we so we our first round, was with angels. then Then we raised some money from a venture fund here in the UK called Mercia Ventures. And then we raised money from the business owners.
00:28:28
Speaker
just Just tell me the years also, like which year and how much? We were doing, and this is this is another another mistake that we made, but we were doing round pretty much every year. So that the the first year was 150 and then it it quickly went into the millions and we were having to constantly raise that.
00:28:47
Speaker
um So some of that was the circumstances of the time as well, because 2020, we had the global pandemic. And all of a sudden we had so we had we had product that was manufactured and it was sitting in China.
00:29:05
Speaker
And we could not get it to the UK for a year because we could like the the the cost of shipping went up. the And because batteries are hazardous materials as well, the number of slots on ships were much reduced and there's higher competition for these. And you know bigger companies are able to charge their own ships. We didn't have that luxury, that resource. So yeah, so we had our three main investors were Mercia,
00:29:30
Speaker
BGF as a business growth fund in the UK. And then also Toyota Mobility 54, which is one of their corporate corporate venture ah teams. Wow.
00:29:41
Speaker
And how much had you raised by 2020? By 2020, it was about 9, 10 million. by twenty twenty um it was about ah but eight nine nine ten million Wow. Okay.
00:29:56
Speaker
Which is pretty impressive for an early twenties kid, right? That's what you were at that time. Yeah. I was in 2020, I would have just turned 30.
00:30:09
Speaker
So late twenties. Yeah. Late twenties. Okay. Okay. So what, like what made the funding happen? What did the investors get most impressed by looking back?
00:30:23
Speaker
I think it's down to um the persistence that we had. So like but each of these investors, they turned us down first. um so it was a case of constantly going out there, proving ourselves, keep coming back making things happen.
00:30:37
Speaker
um and And I think it was the excitement at the technology. And certainly like we were there were market factors here as well, because 2019, 2020, there was a big push in climate to to do things and batteries as well, so a huge amount of investment.
00:30:53
Speaker
um So these things, they come in waves. I think we we were able to ride some of that wave for a while. um And yeah, I think so i think those are those are the the the main reasons. um And we had something different. like we weren't We weren't saying to people, we're going to go and build a gigafactory somewhere. But we had a ah and an interesting technology that was genuinely different different in the market that was protected because we had some patents around this as well.
00:31:19
Speaker
um Yeah, I think there were there was lots of interest in that. And ah the only way to manufacture batteries would have been through China. you You couldn't have done it domestically, right? At that point, yeah, because majority, i mean, there were no gigafactories in the UK, Europe at that point in time. i China was the place where a lot of the a lot of the manufacturing was happening. I mean, India started coming online towards the end of that.
00:31:43
Speaker
But yeah, china was the China was where a lot of ah the manufacturing was happening. So whom were you selling to? You were getting these batteries made ah in China. The thesis was that our batteries will last much longer. Like we can continuously, because they are easy to disassemble, so we can continuously make sure that they don't have to be thrown.
00:32:07
Speaker
ah We can swap out individual cells which are not working. Very similar to say you have these keyboards which have replaceable buttons. So even if you spill water on it, a button goes bad. you can pluck that button out and put in another button. So the life is longer. So which is what the promise was for your battery that the life will be longer.
00:32:26
Speaker
um How were you selling it? ah Was it a one time sale or was it a leasing kind of a thing which would probably make more sense if you believe the life was longer?
00:32:37
Speaker
Yeah, so by the by the end of the journey, we we were focused on selling ah mobility style batteries. So these were for light light mobility, so two-wheeler, three-wheeler, four-wheeler and ah vehicles.
00:32:51
Speaker
ah These are small modules, but high power modules that were suitable for batteries. powering those powering those vehicles. um And then we also had mostly stationary batteries. So these are systems, more more so systems that were designed for residential and sort of light industrial use.
00:33:09
Speaker
So this was the 10 kilowatt hour up to 150 kilowatt hour range. This would be power backups. This would be, yeah, power yeah but power backups or hybrid power use. So where you might have solar or even sometimes grid.
