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Zero to £22m in Licensing Revenue: Tony Cochrane's Ceres Power Journey · Lab to Market Leadership with Chris Reichhelm

0:00
Tony Cochrane: The best approach that I've learned is look at the whole value chain and how much value can be created by your technology.
0:07
Tony Cochrane: Look at all the players who have to be active and engaged in that value chain and decide how much they're going to need to earn to be motivated and how much risk they're going to have to take and how much investment they're going to have to make.
0:22
Tony Cochrane: And if you can't see a benefit for everyone in that value chain to participate, then you Then you've got a problem you need to solve.
0:33
Tony Cochrane: You either need to convince people to give something up to that entity, or you have to create more value as a whole, so that there's more to be shared.
0:42
Tony Cochrane: So, it's not just about selling to the interface you have.
0:46
Tony Cochrane: It's actually looking at the entire value chain that you need to enable and make sure it spells success for everyone in some way.
0:54
Chris Reichhelm: Welcome to the Lab to Market Leadership podcast.
0:57
Chris Reichhelm: Too many advanced science and engineering companies fail to deliver their innovations from the lab to the market.
1:04
Chris Reichhelm: We're on a mission to change that.
1:06
Chris Reichhelm: My name is Chris Reichhelm, and I'm the founder and CEO of Deep Tech Leaders.
1:10
Chris Reichhelm: Each week we speak with some of the world's leading entrepreneurs, investors, corporates, and policy makers about what it takes to succeed on the lab to market journey.
1:21
Chris Reichhelm: Join us.
1:22
Chris Reichhelm: If you're a deep tech entrepreneur wondering how you're going to commercialize your business, you need to listen to today's podcast.
1:30
Chris Reichhelm: If you've got an embedded technology platform and you're wondering how you're going to commercialize that, you need to listen to today's podcast.
1:39
Chris Reichhelm: And if you've got a licensing business model, then you really need to listen to today's podcast.
1:46
Chris Reichhelm: I am so fortunate to be joined by Tony Cochran.
1:51
Chris Reichhelm: Tony is the Chief Commercial Officer of Ceres Power PLC.
1:56
Chris Reichhelm: Ceres Power is a UK headquartered fuel cell technology business.
2:00
Chris Reichhelm: Uh, its business model is licensing and services.
2:04
Chris Reichhelm: And there are fewer businesses out there than fuel cell technology businesses that are more difficult to build, scale, and commercialize.
2:13
Chris Reichhelm: So for those platform technology companies out there, You really need to pay attention.
2:19
Chris Reichhelm: I am, I am so interested to talk to Tony and find out about his lab to market journey, what they had to learn and get their head around, the level of preparation that was required in order for them to win their first slate of customers.
2:34
Chris Reichhelm: So without further ado, let's get into it.
2:41
Chris Reichhelm: Tony Cochrane, so much for joining me.
2:44
Tony Cochrane: My pleasure.
2:47
Chris Reichhelm: Let's get right into it.
2:49
Chris Reichhelm: Your, your background is going to be super interesting to so many of our listeners.
2:56
Chris Reichhelm: In particular, those who are interested in taking their company from zero in revenue, and let's be very clear, most of these deep tech, advanced science and engineering companies that are out there have zero revenues.
3:14
Chris Reichhelm: and taking them to where you've taken Ceres which today, uh, is at around the 22 million pound mark.
3:21
Chris Reichhelm: And so that journey of commercialization, where it's not just getting that first industrial partner or the first customer, but getting many, building a business model on the back of it and building sustainable, continuous revenues, uh, is super interesting.
3:38
Chris Reichhelm: So that's what I want to get into with you today.
3:43
Chris Reichhelm: Um, start me off.
3:46
Chris Reichhelm: When you join, where was the company in terms of their development?
3:52
Tony Cochrane: Yeah, so I joined the company Nine years ago now.
3:56
Tony Cochrane: And at that time, they had gone through a pretty major misstep in commercialization prior to me joining.
4:09
Tony Cochrane: And the main reason for that was twofold.
4:12
Tony Cochrane: The tech wasn't quite ready.
4:14
Tony Cochrane: which is very dangerous to a company, and the business model was about the hardest business model you could choose to introduce technology into.
