Speaker 1: Welcome to zero. I'm Kshatti. This week explosions, experiments and
Speaker 1: three D printing. From the outside. Batteries can seem boring,
Speaker 1: but they're a bit like jazz or museums. The people
Speaker 1: that care really care. They become obsessed when they find
Speaker 1: something intriguing and can't stop thinking about it. Everybody wants
Speaker 1: a better battery. There's just infinite demand for better batteries
Speaker 1: that are safer, that our higher performance and those better batteries,
Speaker 1: and not just because you want a smartphone that will
Speaker 1: run for the whole day without needing more juice, but
Speaker 1: also because batteries are powering more of our lives and
Speaker 1: are crucial to making renewable power reliable and their job
Speaker 1: is not done yet. As batteries have become cheaper, people
Speaker 1: want to put them in all kinds of places, and
Speaker 1: that means they need to come in all kinds of shapes.
Speaker 1: You can fold them, they're flexible, they're bendable. So just
Speaker 1: to kind of prove a point we've made like donut
Speaker 1: shape batteries before and fund things like that. That's Christine Howe,
Speaker 1: the founder of Imprint Energy. She's making three D printed
Speaker 1: foldable batteries which can be used as smart labels. Think
Speaker 1: of the last time you ordered something online and got
Speaker 1: a million updates about where it was. Each of those
Speaker 1: updates came from a person interacting with and scanning that package.
Speaker 1: A smart label powered by Imprint's battery can send the
Speaker 1: messages itself. So these are almost like a cell phone
Speaker 1: that's been flattened out and a cellphone that you can
Speaker 1: kind of attach to almost anything, and in that case
Speaker 1: you can actually track where this is anywhere in the world.
Speaker 1: That's scott selphone coverage. That connectivity might not seem important
Speaker 1: if it's just about a pair of shoes, but being
Speaker 1: able to get updates and information about the heat and
Speaker 1: humidity that are exposed to can stop us wasting so
Speaker 1: much stuff. Imprints batteries are being tested by companies that
Speaker 1: ship food and even crop seeds. These packages are particularly
Speaker 1: vulnerable to theft and price couching, and more benignly, it's
Speaker 1: just important that they stay at a certain temperature. With food,
Speaker 1: the lastes on the error of like a third of
Speaker 1: food that's producer just doesn't get to the right place,
Speaker 1: or it gets over ripens or rots along the way.
Speaker 1: Optimizing delivery using technology like imprints can reduce emissions while
Speaker 1: saving on fuel costs. And there's a broader point. As
Speaker 1: the race continues to make new and better batteries, the
Speaker 1: innovations won't only help avoid waste and cut emissions, they'll
Speaker 1: also have applications we can only imagine. Christine has already
Speaker 1: raised twenty five million dollars for imprint Energy, and when
Speaker 1: I visited her last summer in an office park in
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley, they were scrambling to finish an order of
Speaker 1: thousands of batteries, working double shifts to get those batteries
Speaker 1: out the Christine took the Zero team on a tour
Speaker 1: of her small factory and then afterwards sat down to
Speaker 1: talk about how she became a battery person, how she
Speaker 1: went from academia to running a company, and how a
Speaker 1: printaple goop became a working battery. Welcome to the show, Christine,
Speaker 1: thank you. Now, what is the moment that you thought
Speaker 1: batteries are the future? So I went to Berkeley for
Speaker 1: my undergrad degree and grad degree. I studied matual science.
Speaker 1: My dad was actually matual scientists, and so I decided,
Speaker 1: I'm going to try this out and if it works,
Speaker 1: that's great. It's not. You know, I can change my mind,
Speaker 1: and I really didn't have an understanding of what I
Speaker 1: wanted to do, but I answered an undergraduate ad to
Speaker 1: become a researcher in a group that was setting battery
Speaker 1: and so I just wanted a way to make a
Speaker 1: little bit of money through the year and to help out.