00:33:24
Speaker
grid back up as well yeah yeah even in the grid you p cars and you have non-p cars so you draw more in the non-p cars so that in p cars you're not drawing got it Yeah, doing the doing the and energy arbitrage, so being able to buy electricity when it's cheap and sell electricity when it's when if expensive.
00:33:42
Speaker
and So that that was another was another model. And and yes, exactly. So leasing leasing these modules, so we called it energy storage as a service or subscription on the on the modules. um And ah then we started exploring the licensing approach as well. So we had a few approaches actually because we We were in partnership with the and supported by the Department for Business and Trade in the UK. And they have a big thing. They do a lot of work, particularly keen on the the relationships with India as well. So they started putting us in front of lots of different Indian companies, particularly ones in the automotive supply chains.
00:34:17
Speaker
And um so we had lots of visits, we had trade visits and so on. And then um one of those one of those partners ah really expressed an interest and we started then sort of working with them and developing a licensing arrangement around the IP because they wanted to bring this all in-house. So the like a legacy battery company in India, I'm guessing. Not legacy battery, actually. this was a so this is um the The company ultimately ended up acquiring Advic.
00:34:48
Speaker
They are a tier one supplier in the auto or market. So they they sell ah drive chain components, so a metal you know for traditional internal combustion engines. And they wanted to get into, are getting into batteries for the electric vehicle electrification of these.
00:35:07
Speaker
as well. um So that that was that was their interest in in the technology. It was different. is It was something which they could they could do by hand as well initially um and make work.
00:35:18
Speaker
So that's where that's where the the relationship began with them. And then they made an offer. They offered to lead around they offered to buy the technology from us. And that's ultimately where we ended up.
00:35:30
Speaker
So if I rewind a little bit, so in 2021, the end of 2021, Toyota invested. The beginning of 22, we were going to do another funding round. And this time we were going to raise 5 million pounds.
00:35:44
Speaker
And during that process, we we ended up um appointing a a corporate finance advisor who to to help. And this was the first time I'd worked with a separate advisor. Historically, all the funding rounds had just been done by myself.
00:36:03
Speaker
And over that period, they didn't manage to secure for us any investor meetings, really whatsoever, any investor interest. And then they started ghosting us after after a while as well. So it was it was not a great situation.
00:36:18
Speaker
And at that point in time, so this would have been March 22, we were at a fork in the road. So we had runway at that point in time ah to get to September 22.
00:36:29
Speaker
of twenty two And my gut instinct was, let's go back. I'll redo the materials myself. I'll go back out to market myself, go and raise the money and get the 5 million. lights I'm pretty sure I can do that. And we've got enough time to do that.
00:36:44
Speaker
Yeah, you were already raised 10 million, so another five, I'm sure you would have managed it. And then we had the chair of the business who was a finance person. He'd been appointed by one of the investors.
00:36:55
Speaker
And he said, he he disagreed. And so he said, no, I think we should be um asking our existing shareholders for more money. So we'll do an internal funding round.
00:37:07
Speaker
And then we'll go we'll buy ourselves another year. We'll go back out to market next year with some more so more traction and sort of raise the larger round then. And I defer to his to his experience. He's a finance person. He's appointed by the you know by the the investors. He probably knows more than more than me about these finance-related matters.
00:37:28
Speaker
How much ownership was still with you at this time? At that point in time, it was about 15%. fifteen percent So yeah, you had no choice but to listen to. I mean, investors own 85%, right? So...
00:37:43
Speaker
Yeah. So still lots to, um, I'll say, I mean, it was my, myself and my co-founder between us have 30%. Um, but yeah, it was, it was roughly. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. yeah In rest of the zone, 70% got it.
00:37:58
Speaker
Yeah, yeah and and And so we I deferred to his judgment and then spent the next two months working on a different plan, ah which was aimed at existing investors to to raise more capital.
00:38:12
Speaker
Presented that to the board at the very beginning of June and went away then for the first two-week holiday in six years. So prior to that, every time I'd been away, it'd been just for one week at a time.
00:38:25
Speaker
and Then I came back from holiday and this is the 27th of June, 2022. The chair calls me into the office, said, we need to speak urgently.
