Out of the Lab

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More about Syzygy

Developed at Rice University by Professor Halas and Professor Nordlander, this is the world’s highest performance photocatalyst. It has been published in leading academic journals such as Science, Nature, and PNAS, to name a few. The catalyst is a platform technology and it has been demonstrated on many different chemical reactions resulting in more than a dozen publications.

Visit Syzygy's website to learn more. 

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Ayse Asatekin received her bachelor's degrees in chemical engineering and chemistry from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. She went on to receive her Ph.D. in chemical engineering through the Program in Polymer Science and Technology (PPST) at MIT. She pursued her post-doctoral work with Prof. Karen K. Gleason, also at MIT. She co-founded Clean Membranes, Inc., a start-up company that commercialized the polyacrylonitrile-based membrane technology that she began developing during her doctoral research, and worked as its Principal Scientist before joining the Tufts faculty in 2012. Novel membrane technologies developed in her lab are currently being commercialized at ZwitterCo, Inc., where she serves as the Senior Scientific Advisor. She is the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, Massachusetts Clean Energy Council's Catalyst Award, and the Turkish American Scientists and Scholars Young Scholar Award. Her research interests are in developing novel membranes for clean water and energy-efficient separations. She is also interested in multi-functional membranes, controlling surface chemistry for biomedical applications, polymer science, and energy storage. To connect with Ayse, visit https://engineering.tufts.edu/chbe/people/faculty/ayse-asatekin

More about ZwitterCo 

ZwitterCo is a national industrial membrane provider, delivering patented filtration technologies that are durable and fouling resistant. The company recently closed a $5.9m fundraising round led by Mann+Hummel Corporate Ventures, and has been recognized by the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center as a leader among clean water technologies. ZwitterCo’s cutting-edge membrane chemistry, paired with the company’s deep domain expertise, gives industrial processing facilities and their partners a pathway into the next generation of water treatment, precision separation, and resource recapture. For more information, visit https://www.zwitterco.com/.

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The convo is short and fast-paced - Ric is a really busy guy. But its rife with a ton of advice to young entrepreneurs on how to pick a market problem to solve. Lessons learned from his previous company, A123 Systems, a battery company that also went public, yielded his repeated advice: High margins, recurring revenue, low account concentration. He also references Carlota Perez, an economist at LSE, whose work talks about technological breakthroughs and how they transition from installation to deployment phases. It's really valuable stuff. 

We also talk about how he formed A123 by licensing a technology from MIT, how he runs DM, and much more. Enjoy! 

More about Ric

Prior to founding Desktop Metal in October 2015, Ric was a General Partner at North Bridge, a VC fund with $3 billion under management, for five years following a fifteen- year career as an entrepreneur. Ric is the founder of six technology companies, including A123 Systems, Boston's largest IPO in the past decade and one of the world’s largest automotive lithium ion suppliers with revenue exceeding $500M in 2016. At North Bridge, Ric led the software and 3D investing practices and was an early stage investor and board member in Dyn (acquired by Oracle for $600 million), Onshape, MarkForged, Salsify, Lytro and Gridco. Ric is a former Board Member of the Electric Drive Transportation Association and holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School where he was a Sloan Fellow.

More about Desktop Metal 

Founded in 2015 by leaders in advanced manufacturing, materials science, and robotics, the company is addressing the unmet challenges of speed, cost, and quality to make metal 3D printing an essential tool for engineers and manufacturers around the world. 

With solutions for every stage of the manufacturing process - from prototyping and pilot runs to mass production and aftermarket parts - we are reinventing the way engineering teams produce metal and composite parts across a wide range of applications and industries.

Learn more about DM on their website and follow Ric on Twitter. 

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Find Teague on LinkedIn.

Learn more about EnergyX on their website.