Speaker 1: But I got really lucky because the grad student that
Speaker 1: I was helping, his name is Dan Steinert. He was
Speaker 1: a very extremely passionate person about batteries and just wanted
Speaker 1: to solve really hard tech problems and that was just
Speaker 1: really infectious. I just got very obsessed with it as well,
Speaker 1: and since then, you know, I've just been also obsessed
Speaker 1: with making better batteries. Being from Berkeley, we were very
Speaker 1: influenced by the clean tech sustainability focused there as well.
Speaker 1: So it was really by kind of luck and inspired
Speaker 1: by just somebody who had infinite passion for this field.
Speaker 1: And then between finishing your grad studies and founding Imprint Energy,
Speaker 1: what do you do a lot along the way. So
Speaker 1: when I started researching batteries as an undergrad, I was
Speaker 1: looking at lithium ion chemistries and like everybody else, trying
Speaker 1: to squeeze as much density and performance out of really
Speaker 1: unusual materials. And as time went on, you know, I
Speaker 1: became a safety officer and had to deal with many
Speaker 1: explosions in the lab. So I just got I think
Speaker 1: a little bit tired of lithium. Chemistries are just difficult
Speaker 1: to work with, and I knew there were all these
Speaker 1: sort of problems with the materials themselves and the safety
Speaker 1: of these chemistries. Most electronic devices are powered by lithium
Speaker 1: ion batteries your cell phone, your laptop, your electric car.
Speaker 1: But these batteries back in so much energy that if
Speaker 1: they get damaged, it can lead to catastrophic fires. In
Speaker 1: for example, like a warehouse, two palettes run into each other,
Speaker 1: and there was a lithium power tracker that looked like
Speaker 1: the size of a cell phone in between those two palettes.
Speaker 1: They literally exploded, you know, and then damage a bunch
Speaker 1: of inventory as well. So a lot of these retailers
Speaker 1: are being pushed to the point of saying, hey, we
Speaker 1: have to eliminate any sort of the dangerous you know,
Speaker 1: oftentimes lithium batteries in the warehouse because there's just too
Speaker 1: much commotion here, there's too much risk of damage or
Speaker 1: flammability risk. Or whatever. So grad school, Christine had a
Speaker 1: problem to solve, and the solution lay in non lithium
Speaker 1: mine Chemistries. I got inspired by taking a trip out
Speaker 1: to Japan for the summer, and while I was there,
Speaker 1: I was in a lab that wanted to print three
Speaker 1: D batteries using really next gen printing technology. I was
Speaker 1: supposed to be the lithium battery person that would help
Speaker 1: them print these materials. But I go to this facility
Speaker 1: and it's literally like an office space without any safety
Speaker 1: exhaust or glove boxes. So there's no way we're going
Speaker 1: to handle these dangerous lithium materials. And so it almost
Speaker 1: felt like our project wasn't able to take off the ground.
Speaker 1: But when we thought about it, we thought, well, why
Speaker 1: don't we process a much safer material? And zinc kept
Speaker 1: coming up as like, well, this is much safer, you
Speaker 1: don't need all that overhead, and so that was a
Speaker 1: pivotal turn for me. I went from focusing on lithium
Speaker 1: batteries to zinc because I realize just much easier material
Speaker 1: to handle, It's much easier to process, it's earth abundant.
Speaker 1: So once we started focusing on zinc, we realize we
Speaker 1: could process these zinc batteries differently than how their main
Speaker 1: in double as Today the double or triple A battery
Speaker 1: that you most commonly handle is not a lithium and battery.
Speaker 1: Those are made with metals like zinc and manganese, which
Speaker 1: are far less likely to cause fires. Christine uses the
Speaker 1: same chemistry but with some very important tweaks to make
Speaker 1: imprint energies batteries which can be printed. Christine took us
Speaker 1: on a tour as they were actually doing this. The
Speaker 1: batteries start as raw materials that come in giant sex
Speaker 1: like bags of large bags of rice and la or beans,
Speaker 1: but they've got powders in them. Our batteries literally start
Speaker 1: off as powders and solvents that we kind of blend together.