00:38:37
Speaker
I went into the office and he then said to me, while you're away, the investors have agreed that you need to step aside as the leader of the business, as the CEO of the business. You're you're not allowed to leave.
00:38:48
Speaker
If you leave, it doesn't work, but you can't be the CEO anymore. They've said, if you don't agree to this change, they're not going to fund the business. But this is not a command. This has to be your choice.
00:39:00
Speaker
ah But if you don't agree with it, then all of these people you've employed, at that point, we had 35 people in the team, and all of these people you've employed will not have hey job anymore.
00:39:11
Speaker
So you've got 24 hours. What do you want to do? Think about it. And um I always said from the outset of the journey, I didn't want to be the bottleneck to the success of the company.
00:39:27
Speaker
And so I agreed to the change.
00:39:31
Speaker
And what followed was the hardest six months of my, of my journey, of my career. Um, because five weeks later, the investor that was pushing for it decided not to invest anyway.
00:39:47
Speaker
So they, they, they run away. it was like, they dropped a brick into the pond, uh, watch the ripples and then run away anyway. So they didn't support us and we really needed it.
00:39:59
Speaker
And i was left with someone else being appointed as the CEO. Um, while still trying to fundraise with the company. So it was clear to me that couldn't rely on the existing investors.
00:40:12
Speaker
So I went out to market again, no longer as a CEO, not really sure what the position was, what I was doing. And I started talking to various investors and I managed to get a family office.
00:40:26
Speaker
Um, and they really liked what were doing, felt it would fit well with their portfolio. They agreed to a term sheet. So they gave us a term sheet for the five million and went through the process of them. So we, we got to a stage where the the legal agreements had been agreed and it just needed signature on paper and cash transfer to, to finish just before Christmas.
00:40:54
Speaker
because this is always the time when these things happen. The managing director of the of the family office ended up resigning. Nothing to do with us. He just, he must've had a different job or so whatever happened. I'm not sure, but he he resigned.
00:41:11
Speaker
The family office was made up of three people, managing director and the two family office owners. and the And the family office owner said, we're putting everything on pause until we recruit a replacement.
00:41:25
Speaker
And so we went into December 22, not knowing what was going to happen next. And then we came back in January and the existing investors that remained, not the one who had told us they weren't going to support us, but the existing investors of Toyota and one of the other two venture funds, they said to me, we need you to step back in.
00:41:49
Speaker
So we're going to make another change. going reverse the change I was made before. and We'll change the chair. um And please, can you go and sort of do the next step? So at that point in time, we had runway until March.
00:42:05
Speaker
And i had to then we had to then go through a period of, we had to cut the team in half, basically. We had to drastic reduction in in headcount. um and We had to keep moving forward, do another fundraising process.
00:42:22
Speaker
And it was while we were doing that process that Advoc made the offer. And it was to me, i was ready to having gone through that whole period. It was for me, it was a, it's not ideal, but actually this is a better way to end things than, you know, carrying on for another five years, feeling really burnt out and, you know, all the rest of it. I mean, I'd already said to the, I'd already made clear to the to the board, um, that,
00:42:52
Speaker
Raising funds, not a problem, but I was probably, it was it was going to be time for me to leave anyway after that to get the company into a good place. And then when this offer came, the existing investors and the the board, when I said, look at it this is the situation.
00:43:07
Speaker
They said, well, we know that you you could raise the rest and there's a couple of term sheets that are incoming, but if this is if you're not going to stay anyway beyond this period, the company's not yet in a place where it can really survive without without you being there.
00:43:25
Speaker
So we agree with you that actually this this offer to buy the company is probably better than the alternative, which is you raise the rest of the funding and then you leave and we have to go through a period of recruitment and so on. So that was the that was the best that was the best option for the company at the time, um even though it was all incredibly, incredibly painful. I mean, i look back on it now, actually, I think this was one of the most challenging, challenging experiences, but it but it was genuinely one of the best gifts that I could ever have received.
00:44:02
Speaker
I learned so much more from that experience and I'm so grateful for the experience. I would never want to go through it again. and and I wouldn't wish it on anyone else.
00:44:12
Speaker
Yeah, I can imagine. but But actually, it's it was ah it was a present. It was a gift, um which I could not have received from anywhere else. But I'm assuming it would have been less than what?