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This conversation is a fast-paced, deep dive into the world of technology transfer. Hamdi has seen and participated in this sector from a variety of different vantage points and has an extremely unique perspective. We talk about the team DNA of strong research-based university spinoff companies, including advice to young entrepreneurs and researchers who want to lead or join these initiatives. Hamdi is one of the most well-connected people in the space and operates at a distinctive intersection and critical stage for these young startups coming out of the lab. We talk about what tech transfer orgs (TTOs) do well, how they can improve, and also Hamdi's background as a researcher and what might be on the horizon for him. I always learn from Hamdi every time we speak and this was no exception. I highly recommend signing up for Hamdi's newsletters which aggregates an enormous amount of useful info on research commercialization from around the web including articles, insights, events and more. See past issues here and enjoy the episode! 

More about Hamdi

Prior to AVX, Hamdi completed his BA/BS in Chemical Engineering at Tufts University and his PhD at Columbia University in the lab of Dr. Ozgur Sahin. Hamdi’s research interests lie at the intersection of biology, energy, and the environment; his thesis is titled “A Theory of Renewable Energy from Natural Evaporation”. Hamdi has co-authored several papers in Nature Biotechnology and Nature Communications. During his PhD, Hamdi served as the President of the Graduate Student Advisory Council at Columbia University and worked for 6 years as a Fellow (3 years) and Senior Fellow (3 years) at Columbia Technology Ventures – the tech transfer office at Columbia University in the City of New York. Hamdi previously served as an assistant and advisor to both the BioMedX Accelerator at Columbia University and the New York City Regional Innovation Node (NYCRIN) of the National Science Foundation (NSF) i-Corps program.

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Learn more about AVX on their website. 

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Just read this quote from Bob on the website of one of their investors, The Engine - “Suono Bio exemplifies what I’ve observed is required for a successful company: a platform technology with potentially broad utility, proof that it works in animal models, powerful patents, and publications in top-tier journals,” says Professor Langer. “The ability to deliver unformulated therapeutics with this technology is a tremendous achievement in the field of drug delivery and has potential for widespread applicability in a range of diseases. Carl is highly driven, extremely brilliant, even by MIT standards, and really wants to make a difference in the world.”

More about Carl 

Carl received his B.S. from the University of California, Berkeley in Chemical Engineering, and completed his Ph.D. and postdoctoral training in the lab of Professor Robert Langer at MIT. His work has been published in Science Translational Medicine and Gastroenterology, and has been featured by Forbes, Popular Science, CNET, and The Atlantic, among others. He was the recipient of the 2015 Lemelson-MIT National Collegiate Inventors Prize, the 2016 National Collegiate Inventors Competition top prize, and was named a Forbes 30 Under 30 in Healthcare.

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More about Suono

Suono Bio is developing a platform technology to enable the ultrasonic, targeted delivery of drugs and macromolecules, proteins, DNA, RNA, and even the gene-editing tool CRISPR, directly to the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, their first use case. This enables them to “push” virtually any therapeutic class, including temperamental molecules, like nucleic acids, directly into cells with astounding efficacy and accuracy, affecting historically "undruggable" targets. They harness the power of ultrasound-induced cavitation to achieve this delivery and are applying it to creating new treatments for a variety of diseases, starting with inflammatory conditions.

Learn more about Suono on their website. 

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More about actnano

actnano is a revolutionary nanotechnology company that enables the protection of a variety of materials from water damage and harsh environmental conditions. Specializing in automotive and consumer electronics, our thin-film coatings, called Advanced nanoGUARD can be applied to the full PCBA including connectors and provide up to IPx8 protection levels. Solutions can be integrated easily into existing manufacturing lines by our expert, regional engineering teams.

Visit the actnano website to learn more. 

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Courtesy of The Engine

Here's a link to Professor Omenetto's TED talk on the powers of silk. 

Find Livio on LinkedIn and visit the Vaxess website to learn more. 

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Mehrdad Mahoutian, PhD - PEng, is an award-winning scholar, entrepreneur, and co-founder of CarbiCrete. He is also the co-inventor of CarbiCrete’s technology. Mehrdad serves as CarbiCrete’s CTO and is an expert in the carbon capture and utilization, mineralization, sustainable construction materials and concrete technology. 