4:25
Tony Cochrane: And what I mean by that is, Ceres, before I joined, was a company that was going to introduce solid oxide fuel cells, in of itself sounds complicated, and they were going to try and sell it as a boiler replacement to individual homes in the UK, Now, if you think about that for a minute, if you're going door to door to people who don't even know what solid oxide means and telling them to invest a premium relative to what they could replace their boiler for, for totally new technology, And trust us, this is going to work, which it didn't, um, that caused a major problem for Ceres, uh, including the need for a rescue financing package, which happened about two years before, or a year and a half before I joined.
5:18
Tony Cochrane: Um, and so that was my starting point, um, a major reset to the company, new investors.
5:27
Tony Cochrane: And a realization that, um, the technology, uh, which, which had matured since I joined to a point of readiness, needed a new business model as well in order to be introduced into the market.
5:42
Tony Cochrane: So that was my starting point at Ceres, and it was a really interesting challenge at that time.
5:48
Tony Cochrane: Yeah.
5:49
Chris Reichhelm: I bet.
5:50
Chris Reichhelm: Had that business model been defined at the point you joined?
5:56
Tony Cochrane: It had.
5:57
Tony Cochrane: So, so the concept of it had been defined.
6:00
Tony Cochrane: Um, so the decision prior to me joining was that to introduce a, a capital intensive product line for a technology that had multiple uses rather than a single product use, warranted a licensing business model, which I agreed with.
6:22
Tony Cochrane: And that's part of the reason I joined Ceres is because I agreed with the business model.
6:27
Tony Cochrane: I understood what licensing meant.
6:30
Tony Cochrane: And I had very good insight into assessing the technology itself at that time, given I was, you know, in that industry for 17 years prior to joining the company.
6:42
Chris Reichhelm: Yeah, that's right.
6:43
Chris Reichhelm: And you had come from Ballard, haven't you?
6:46
Tony Cochrane: Yes, correct.
6:46
Tony Cochrane: So it was also a fuel cell company, also very similar sort of chemical reactions and approaches.
6:54
Tony Cochrane: And so I, I had unique insight into What I thought of the technology, how ready I thought it was, obviously I was privy to some confidential disclosures at that time about what the technology really was.
7:07
Tony Cochrane: And I was very confident that given what I saw and the business model that was chosen, I could add value in my commercial role.
7:16
Chris Reichhelm: Yeah.
7:17
Chris Reichhelm: In, in terms of technology readiness, where was it at the point when you joined?
7:24
Tony Cochrane: So,
7:25
Chris Reichhelm: um, if you had a, you know, in terms of a rating, for example,
7:29
Tony Cochrane: yeah, so, so the technology was probably at, if people are used to TRL levels and so on, it had reached probably a TRL six to seven.
7:40
Tony Cochrane: But the good news for Ceres is when I joined is the manufacturing readiness was about equivalent.
7:46
Tony Cochrane: And that's really important, is that CERES had coupled the manufacturing and the design together very early on, and in fact, all of the samples that were being tested early on, and all of the R& D samples that have been tested since, have all been produced on the manufacturing equipment that's intended for commercialization.
8:09
Tony Cochrane: And what that does is it gives you both of the maturity indicators at the same time, which is very, very powerful for a technology company.
8:19
Chris Reichhelm: Yeah.
8:20
Tony Cochrane: Yeah,
8:20
Chris Reichhelm: that is.
8:21
Chris Reichhelm: And I don't know about you, but in my experience, there are a few companies that manage to scale both the technology and the manufacturing readiness levels concurrently.
8:38
Tony Cochrane: Yeah.
8:38
Tony Cochrane: Yes.
8:38
Tony Cochrane: It's, it is rare.
8:42
Tony Cochrane: In the industry I'm in, it's a necessity because the process technology contains a lot of the trade secrets related to the technology.
8:51
Tony Cochrane: So how you make it is fundamental to the performance of the technology, but also it's fundamental to the confidentiality, which under a license is an imperative.
9:01
Tony Cochrane: So when you think about a licensing model, a license to only patents, Patents are already in the public domain, so people can read those.
9:10
Tony Cochrane: They don't need to talk to you about what your patents say, but if you have trade secrets and know how that you can layer onto your patents, that significantly increases the value of your license, which was fundamentally important to our business model at that time.