00:44:25
Speaker
Like that 10 million which was raised, it would have been less than that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. and Okay. I guess to me... ah The one big ah takeaway from this story is that kind of dilution which you did 70% to investors at such an early stage.
00:44:48
Speaker
And it is equally, i guess, the investors to blame who agreed to ah come in with that kind of dilution of founders. I mean, it's...
00:45:05
Speaker
the the skin in the game is not there that strongly then, you know, which is why it was for you, the decision to move out was not a tough decision to make. ah The ability for investors to derail ah what was something which could have been saved, you know, the all of those things are just coming from that one situation.
00:45:31
Speaker
capital decision of diluting so much. What i mean what do you think? like like Do you agree with that? I think there's a few things in this. I think one the first time founder naivety.
00:45:44
Speaker
I think two, it's the attitude to venture capital, certainly in the UK, where the the feeling is very much one of optimizing to reduce downside as opposed to optimizing for maximum return.
00:46:00
Speaker
And what that means is they they yeah that's sort of to understand they take larger stakes earlier because they know that their or their feeling is, well, the value of of sort of exits is smaller.
00:46:13
Speaker
This is a smaller market and so on. So that that's where i think it also is really challenging. And then the third thing is, I think the business model and the sort of approach, the hardware nature of this meant it was really challenging as well.
00:46:29
Speaker
Also, I just want to say that, like and I don't mean this with any disrespect to investors, you know there are some wonderful investors out there. But when when investors have, you if these they' if they've got a purely finance background, and they've never been in the arena as an entrepreneur, they don't necessarily know what it means either to do this.
00:46:49
Speaker
And you know ultimately, if I think about our journey, it could have been a very different outcome if we had um if if we hadn't had that instability in 2022.
00:47:02
Speaker
twenty twenty two And that was there was no need for any of that. But it ended up happening. So my favorite phrase, I reflect on this a lot, but my favorite phrase is that there are just there are only two types of problems in business. There are people-related problems, and there are problems that you don't yet realize are people-related problems.
00:47:19
Speaker
And in our case, it okay that was absolutely true. like we we didn't have It wasn't a technology problem. there was ah It was a bit of a bit, like we we could optimize the business model, but really was a people problem.
00:47:33
Speaker
thus That's what ended up sort of causing it to go ah on a path that was suboptimal perhaps. I mean, i i I don't know if I would call it a people problem when...
00:47:44
Speaker
The cap table to me is the villain in the story. Like 70% gone at such an early stage. You would have been at best a series A business, right? We were raising the series B in 22.
00:47:58
Speaker
And this was obviously a business which needed you to raise a significant amount. So there would have been multiple rounds that you would have had to continue to raise. And... ah Yeah, I think what what you explained as the minimizing the downside, ah the risk that in the UK market, the outcomes are not so large. Therefore, they want bigger stakes. ah Those there are structural problems. Yeah.
00:48:24
Speaker
that How do you see this getting solved? I think we need more founders to become investors um because they bring that level of empathy. I think there's also part of this we can borrow from other cultures which are much more entrepreneurial and less risk-driven. Some of them, as you say, are systemic and they require change in law. So even the way you treat things like bankruptcy in the UK, in America, it's designed for that entrepreneurial way where you just you you finish one thing and then you can move forward. And it's nothing wrong with it. But in the yeah UK, you know there can be real serious ramifications. it could lead to prison time if it's done in the wrong way. like The risk is much higher.
00:49:03
Speaker
And so like if you want to promote that sort of lower risk culture, then some of that is but in in that direction. but i think, yeah, we can learn a lot more from other cultures where this has done much better.
00:49:15
Speaker
i mean, there are some things that the UK have done really well. Like, for example, um there's there's tax incentives for high net worth investors where they they you know there's something called the seed enterprise investment scheme um and the and and enterprise investment scheme where they can get up to 50% of their investment back as as a tax rebate.
00:49:34
Speaker
um So that's literally like de-risking their investment by half. um And so that that that has unlocked so much more early stage capital. But then you've also got this big gap between the early stage and the um the sort of Series A plus rounds.