Speaker 1: So you know, for example, like our zinc collectro, it's
Speaker 1: got zinc powder, it's got some binder that holds its gether,
Speaker 1: and it's got a solvent that makes it flow. And
Speaker 1: same with that magni sack side cathode, and then behind
Speaker 1: us over here and over here a bunch of mixers
Speaker 1: that look like you're kind of home kitchen egg mixer,
Speaker 1: but ten times bigger. And then using the giant mixer.
Speaker 1: All of those powders are turned into a very special goop.
Speaker 1: It looks a little like glue, the kind you used
Speaker 1: to play with in school and get all over your fingers.
Speaker 1: It's this kind of white pace. It's pretty viscous. It
Speaker 1: does flow, but it's also quite pasty and thick. And
Speaker 1: so we're actually printing this by squeezing it through a sensil,
Speaker 1: and that sensil has a pattern on it, So whatever
Speaker 1: shape you want to print from a battery perspective, you
Speaker 1: just cut out that sensil shape. So literally today we've
Speaker 1: got four rectangles that we're printing on each substrate, but
Speaker 1: it could be four hearts. While finishing a PhD, Christine
Speaker 1: started to look into the Internet of Things as a
Speaker 1: route to using her research. If you haven't heard of
Speaker 1: this term yet, the Internet of things or IoT. It's
Speaker 1: the connection of physical objects fridges, thermostats, or even packages
Speaker 1: to the Internet, and many of these devices required batteries.
Speaker 1: Given the trends in sensors and Internet of things, we
Speaker 1: realized that there'd be this interesting opportunity to integrate these
Speaker 1: types of safe batteries in lots of devices, and so
Speaker 1: I spent a lot of time on the mature science
Speaker 1: side of that, trying to make these materials work, trying
Speaker 1: to get some sort of proof of concept that these
Speaker 1: batteries had good performance, they could be processed. And I
Speaker 1: just got really lucky. This doesn't happen to every grad student,
Speaker 1: but my project actually worked. I had some really compelling data,
Speaker 1: and so in my last year as a grad student,
Speaker 1: I started publishing that data, going out on the conference
Speaker 1: circuit talking about my work, and a consistent message that
Speaker 1: came back from big companies that were at these talks
Speaker 1: was that they wanted to get their hands on this technology.
Speaker 1: I was kind of the first time, I'm sure to
Speaker 1: think about, like, well, what does happen to academic research.
Speaker 1: Does it stay you know, in the four walls of
Speaker 1: hers Mining building, which is where I did all my
Speaker 1: research as a grad student, or is there a way
Speaker 1: for this technology to get out? And that was the
Speaker 1: first time, you know, me and also my advisors and
Speaker 1: mentors started to talk about commercialization and using different vehicles,
Speaker 1: whether it's licensing or startups, to pull technology out of
Speaker 1: the university. And so, you know, after emotionally sort of
Speaker 1: switching gears from being a researcher really just fixated on
Speaker 1: solving a hard problem to somebody really interested in bringing
Speaker 1: technology to the real world. That inspired this idea that
Speaker 1: we could start a company in Print Energy to commercialize
Speaker 1: cool technology. So what aio did you found the company
Speaker 1: and how many years before you actually made the product
Speaker 1: that somebody would buy. I graduated like Christmas two ten,
Speaker 1: and we incorporated the company like December two and ten,
Speaker 1: and so this is my first and only real full
Speaker 1: time job, you know, outside of school essentially, so for
Speaker 1: four or five years we incubated on campus. We essentially
Speaker 1: kind of paid the equivalent of like a gym membership
Speaker 1: to stay on campus, use the facilities, and we got
Speaker 1: to keep the ip as Imprint Energy as an entity,
Speaker 1: but we got to kind of get the benefit of
Speaker 1: still being in that academic space and having access to
Speaker 1: all that incredible equipment and all the smart people. We
Speaker 1: had a lot of student interns that helped build those
Speaker 1: early prototypes. So it took some time. You know, batteries
Speaker 1: are really challenging in that to stabilize and understand the chemistry,
Speaker 1: you have to make a lot of batteries and you
Speaker 1: have to test a lot. You can't get away with
Speaker 1: just making one and then just go into market. So
Speaker 1: it took us some time there, and in that time
Speaker 1: we bootstrapped the company. We entered a lot of business competitions.