I loved this conversation because we broke down the entire process of inventing a game-changing technology as part of PhD research, determining with your advisor if something's novel, introducing to the tech transfer office and working with them on patenting, getting introduced to a successful entrepreneur who becomes your co-founder, leveraging non-dilutive funding and much more. Mehrdad highlights how luck met preparation in a crazy story that was a turning point for his invention - no spoilers! The audio is a bit rough as he's at the R&D lab for their concrete production company but the content is well worth it. Enjoy! 

More about Mehrdad

Dr. Mahoutian has published more than 50 peer reviewed journal paper and conference papers. His research and studies have been cited by more than 600 papers and reports. Mehrdad has seven granted and pending patents and was the team leader for CarbiCrete as one of the finalists of the international $20M Carbon Xprize competition. He won the Canada's 2019 Clean50 Award in the research and development category.

Find Mehrdad and CarbiCrete on LinkedIn 

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Donald Sadoway is a professor of materials science and engineering at MIT where he teaches the most popular freshman course that is offered. His accomplishments include inventing the liquid metal battery for large-scale stationary storage and molten oxide electrolysis for carbon-free metals production. He is the founder of four companies, Ambri, Boston Metal, Avanti Battery, and Sadoway Labs. His TED Talk is animated and inspiring - and with 2.4 million views it is as much about inventing inventors as it is about inventing technology.

Professor Sadoway's mission to improve the environment, the success of his lab, the propensity to create spinout companies that commercialize his inventions, and most importantly the way he mentors grad-students and post-docs in his labs to ultimately be future technology leaders. We talk about thinking from first principles, knowing your limitations, thinking ahead of time about environmental impact of material inputs and the social considerations of extracting them, and much more. 

Check out his free series of lectures on MIT open courseware: Intro to Solid State Chemistry This is the course that Bill Gates loved to the point of wanting to meet Professor Sadoway which ultimately led to Bill Gates investing in Ambri, the liquid metal battery technology that Professor Sadoway invented. 

More about Donald

Donald R. Sadoway is the John F. Elliott Professor of Materials Chemistry in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His B.A.Sc. in Engineering Science and Ph.D. in Chemical Metallurgy are from the University of Toronto. He joined the MIT faculty in 1978. The author of over 180 scientific papers and inventor on 35 U.S. patents, his research is directed towards batteries for grid-scale storage and towards environmentally sound metals extraction technologies. Online videos of his chemistry lectures hosted by MIT OpenCourseWare extend his impact on engineering education far beyond the lecture hall. In 2012 he was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World.­­

Find Professor Sadoway on Twitter and LinkedIn and the website for Sadoway Labs. 

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Dr. Iris Good is a scientist-entrepreneur and investor, specialising in commercialisation of medical devices in India for over 20 years. She has established and brought to growth several medical device companies and has been a non-executive director in several countries. Iris is chair of Imperial Innovations Seed Fund, of London Business School HealthTech Challenge, of Good Relations India and is a member of the investment committee of Cambridge University Seed Fund.

Iris is inspirational in how much she has accomplished from her work as a scientist, entrepreneur and now investor. We talk about her experience transitioning into these roles, lessons she's learned and failures she's experienced, qualities of good startups and scientist entrepreneurs, new initiatives from technology transfer organizations, her experience as a woman in science, and much more.  

More about Iris 

Soon after completing her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Weizmann Institute of Science, followed by two post docs (molecular biology and brain research) Iris moved to technology commercialisation in international markets. She co-established UltraShape (high-intensity ultrasound device for fat emulsification), acquired by Syneron Medical Ltd, and led the business development of MetaCure (a diabetic pace-maker). She took MetaCure to India, setting up pan-India clinical-trials and commercial operations. She founded I-Connections, an India market-entry firm focusing on cutting edge technologies, establishing strategic partnerships and commercial expansions. I-Connections later merged with Good Relations India, a 33-years old award-winning Strategic PR & Market Entry consultancy with offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai and London, providing full strategy and execution to international companies in India. Iris became its chair in 2008. Good Relations India has handled leading clients such as Apple, Barclays, Bloomberg, Cartier, CNBC, Etihad, The UN and Virgin Atlantic and hundreds of start-ups. The company brought Marks & Spencer to India and created their JV with Reliance Industries, Sun Life Insurance with Birla Group, Scottish & Newcastle with Kingfisher and many others.