00:49:52
Speaker
And then you also factor in hardware, like the UK is really good at FinTech. It's one of the strongest in FinTech. There's so many sort of investors who are interested in that and and maybe SAS software, not so much in in hardware.
00:50:06
Speaker
um there's There's far fewer investors interested in hardware and that that's also challenging as well. Yeah. It's a fantasy sub. So and then, and also are our markets. So we were focused on markets like East Africa, like India, like Central America.
00:50:22
Speaker
And like most UK investors don't know anything about that. but but these These markets you are focused on for selling the batteries or for licensing deals? Both. So we what we found in our experience was that we needed to demonstrate the technologies could work in these markets in order to attract and prove that there was a license worth taking ah because the technology was so different from conventional technology.
00:50:46
Speaker
um And so that was part of the reason why we ended up selling in these in these environments. Okay. So, ah okay, ah what next is then? So you you managed to walk out of it ah without being jailed. Without being jailed, yeah. Yeah, and let's pound our blessings.
00:51:05
Speaker
Oh, 100%. Yeah, so so had the option of staying staying with the company. So um my co-founder Carlton, he did. So he's still with Advik now as a recording. So he's great. but He spends most of his time, if he's been now more times to India than I have.
00:51:18
Speaker
um And he he knows the route well, he knows the people well. um So yeah, he's he he he lives in between the UK and India at the moment, leading on their their battery work.
00:51:30
Speaker
But I had made clear that I was ready for the next thing. So I took a little bit of time off. I ended taking about three months three months off to... I say sort of to get over the trauma of the whole experience um and just to decompress a little bit.
00:51:47
Speaker
And then I started getting inbound inquiries pretty much straight away. So like I think the day I said I was sort of finished with the journey, I think I had like three or four people approach me and say, would you be interested or could you come and join us and do this you know for us?
00:52:03
Speaker
So these were like entrepreneur in residence kind of roles. No, no, these were like full-time CEO of other so of other other startups and company roles.
00:52:14
Speaker
um But i wasn't I didn't feel like I was ready ah for those. And then I had an approach from Carbon 13. So Carbon 13 is a venture builder in the UK, in Germany as well now. So they they have but what they do is they bring together founders who don't necessarily have ideas.
00:52:33
Speaker
And they bring them together, they let them percolate, come up with without good ideas, and then they invest the first check into the top teams and top ideas. And so they were looking for a new entrepreneur in residence to join the team.
00:52:46
Speaker
There's about 10 or so of us. And then, um yeah, that was the sort of first thing that I really felt like doing because it was so fulfilling to be able to teach and pass on these lessons to the next generation of you know founders who's who's going through the program.
00:53:03
Speaker
um And I was and also invited to join the strategic leadership group of the Ayrton Fund. So in the UK, this is a UK aid fund. It's a billion pound fund, which is focused on the um on on commercializing research and development in Commonwealth countries.
00:53:24
Speaker
So a lot of the work we were doing in sub-Saharan Africa and India, they were a partner of of ours through some of the corporates that we were working with. So I was asked to come and advise on the on the circular energy storage aspects along with other folks.
00:53:38
Speaker
And then I was also invited to join Fast Forward 2030 as well. I've just changed the name now. So Fast Forward Global, um which is based out of UCL's Institute for Global Prosperity.
00:53:50
Speaker
um And that's all about getting more people into social enterprise. So was doing a lot of this work. And while I was doing the the entrepreneur in residence work over the next sort of year or so, I started to getting the feeling, the itchy the itchy feet, the sort of clenching of hands when you give people advice and they don't necessarily follow the advice.
00:54:08
Speaker
ah And so I wanted to i've wanteded to see if I could do it better because I reflect ah reflect on the journey with Acceleron. And I often think that 90% of the decisions I made, i would do differently the second time around. And so thought, well, why am I not doing that?
00:54:27
Speaker
I should go and do this. And so... I ended up, ah two of my team two of my team in Acceleron, so Barry and Paul, um we we were working together and decided to to do something together.
00:54:41
Speaker
So we started thinking out some ideas, what could we do? And that's where that's where Lawfully began. So law is spelt L-O-R-E and it means a body of knowledge, which is typically passed from person to person by word of mouth.