9:27
Chris Reichhelm: But then is that know how delivered via a services component to the offering?
9:34
Tony Cochrane: Yeah, so let me tell you a little bit about how the business model was commercialized.
9:39
Tony Cochrane: So when I joined, as I said, the concept of a licensing business model was agreed.
9:43
Tony Cochrane: The board believed that was the right approach.
9:46
Tony Cochrane: I was brought in because I had some experience in licensing business models, and I, I knew what that meant.
9:53
Tony Cochrane: And what I decided to do with my team at the time was to set a mold.
10:00
Tony Cochrane: And it's really important for technology companies when they start to not think about the contract they have ahead of them as their first adopter, right?
10:08
Tony Cochrane: But think about how it scales before you sign your first agreement.
10:13
Tony Cochrane: And what I mean by that is that companies that are, are, are too accommodating of their first and very important partner, sometimes make mistakes that interfere with future contracts with partner two, three, and four.
10:30
Tony Cochrane: So I was quite deliberate at the time to make sure that whatever we put in place commercially was future proof to the second, third, fourth, and fifth Licensee, so that the first contract wouldn't interfere with scaling.
10:44
Tony Cochrane: And the kinds of things that interfere with scaling are exclusivity rights, preferred terms, most favored nation, all the things that your first partner will try and demand of you can sometimes erode your ability to scale and to be commercially successful with your second, third, and fourth partner.
11:04
Tony Cochrane: And anyone who's starting any journey on a business model.
11:08
Tony Cochrane: He needs to really think about how robust it is to that scaling of the commercial terms themselves.
11:15
Tony Cochrane: And so I institutionalized a licensing model that included upfront technology transfer fees, which are meaningful to the company that pays the bills today.
11:26
Tony Cochrane: I introduced engineering services, which delivered the technology through essentially consulting expertise that our employees have, then obviously the long term prize, the one that really adds value to the company, are the royalties themselves.
11:42
Tony Cochrane: And all three of those elements were built on the first contract we ever signed.
11:48
Tony Cochrane: So we could continue to use that mold and that approach with subsequent licensees and partners.
11:55
Chris Reichhelm: How easy was it to get that first contract away?
11:59
Tony Cochrane: It was hard.
12:00
Tony Cochrane: Um, and, and the reason it was hard is because you have to fight for the things that you absolutely need long term with a partner who knows they have a lot of clout over you at a time when the company desperately needs revenues.
12:16
Tony Cochrane: And it's difficult.
12:17
Tony Cochrane: So the, the, the support you need, and obviously I had that support from the board and CEO, you need to be able to walk away.
12:26
Tony Cochrane: And we did walk away from some of our first deals.
12:29
Tony Cochrane: But if you believe in the strength of your technology and your value proposition.
12:34
Tony Cochrane: Those partners will come back and they usually do, uh, because they really value what you have to offer.
12:40
Tony Cochrane: And that's, that's really important to know that you're valued enough that people will test your willingness to walk away.
12:49
Tony Cochrane: And if you do, they'll come back to you and find a suitable compromise, which, which we were able to do.
12:55
Chris Reichhelm: Now, they often come back provided the problem for them is real enough.
13:03
Chris Reichhelm: And there's a recognition.
13:06
Chris Reichhelm: That you've got a solution to that problem, a workable solution to that problem that can be implemented, that's going to work.
13:14
Chris Reichhelm: They've got a lot of confidence there.
13:17
Chris Reichhelm: At the time of you joining and, and running through this first contract with your first customer, was that recognized by them?
13:27
Chris Reichhelm: that they had this kind of problem for which this solution was going to work?
13:31
Chris Reichhelm: Or was it still, were they still unsure?
13:35
Tony Cochrane: Yeah, so the good news for us is that, um, and I'd recommend testing how interested people are very early in any relationship that involves a partnership.
13:47
Tony Cochrane: But our early partners had already tried to do what we do, which was very powerful.
13:53
Tony Cochrane: So if someone has tried to do what you do and realized it's hard, and can't do it themselves, But believe in the value in the business case, you're in a very strong position because they, they know they need you to succeed and they really want to succeed.
14:12
Tony Cochrane: But that has to be tested quite early.
14:13
Tony Cochrane: So the strength of the business case needs to be strong enough and the appreciation for the technology ingredients that you enable in that business case needs to be understood and valued.