Speaker 1: We probably made under one hundred thousand in various competitions.
Speaker 1: The first one I think we won was just an
Speaker 1: inter Berkeley competition, and I remember the check size being
Speaker 1: sent five hundred dollars and we thought we were rich.
Speaker 1: We bought a screen printer with that money. Then we
Speaker 1: kind of graduated to applying for grants and that brought
Speaker 1: us into the realm of bringing hundreds of thousands or
Speaker 1: even millions of dollars into the company. So that helped
Speaker 1: funded that early kind of development chemistry, stabilization, proof of
Speaker 1: concept stage of just us understanding this chemistry. I think
Speaker 1: about twenty fourteen fifteen time frame. We started to get good,
Speaker 1: consistent results and so we raised our Series A and
Speaker 1: that gave us a larger infusion of resources to hire
Speaker 1: a team to move to the space. So we move
Speaker 1: straight to Alameda from Berkeley. It's the same facility we
Speaker 1: walked around. These batteries are being manufactured in a space
Speaker 1: no bigger than your average classroom, and it is the
Speaker 1: smallest battery factory I have seen, not just because Imprint
Speaker 1: Energy is a startup, but because the innovative process just
Speaker 1: requires less space. Takes like tens of meters of space
Speaker 1: in a large scale battery facility to be able to
Speaker 1: make tens of thousands of batteries in general. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's a much more compact process. So overall, and the
Speaker 1: workhorse of our processing is printing, drying, and then laminating.
Speaker 1: There's some finishing processes of the customer wants holes punched
Speaker 1: in a certain place, or if they wanted to attach
Speaker 1: to something. But you know, to make a say like
Speaker 1: a lithium battery could take anywhere from ten to multiple
Speaker 1: dozens of different equipment and different stations. So it's very simple.
Speaker 1: We've gone through a very interesting journey looking for product
Speaker 1: market fit with customers. Batteries are really interesting in that
Speaker 1: everybody wants a better battery, and so we get approached
Speaker 1: by customers from little things to like massive things all
Speaker 1: the time. There's just infinite demand for better batteries that
Speaker 1: are safer that our higher performance, and so what's been
Speaker 1: challenging for us is narrowing that and saying, okay, you know,
Speaker 1: our initial markets are really going to be in this
Speaker 1: one space, and we're best positioned to be that solution
Speaker 1: in that market. So that took us some time. You know,
Speaker 1: we did a lot of projects with customers and we
Speaker 1: made a lot of amazing things, but it took us
Speaker 1: some time to land on this IoT smart label market
Speaker 1: as this huge growth opportunity that has no other real
Speaker 1: good solution. It wasn't really until the last couple of
Speaker 1: years that we got there. So we're now at a
Speaker 1: phase today where we've got orders from customers and they're
Speaker 1: on the order of one hundreds of thousands of units.
Speaker 1: We're about to negotiate a million unit contract with one
Speaker 1: of our customers, and we're at a scale up phase.
Speaker 1: And what that means is we need to be able
Speaker 1: to make this battery in huge volume and also more
Speaker 1: cost effectively. And along that journey, you know, it's been
Speaker 1: more than ten years. I've always thought every day was
Speaker 1: like a really hard day, but scaling up is really hard,
Speaker 1: and so we're kind of living our hardest lessons and
Speaker 1: finding our hardest battles now because making a thing in
Speaker 1: huge volume, cost effectively and delighting your customers over and
Speaker 1: over again is just really really challenging. After the break,
Speaker 1: how Christine raised money to go from a prototype group
Speaker 1: to working batteries, and how she transitioned from academia to
Speaker 1: running a company. By the way, if you want to
Speaker 1: check out what these batteries look like, we have some
Speaker 1: pictures online and a link in the show notes. Most
Speaker 1: industries that shift their products long distances plan for a
Speaker 1: certain amount of waste. The pharma industry, Christine says, can
Speaker 1: see up to forty percent loss in the supply chain.