00:54:57
Speaker
And when we when we started it, so this was now um in sort of mid-24, when we started it, it was really to to address one of the big challenges we faced in Acceleron.
00:55:12
Speaker
Because we were so busy all the time and we had projects going on everywhere, there was never enough time to write things down properly. And this is especially true for people in the field doing things.
00:55:24
Speaker
And so we started out this concept of how do we make it easy for people to share what they know? um Because especially like field engineers, if you're out there in the field and you enjoy that kind of work, the last thing you want to do is be sat at your desk writing lots of things out.
00:55:42
Speaker
And so with the with the advance of ah technologies um like AI, we thought there must be an easier way to do this. So Paul, my co-founder, a I've known him since my PhD days. So he was he was also a PhD in the same research group as I was.
00:56:00
Speaker
And but his specialism was in computational science. So he did he did his PhD in computational science, and then he moved into postdocs in machine learning and and sort of AI science. And he did that at Stanford in the US. He did that in Denmark at DTU.
00:56:18
Speaker
um And then he came and joined me in Acceleron, and he was leading up a lot of the software that we were developing for the remote monitoring of the batteries and the predictive maintenance and things like that.
00:56:29
Speaker
And so he starts turning his mind to it And then Barry, our third co-founder, has a background in a lot of these operations. And so he's often, he' is the yin to my yang. ah he He is the, I come with the crazy ideas and then Barry's the one who who makes them turns them into into reality. So we ended up designing something. we I spoke to people, we got some pilots very quickly with big multinational organizations, all these sort of field service engineer type type roles.
00:57:02
Speaker
And those pilots went really well. So we were using the software, making it easy for people to to tell us what they were doing on these jobs and then categorizing and structuring that information. And and We then found that as those pilots came to a conclusion and they were successful by the metrics we set out, we were things really slowed down with these big multinationals.
00:57:30
Speaker
Because what we realized is that they don't have budget lines for things like knowledge management.
00:57:37
Speaker
And so you end up in this bureaucratic nightmare where you need to get approval from 10 different advisory groups that exist all around the world.
00:57:50
Speaker
And by the way, the advisory group, the next one that's on the list just met last month, so you've missed them. And the next time they're going to meet is in six months. everything slowed down because we ended up in this bureaucratic nightmare where yeah we would end up having to um talk to different boards that were sort of all around the world.
00:58:12
Speaker
And especially with AI at that point in time becoming such a big topic areas. like Sometimes we we get approval for something and the next thing we know, they would say, ah we've just that we've just been told that the company as a whole has brought together a new convening group with a new AI person, but that person's just started, so they're going to take six months to get there take get their feet under the table and that's going to take some time.
00:58:36
Speaker
So that was it turned out to be really... So some of those conversations are still ongoing even now. um And so by the end of 24, beginning of 25, we thought this we've got to pivot this because if we carry on waiting, we're going to run out to a resource resources.
00:58:51
Speaker
And so in April of 25, we thought, okay, well, let's, what if we take this problem and apply it to smaller companies? Because we know that sort of these large corporates have this problem.
00:59:05
Speaker
Chances are small companies are also going to have this problem. So ah that should work out for us. um Started talking to lots of small companies. And as part of that, we decided to exhibit at a trade event called the Installer Show.
00:59:22
Speaker
It's quite a large industry event here in the UK. So it's a trade show and they had last year, they had 31,000 people attend. I got in touch with the organizer and and decided, well, I wanted to see if we could get some free space ah because you know being a small, scrappy startup, you can't you've got to try and try and get everything for as little resources as you can.
00:59:48
Speaker
And the organizers saw what we were doing when we showed them and they said, well, forget your application. Can you use this in the context of our of our event and tell us what you learned?
00:59:59
Speaker
So said, we'll give you the space for free. You come and do what you need to do. rap report back to us afterwards and we'll take it from there. So we so we thought, okay, there's something here. they're giving us They're giving us free space. They seem really interested in this.
01:00:13
Speaker
And if they're interested and it works out really well, maybe there's something maybe that's a the more to this. So we we pivoted at that point to design a system that would work in the context of ah of an event. It's a very different use case.