In recent years Iris has served on boards of Sight Diagnostics, Step of Mind and Tikal Networks (Israel) on the advisory board of Trapezia Capital and Puridify Ltd and on the main board of Accloud and Touchlight Genetics (UK). She has been active mentor/judge/investor in London Business School, Judge Business School, Oxford Foundry and Imperial College. She is a member of the Cambridge Seed Fund investment committee since 2018 and chairs the Imperials College Seed Fund since 2020.

Find Iris on LinkedIn. 

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See his TED talk entitled The Potential of Technology Transfer and find him on LinkedIn.  

More about David

Early in his career he earned a national reputation as a researcher, consultant, and manager in the field of technology business incubators. Later in his career he gained a national reputation for turning around underperforming university technology transfer operations, and for creating and operating university proof of concept programs. Over his career he developed a knack for identifying the asset potential in research derived inventions and how to move the inventions into the market through intellectual property strategy and early-stage technology development. He spent decades building and using innovation and commercialization networks to augment technology transfer operations. He retired from the University of Arizona (UA) April 2018 after 5.5 years as Vice President of Tech Launch Arizona (TLA).

Before coming to the UA, Dave was the University of Colorado System (CU) Associate Vice President for Technology Transfer from February 2002 to August 2012. Prior to CU he served as the Associate Vice President for Technology Partnerships at the Ohio State University in Columbus. Before coming to Ohio State in 1997, he was Associate Vice President for Technology and Economic Development, and Director of the Edison Biotechnology Institute, at Ohio University in Athens. 

Prior to his tech transfer career, he was a professor at Pennsylvania State University, University Park, where he taught graduate and undergraduate statistics, management, and entrepreneurship classes. During the decade at Penn State, he was also a consultant to a regional seed venture capital firm and the principal in a technology enterprise consulting firm. David earned a doctorate in 1980 from Indiana University, Bloomington. His Ph.D. chairperson and mentor was the late Elinor Ostrom, a co-recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Economics.

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Diana Yousef is the CEO and founder of change:WATER Labs, a startup that designed and developed a low-cost, portable toilet using a simple membrane to rapidly evaporate 95% of sewage without using any type of energy. Diana is a PhD, MBA, MA and a serial entrepreneur with 10+yrs experience commercializing technology for social and environmental impact in the developing world.

In this interview we talk about what to do after your PhD, how to get entrepreneurial as a scientist, the value of small grants, how motherhood in part helped lead her to entrepreneurship, the inspiration and early days of change:WATER and much more. Tune in for more bits of wisdom like “if you have a hunch that you’re onto something, keep going.” Also, change:WATER is hiring and raising a round - so make sure to reach out if you believe in their mission and would like to help. 

More about Diana

Diana consulted for McKinsey, co-founded IFC/World Bank’s Life Sciences Investment Group and the United Nations’ Inclusive Markets incubator, and was a seed-stage VC with Battelle Ventures. She co-founded: WeCyclers (social venture to clean up urban slums and create recyclables supply chain linkages in Nigeria), Immerse Global (Stanford-spin out to develop atmospheric water capture technologies), and SachSiSolar (MIT-spin out to develop revolutionary new materials to lower the cost of solar energy). She is a former protein biochemist (A.B., Harvard; Ph.D., Cornell), and holds an MBA and MA in International Development (Columbia). She serves as an advisor to the TED Fellows Program and a Founding Council Member for NASA/USAID’s LAUNCH Accelerator. She is founder & CEO of change:WATER Labs. The work of Diana and her team has been covered such publications as Forbes, Fast Company, BOSS Magazine (on the cover of April 2018 issue), Bloomberg, the Discovery Channel, The Daily Beast and the Boston Globe.

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Ofra Weinberger is the Director of Commercialization and Licensing at Columbia Technology Ventures (CTV). She oversees the management of over 400 inventions, 200 patents, approximately 100 licenses to industry, and the formation of approximately 25 new startups per year.