Speaker 1: It's one reason they produce more drugs than needed, knowing
Speaker 1: that there will be losses. The food industry can have
Speaker 1: comparable losses, especially during transport. The emissions linked to waste
Speaker 1: are a major challenge, one that Christine hopes to solve
Speaker 1: by powering smart labels with printable batteries. But getting there
Speaker 1: means scaling production of these batteries fast. So right now
Speaker 1: we're kind of in a race. We literally have a
Speaker 1: unit target today. I think the target was four hundred
Speaker 1: or five hundred batteries. I think we met it, but
Speaker 1: we're trying to catch up. We're on the hook to
Speaker 1: deliver thousands of batteries this month, and with summer vacations
Speaker 1: and things, you know. In some cases like equipment going down,
Speaker 1: we've had to recover time. So we've actually been running
Speaker 1: extended shifts to the interview. You're getting on the line. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean all of us are on the hook essentially,
Speaker 1: So I ask you guys to join the line if
Speaker 1: you have extra high ideas. So in the scale of phase,
Speaker 1: capital is still key. How much more money have you
Speaker 1: raised since? And like how much do you need to
Speaker 1: raise because you're also getting revenue. Yeah, yeah, So over
Speaker 1: the lifetime of the company, in terms of institutional funding,
Speaker 1: we've raised a total about twenty five million or so.
Speaker 1: We've completed a Series B over basically during COVID, so
Speaker 1: we're gearing up to raise a much larger Series C.
Speaker 1: In that Series AID to B phase, we've really been
Speaker 1: not just validating technology, but validating our customer and market targets.
Speaker 1: Series C is really about scaling and getting to the
Speaker 1: point where we can build a profitable business, and so
Speaker 1: we're anticipating that we'll probably raise another twenty thirty million
Speaker 1: dollars to build up that capability and capacity. Lots of
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs start companies, but not all entrepreneurs who have PhDs
Speaker 1: and battery science start companies. So what's been your learning
Speaker 1: going from being an expert in the subject area right
Speaker 1: to being able to not just use that expertise for
Speaker 1: that subject, but also have business skills alongside. I talked
Speaker 1: to a lot of PhD with the aspiration of being entrepreneur,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot about my own experience too.
Speaker 1: I think the pH experience is actually really both magical
Speaker 1: and frustrating. It's a test of character. You know, you're
Speaker 1: required to spend years studying things and ultimately becoming an
Speaker 1: expert at something, and so that requires putting in the
Speaker 1: time and putting a lot of effort. My PAH experience
Speaker 1: was that I was the ultimate owner of my project.
Speaker 1: There was nobody else who was going to drive this
Speaker 1: project forward except for me. I had to become really
Speaker 1: self reliant, really innovative and creative. But a lot of
Speaker 1: motivation had to come from within. People who get their
Speaker 1: PhD are actually inherently really driven. They've got a lot
Speaker 1: of that motivation within them, and it's a really great
Speaker 1: skill from an entrepreneurial standpoint. What I was really challenged
Speaker 1: with was working together in teams and building trust with people.
Speaker 1: I knew I didn't want to be a lone wolf,
Speaker 1: but at the same time, I was used to doing
Speaker 1: everything myself. When you start a company, there's just so
Speaker 1: much to do. There's no way you can be the
Speaker 1: one person that does everything. And so building trusts in
Speaker 1: others and realizing, hey, there might be somebody that's even
Speaker 1: better position to do this hard thing than me has
Speaker 1: been a really interesting exercise over time. One of the
Speaker 1: greatest gifts I ever I think got from that standpoint,
Speaker 1: from an entrepreneurial standpoint, is I got pregnant four years ago.
Speaker 1: I had a child, had to stay away on maternity
Speaker 1: leave for a number of months, and it drove me crazy,
Speaker 1: you know, like I wanted to be here, see what's
Speaker 1: gone on, solve problems alongside my team, but I had
Speaker 1: to step away, I had to disengage. When I came back,
Speaker 1: I realized, I've got an empty plate, and I can
Speaker 1: choose what I can put on this plate. I don't
Speaker 1: have to do everything. I can choose the things that
Speaker 1: I am best leverage to do, and I can trust
Speaker 1: that all the other things are happening. And so being
Speaker 1: away actually showed me that the machine actually kept rolling
Speaker 1: forward and actually the machine was working really well. So
Speaker 1: I think that transition from being self reliant and working
Speaker 1: on your own and being kind of successful on your
Speaker 1: own to working in a team was one of the
Speaker 1: major leaps that I had to go through from being
Speaker 1: a PC student to an entrepreneur. As well as making
Speaker 1: finish batteries, Christine tells us in the factory that her
Speaker 1: crew is shipping the materials and licensing the know how
Speaker 1: for other manufacturers to make our print the batteries themselves.