01:00:29
Speaker
And the show was a huge success for us. So in June 25, at the very end of June, exactly one year ago, almost one year ago, um we went there and we captured lots of information all about what installers thought about heat pumps and associated technologies.
01:00:49
Speaker
And then um at the end of July, we had our debrief meeting with the organizer and they said, this is amazing. You've never had this level of quality of information. We need to start talking about the next the next event.
01:01:05
Speaker
Then middle of August, we so two weeks later, i thought there's there' clearly something here. So we should start reaching out. I'm going to start reaching out to other organizers who are running events.
01:01:17
Speaker
and see see what we can but we can do. And very quickly, we managed to get our second trade event, which was a trade show called the Cenex Expo. So this was the, it was a low-com vehicle showcase.
01:01:32
Speaker
And that too went down really, really well. And what we worked out is that we the the the micro problem that we're solving, because I like to think now about problems in two stages. And you've got the macro problem, which is what is the big picture problem that we're solving?
01:01:47
Speaker
And then there's the micro problem, which is the sort of who are we specifically solving it for and what's it what's it about? So the macro problem if I could take a step back, is that we we we believe that human knowledge is far too valuable to lose, and yet we're really casual about doing so. and imagine I'm always fascinated by this idea that imagine how much further ahead we would be as ah as the human race if we had access to all the genius of our predecessors,
01:02:15
Speaker
but But unfortunately, a lot of that is just lost to the sands of time. And how many lessons do we keep having to relearn because we forget that we've already been through this experience? So imagine if we could capture this or of this genius and bring it together.
01:02:27
Speaker
That's an immense amount of of value. So if we can capture this human expertise at scale, we can convert it into useful insights and we can progress faster towards things like net zero and the benefit of humanity.
01:02:39
Speaker
as we As we went through this thiss process, the micro problem that we worked out is that Organizers in particular, who are people who are convening people for these events, they no one ever fills out post-event surveys. They have very little idea of how their event is being received.
01:02:58
Speaker
There is a wealth of content being generated around them. but they don't have the capacity or the bandwidth to capture any of that. And then the third problem is that they're under immense pressure from sponsors, from exhibitors, from attendees, all to prove what is the return on investment for me being at this place in time.
01:03:20
Speaker
The second challenge that they experience is that there's a lot of content being generated around them and there is no bandwidth to capture any of it. And then the third challenge that they face is that they're under immense pressure from their sponsors, their exhibitors, their attendees, all to prove the value, the the return on investment for spending their time and resource being at this point in time.
01:03:44
Speaker
What I find particularly interesting is that we we are bringing together hundreds, if not thousands of people into a given space, all of whom are subject matter experts in their own way.
01:03:55
Speaker
And it feels like an absolute waste to let them leave without trying to capture something because they're all having wonderful conversations and they're coming up with the next best idea that could be the game changer for the world.
01:04:09
Speaker
And it's all being lost. It remains in their minds and maybe the people they're talking to, but no one else will ever know. i also think there's something beautiful about the thought equality aspect of this as well, because when you go to an event, you hear from the good and the great. You hear from the people who...
01:04:24
Speaker
you know are well known and talk with authority about a topic. But actually there so many people in the room who have an informed view, who never get the chance to to express it in a way where it's recorded. And so like the number of events I've been to where I've spoken to people and they've said, i'm not I'm not qualified to answer this question, or I can't possibly have anything interesting to say. And when you press them and they do tell you what they think,
01:04:47
Speaker
what they're saying is actually incredibly valuable and it's a viewpoint which no one else has expressed. So it's it's really, truly that diversity of experience and thought process that manifests i want to so i I hear you. The knowledge that can be captured there is valuable. ah What I want to understand is how. it Is it through audio recording, which gets transcribed and analyzed by AI?
01:05:16
Speaker
So we've we've developed a software platform, um which we take along to events with us. And then we have human to human conversations. So this is not your traditional tech company where there are no people involved. This is very much that interface of human and technology. So we we have human to human conversations with people. We talk about topics and we capture those conversations that we're having with those people.