14:27
Tony Cochrane: Otherwise, it's very difficult to introduce new technology through, through a partnership.
14:33
Tony Cochrane: The other thing that is quite important is, it's not only about selling the business case to your partner, but it depends a little bit on how deep the value chain is.
14:44
Tony Cochrane: Because that partner needs to be able to either sell direct to a consumer, which is, or end user, which is good.
14:50
Tony Cochrane: Um, then you only have one sales process.
14:53
Tony Cochrane: But if your partner is embedded deep in the value chain, there's actually a cascading selling process where the value of the technology needs to flow through the entire channel.
15:06
Tony Cochrane: And that's a much more difficult, uh, sales process because sometimes you have to convince their customers that your technology is truly differentiated and adds value to that entity's business case as well.
15:22
Tony Cochrane: And you have to work on the principle of what I call net value add to everyone in the value chain.
15:30
Tony Cochrane: And everyone has to play a role.
15:32
Tony Cochrane: Everyone's going to take some risk.
15:34
Tony Cochrane: Everyone needs to extract their portion of value to reward them for that risk.
15:39
Tony Cochrane: And so it can, it can increase the complexity of the sale quite a bit, depending on how deep.
15:44
Tony Cochrane: in the value chain your technology is embedded into.
15:49
Chris Reichhelm: How, how long did it take you to win that first contract?
15:55
Tony Cochrane: So it was a, uh, about an eight month process with a, with about a, as I said, about a one month pause for people to rethink their interests.
16:07
Tony Cochrane: Um, and, uh, and obviously that was a nervous month, as you can imagine, but, uh, it was the right thing to do.
16:15
Tony Cochrane: And we ended up with a very, very strong relationship.
16:20
Tony Cochrane: We believed very much that the partnership was important as well.
16:24
Tony Cochrane: So we wanted to make sure that all the pieces were future proofed, not only for the partnership that we're staring at, but as I said, future proof for the business model itself.
16:36
Tony Cochrane: And, uh, it's again, when you're too impatient about getting it done right, you can sometimes sign up to terms that you shouldn't reasonably have agreed to.
16:49
Tony Cochrane: And, uh, that obviously is.
16:51
Tony Cochrane: Is a challenge for a startup company.
16:53
Tony Cochrane: It's a challenge because you need the revenue, you need the commercial traction.
16:57
Tony Cochrane: Everyone who's invested is usually very impatient about the result, but, um, you need to hold your nerve and get the right contract in place and set the company on the right trajectory.
17:10
Chris Reichhelm: Yeah, I think, I think that's a, I think that's an excellent point you make where a lot of, we've seen this a lot, uh, especially, I think this is true.
17:21
Chris Reichhelm: Especially of inexperienced founders who may be doing this for the first time, building their first company in one of these advanced science or engineering disciplines and trying to commercialize it for the first time where they just don't have that, they don't have that experience.
17:39
Chris Reichhelm: And the, what's possible commercially isn't, isn't fully known yet, uh, by the board or, or the leadership team.
17:51
Chris Reichhelm: And so invariably someone blinks.
17:54
Chris Reichhelm: And I think when, when you've got that, then, as you say, then you can run into those problems and you can wind up making compromises, which are ultimately going to come back and, and, uh, you know, and could challenge you later on.
18:09
Tony Cochrane: Yeah.
18:09
Tony Cochrane: And, and I, what I would also say is that every tech company I know of thinks that technology is best in class.
18:18
Tony Cochrane: and tell their investors there's some sort of hockey stick curve of growth.
18:21
Tony Cochrane: Now, you've seen millions of them, um, because that's what people want to hear.
18:26
Tony Cochrane: You got best technology and there's explosive growth.
18:31
Tony Cochrane: Now, that doesn't mean that's not true, but I think that the most responsible thing for a commercial representative to do is to be quite strong in the test of whether both those assumptions are true and Because, ultimately, the commercial people in the company have to represent the technology to the customers, and the customers are going to ask the difficult questions.
18:59
Tony Cochrane: And I think it's the responsibility of the commercial organization to ask those difficult questions.
19:05
Tony Cochrane: of the internal teams stating them.
19:08
Tony Cochrane: So that if they're not quite true, we need to test that and make it better in some way.