This interview gets into the weeds of what successful technology transfer programs look like. I learned A TON about how one of the best TTOs out there operates. They constantly keep their mission of doing good in the world top-of-mind, and let it trickle down to small practices like responding to emails within 24 hours. The programs they have created to increase the chances of success for their student and faculty inventions are industry-leading, including the Executive in Residence Program, their Lab to Market Accelerators, and their Fellows Program. 

We talk about walking before you run, the importance of industry engagement and networking, and some detailed licensing terms that university entrepreneurs should know, including recommended process improvements for launching university startups, as well as term sheet recommendations for launching university startups. 

More about Ofra

Ofra is also Associate VP for IP and Technology Transfer at Columbia University. She leads the licensing and startup formation team at Columbia, overseeing the commercialization of technologies in a portfolio comprising both life sciences and physical sciences opportunities and has extensive experience negotiating licenses, research collaborations and strategic alliances, and spinning out companies to commercialize university technologies. Ofra received a PhD in immunology from Harvard University. 

More about CTV

CTV, the technology transfer office of Columbia University, has been involved with launching over 180 companies based on Columbia's technologies to date, and has returned over $3B in revenue to Columbia, making it one of the most successful university tech transfer programs in the world.

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Alexandra Wright-Gladstein is the co-founder and CEO of Ayar Labs (formerly OptiBit), a technology startup that is bringing the high bandwidths and energy efficiency of fiber optic communications directly to silicon computer chips. Ayar Labs will revolutionize the performance and energy efficiency of data centers, and ultimately of all electronics.

Alex brought together the team of researchers across three universities (MIT, CU Boulder, and UC Berkeley) to form Ayar Labs, where she raised its first $27M in venture funding and recruited Charlie Wuischpard as CEO. 

We get into the nitty gritty of what it takes to spin out a piece university research into a startup, talking about her early days knocking on professor's doors looking for technology to license. We hear secrets of applying to SBIR grants and the importance for an entrepreneur to establish trust with researchers. 

This conversation is a must-listen for anyone looking to turn a piece of research into a fully commercialized startup. 

More about Alex

Alex graduated with an MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Business. While at MIT, she was the Energy Practice Leader at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, helping students create clean energy startups out of MIT labs. Prior to MIT, Alex worked at the leading smart grid company, EnerNOC, where she managed and grew data-driven energy efficiency and demand response programs. She has also worked for early-stage clean energy companies Loci Controls and Angaza Design.

Follow Alex on Twitter at @ga1ex. 

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In the episode, we discuss his thoughts on the Elon Musk $100 Million carbon capture prize, which has since been announced. The interview was spurred by Richard's recent LinkedIn post on the subject. While the prize is more focused on what Richard terms "Blue Ocean Technologies", we still have an interesting conversation around innovation challenges and ready-to-deploy carbon capture technologies. We discuss his experience at the CMC research institute, the quirky origin story of the underlying technology for Industrial Climate Solutions and how it then ended up with an Office of Navy Research contract with Sandia National Laboratories for filtering anthrax in extreme desert conditions, to where it is today. We discuss his advice to grad students and PhDs looking to understand industry pain points, and more more. 

More about Richard
He is the past Managing Director/President of Carbon Management Canada/CMC Research Institutes, and was the Sr. Project Lead w. Southern Research Institute (NC), led the establishment of the Carbon-to-Liquids Development Centre, hosting pilot test programs for biomass-to-liquid-fuels conversion technologies. Prior to that he co-founded Mariah Energy, a distributed micro-utility, developing self-dispatching microturbine Combined Heat and Power network. 

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Fernando Gómez-Baquero leads Runway, the Startup Postdoc Program at the Jacobs Technion – Cornell Institute at Cornell tech.  The program is part business school, part research institution, and part startup incubator. It's led to the creation of numerous deep tech startups led by post-docs from all over the world. Fernando holds a Ph.D. in Nanoscale Science and Engineering from the University at Albany SUNY, and has been a co—founder and early technology lead at companies such as Besstech, NanoColombia, Innovate Prefabricate, Dendron Nanomed, Midstate, Revela Medical, and FlashCharge Batteries.