01:05:39
Speaker
How do you capture them? All through all through the software that we've developed. The phone would be in your pocket and capturing No, it's literally, no it's it's literally like it's not a hidden thing, Akshay. So I would come to you and I would say, Akshay, we're here at this event together. I'm curious what your view on this topic is. And do you mind if I if i transcribe what we're going to say now?
01:05:59
Speaker
And then we would have a conversation about it and we'd go as deep as you're comfortable going. And then, yeah, we'd capture that that information. Doesn't sound scalable. If you need people to be manning every event,
01:06:13
Speaker
I think that depends on the size of the event and what the desired output is. But so far it's been entirely scalable. um Also because a lot of these events have their own teams there anyway.
01:06:25
Speaker
So they have like showrunners who are employed specifically to do different things around the venue. So this infrastructure already exists. I think what we are showing is that we can use that existing infrastructure in a different way to capture additional data that can be used for multiple purposes.
01:06:41
Speaker
So you would equip the showrunners with the app and then they would go out and chat. Would you also give them questions? like but How would they know what's an intelligent? Yes, that's that's right. So so there's too's that's the other part of our system is we have we we understand from the organizers, the sponsors, whoever is directing the question, what is it that they're really looking to know?
01:07:04
Speaker
And you know what's different about our system is, unlike a survey, you ask one question, you get a response. This is more like a conversation starter. And so we we have topics that we want to talk to people about, not necessarily specific questions.
01:07:19
Speaker
we then have those conversations. And what we come back with is a rich data set full of information that can then be used for whatever the purpose is. So so in some cases, people want to use it for capturing like the the latest thinking about a topic. In other cases, it's, well, actually, we're we're spending money being at this event.
01:07:40
Speaker
It's great that our logo is here, but actually we need... a year's worth of thought leadership material now. um So can you convert all of this content you're generating or capturing into a series of blog posts or ah some newspaper articles or a white paper or LinkedIn posts, whatever that format needs to be. And this is also run by humans, the conversion.
01:08:04
Speaker
ah So it's all AI in the background, but human in the loop. So... You need someone to to prompt that I need a LinkedIn post. No, weve we've we've we've we've set all of that up already.
01:08:18
Speaker
um But it's it's more about The human in the loop element is making is is the editing and the reading to make sure that it's not it's not just... It's not, yeah, it's based on... Yes, he he's happy exactly. Yeah. I mean, we're quite fortunate because we're using AI in ah in quite a clinical fashion. you know We're not asking it to generate new things.
01:08:40
Speaker
it's it's based entirely upon the data set that we are capturing. Yep. yep yep no it's ah I can imagine the quality of content would be very high.
01:08:53
Speaker
ah and so it would definitely be a good marketing investment for the event. So I see the marketing ROI on this. What are the other ROIs?
01:09:05
Speaker
Like the the marketing, I don't like, you know, in terms of powering the social media content and posts and stuff like that. So I see that. What else is there? So sometimes organizations just want to know what is it that we are missing um or you know we need to think about a new a new way forward in our sector, but we can only be in so many places at once.
01:09:26
Speaker
So what does the what does the audience thing of experts or the stakeholders who we care about, otherwise we wouldn't be sponsoring this event, what do they think about this specific this specific topic that we're interested in?
01:09:39
Speaker
um through to like, so that's a sort of the use case. Others have been more like, oh, we need to know what's the perception about you know our brand or what do people, and what's the first thing someone thinks about when they think about HEPA, which brand comes to mind. so Got it. Got it. So marketing research, market research and insights, basically research and insights. Research and insights, which can be market research, but also can be wider trends, can be a deeper underlying sort of expertise that exists in the room around that technical subject matter.
01:10:11
Speaker
Something like what a Nielsen might be offering, but not just in terms of product, but also in terms of ideas. Ideas, innovation, anything at all, which is, you know, again, like the the more subject matter expert it is, the stronger the stronger it is as well.
01:10:30
Speaker
um So, you know, when you've got ah when you've got a conference, that's all about the latest in in sustainable chemicals. You know, that's that's quite a technical subject. Awesome. Awesome. ah Great chatting with you, Amrit. Thank you so much for your time and wish you all the best.
01:10:44
Speaker
Thank you so much, Akhsar.