Speaker 1: We're in the middle of actually doing that tech trance
Speaker 1: for two manufacturers in different countries right now. Our manufacturing
Speaker 1: partners print labels. They literally print a label that might
Speaker 1: go around your toy or a label that's on a
Speaker 1: T shirt. They're used to really simple processes, and so
Speaker 1: we've tried to make our process fit in with that
Speaker 1: kind of workflow. You're doing something that's quite unusual where
Speaker 1: you are essentially giving the entire process from the powder
Speaker 1: that we looked at a way to making of the battery,
Speaker 1: from the printing and the ceiling to somebody else to
Speaker 1: make it. You know, how do you feel about that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you have to maintain a certain level of quality,
Speaker 1: and that's right. Yeah, so's there's a couple elements of that.
Speaker 1: The reason why it's important to have a portable process
Speaker 1: from start to finish is that so if our battery
Speaker 1: is made here and the smart labels assembled, you know,
Speaker 1: a different continent, than shipping that battery from one place
Speaker 1: to another adds costs and complexity and time. And so
Speaker 1: what we're seeing in the industry is that they're trying
Speaker 1: to consolidate all that manufacturing in one place. So what
Speaker 1: you can actually imagine is these label companies not just
Speaker 1: you know, assembling the label, but starting from making the
Speaker 1: batteries themselves and then ultimately assembling the whole thing under
Speaker 1: one roof. That's not how things are done today right now.
Speaker 1: One components made in one location, another components made another,
Speaker 1: and then there's somebody who kind of takes those lego
Speaker 1: blocks and assembles them together. But you know, with the
Speaker 1: complexity of logistics and supply chains, we're finding that that's
Speaker 1: just too complex and too costly and too vulnerable. If
Speaker 1: you had a billboard outside your house with a message
Speaker 1: of the world, what would it say, Keep moving forward?
Speaker 1: You know, just keep going. I've been with this company,
Speaker 1: but also just looking at batteries for a really long time,
Speaker 1: and there's and people ask me all the time, like
Speaker 1: how can you dedicate yourself and spend so much time
Speaker 1: doing one thing and focus on one thing? And there's
Speaker 1: just a lot of joy when you keep at it,
Speaker 1: keep moving forward. That was a fascinating conversation. We're not
Speaker 1: going to keep you for much longer, you know. Let
Speaker 1: you go back to the assembly line and hit that goal.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. I keep thinking about Christine's question
Speaker 1: because it's a question I asked when I was in
Speaker 1: grad school finishing my PhD. What does happen to research?
Speaker 1: Where does it go? Too often? It just gets published
Speaker 1: in a journal and is never heard of again. Christine
Speaker 1: started this process ten years ago. The funding environment for
Speaker 1: battery startups is easier now, especially with the Inflation Reduction Act, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, you can hear more about in our
Speaker 1: other episodes with alizad Lea Stokes and Bill Gates. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to Zero. If you liked this episode, please rate, review,
Speaker 1: and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. We've had some
Speaker 1: lovely reviews from listeners recently, so thank you to everyone
Speaker 1: who's taken the time to write something. Share this with
Speaker 1: a friend, or send it to someone who gets a
Speaker 1: lot of packages delivered. If you've got a suggestion for
Speaker 1: a guest or topic, or something you just want us
Speaker 1: to look into, get in touch at zero pod at
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot net. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and senior
Speaker 1: producer is Christine driscoll. Our theme music is by Wonderly
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Banquet Wiswynathan and Kira Bindram. I'm Akshatrati
Speaker 1: back next week.