Check out this video about the program and click here to apply by February 15th for the next cohort. 

In this episode we talk his experience forming Besstech, the value of customer development, patenting tips, how to be Bob Langer, what advice they give post-docs at Runway, and much more. 

More about Fernando

Fernando's research has focused on advanced nanomaterials for energy storage applications, on the economic impact of pervasive nanotechnologies, and on tech entrepreneurship. He has more than 15 years of experience in the nanotechnology industry, starting with production and characterization of carbon nanotubes and developing of polymer/nanotube composite materials. He is a leader in the fabrication of nanoengineered electrodes for lithium-ion batteries using semiconductor processes and using nanotechnology to improve the performance of lithium-ion batteries. Dr. Gómez-Baquero has several publications in nanomaterials research and on the economic impact of nanotechnologies and number of patent applications in diverse applications of nanomaterials. Check out his Google Scholar profile.

Fernando is also a leading voice of the Day One Project, an initiative dedicated to democratizing the government policymaking process by working with new and expert voices across the science and technology community. The letter he authored advocating for the creation of a national fellowship for entrepreneurial scientists and engineers can be found here. 

Fernando is also a core instructor for The National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps (I-Corps™), a program that uses experiential education to help researchers gain valuable insight into entrepreneurship, starting a business or industry requirements and challenges. 

Find Fernando on Twitter at @FerGomezBaquero

More about Runway

Based at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute, Runway ushers recent PhDs in digital technology fields through a paradigm shift — from an academic mindset to an entrepreneurial outlook. Startup Postdocs arrive with ideas for unproven products and markets that require time and specialized guidance to develop. These startups demand more than a few months to launch. They need a bit of a “runway.” That’s why our program lasts 12–24 and incorporates academic and business mentorship. The Runway Startup Postdoc Program provides an impressive package valued at $277,000 that includes a salary, research budget, housing allowance, space and more in the first year. In addition, the Startup Postdoc receives significant benefits and perks and corporate support valued at $300,000.

Aaron Mandell has co-founded numerous companies at the nexus of energy and water, including: Altarock, WaterFX, Oasys Water, Coskata and GreatPoint Energy and Greatpoint Ventures. He is on the board of Quaise (millimeter wave drilling for geothermal) and Quidnet (energy storage). 

Aaron has taken numerous companies out of university research labs and formed them into successful operating companies. He's successfully applied for and been awarded large DOE / ARPA-E grants, has raised money from large venture firms like Khosla Ventures and even joined a Y-Combinator batch. 

In this episode we talk:

0:00 Bio / Intro 

01:50 Quaise technology overview and extracting it from MIT 

08:00 Traits of successful inventors 

10:30 Finding commercialization pathways and de-risking 

14:00 Value of Non-dilutive funding 

17:00 Difference between R&D and R&D towards commercialization 

20:00 Mistakes made and importance of timing 

22:00 Running out of water 

29:00 Advice to young entrepreneurs  

31:00 Advice to go after funding from federal agencies / VCs 

34:00 Sell and then build 

35:30 -Product-Market Fit in Hard Sciences / Why Aaron went to Y-Combinator /How to MVP 

42:00 Working with the professor/inventor of the technology 

43:00 Working with TTOs and Universities

47:30 Patents 

More about Aaron: 

Through his leadership, this portfolio is advancing new products in fields such as solar-powered water treatment, desalination, enhanced geothermal energy, coal gasification and alternative chemicals. Aaron was recently the CEO of Altarock, a leader in the development of next generation geothermal energy and is the cofounder and Chairman of WaterFX, a leading provider of solar desalination technology.

Prior to Altarock, Aaron served as CEO of Oasys Water where he led the company from laboratory prototype to implementation of the company’s produced water treatment system and as the founding CTO of GreatPoint Energy where he led the development of the company’s coal gasification process. Aaron has deep roots in the energy and water industries with a technical background in environmental engineering (B.S./M.S.) from the University of Vermont, where he focused on numerical modeling and groundwater hydrology.

Find Aaron on Twitter at @AaronMandell

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