19:17
Tony Cochrane: And if it are, it is true, then you have to really be able to package that well and understand it well, so it can be properly represented through the customer and value chain.
19:28
Tony Cochrane: And similarly on the growth assumptions, it's very easy for a technology lens to assume commercialization challenges.
19:38
Tony Cochrane: as easily overcome.
19:40
Tony Cochrane: And, and they're not, right?
19:43
Tony Cochrane: If a company's filled with, you know, engineering and science lenses, they think once you solve the technology, you're done.
19:51
Tony Cochrane: And, and commercializing technology takes a lot of persuasion.
19:57
Tony Cochrane: It takes, you know, channel management.
19:59
Tony Cochrane: It takes partnership acquisition.
20:03
Tony Cochrane: You know, you've got to think if you're a product company, you got to think about service model, the warranty model.
20:08
Tony Cochrane: You've got to think about the assurances you have to give contractually to the early adopters and ultimately the broad adoption cycle.
20:18
Tony Cochrane: And all of those have a huge interaction with the rate of growth that you can enable.
20:23
Tony Cochrane: It's not just about solving the technology problem.
20:26
Tony Cochrane: It's about solving the whole problem for the market.
20:30
Chris Reichhelm: It's about building a solution because all of those other things you've just mentioned there are all elements of a solution, all features of a solution ultimately.
20:39
Chris Reichhelm: When you, when you joined was, was there a solution already or was it still just a, a TRL six or seven technology that was becoming more stable with a business model that was workable?
20:57
Tony Cochrane: Yeah, so the, the, the solution was not yet fully defined and The reason I joined and believed that technology was commercially ready was because in Ceres particular case, the The product development cycle that embeds the technology was also quite long, which means there was time to solve some of the final technical challenges and there was time to build the solution through the value chain while our partners were developing the product around the technology, which was years, not, not months.
21:38
Tony Cochrane: So it depends a little bit on product and the business model.
21:43
Tony Cochrane: In a licensing business model, um, we would obviously ask the partner to build the factory.
21:50
Tony Cochrane: The partner would build the product.
21:53
Tony Cochrane: And our role was to enable the license to be practiced so that the partner can succeed with not only the product, but also the manufacturing of the product.
22:06
Tony Cochrane: That was, that was our role, which means you could embark on that journey quite early.
22:11
Tony Cochrane: And it was a true collaboration over years.
22:13
Tony Cochrane: to get to that end result.
22:15
Tony Cochrane: If you're a software company, I imagine those cycles are much, much shorter.
22:20
Tony Cochrane: Um, the good news though, is that you can, with software updates, the, the ability to remedy any shortfall is better.
22:27
Tony Cochrane: Whereas in a, in a brick and mortar product business, you've got to get it right the first time.
22:32
Tony Cochrane: The product has to work.
22:34
Speaker 3: Yeah.
22:34
Tony Cochrane: The factory has to be built.
22:36
Tony Cochrane: There's not a lot of room for mistakes.
22:38
Tony Cochrane: Yeah.
22:38
Tony Cochrane: Um, and, and so it really does depend on what, what your product is and what market you're going after in terms of how conservative it is and how risk averse it is.
22:50
Chris Reichhelm: Yeah.
22:51
Chris Reichhelm: How many meetings did you have before you signed that first contract?
22:57
Chris Reichhelm: Not just with that client, but you join, you agree with the business model, you start going out.
23:03
Chris Reichhelm: Obviously, they're looking for revenue from you.
23:07
Chris Reichhelm: How many meetings do you have to have out there roughly before you're able to sign that first contract.
23:16
Tony Cochrane: Yeah, look, over, over the course of eight months of negotiation, um, you know, I, I joke that some of my partners spend more time with me than I do with my family.
23:28
Tony Cochrane: Um, because, you know, you have to, the selling of technology into a new product in a new business, which is what, what we do involves, uh, assessing the technology.
23:44
Tony Cochrane: No one, no one just believes PowerPoint.
23:46
Tony Cochrane: You have to sometimes do some testing, send some samples.
23:51
Tony Cochrane: Confirm that they're testing it in the right way.
23:54
Tony Cochrane: And that's seen as a bit of a waste of time, but unfortunately, it's a necessary ingredient to the belief system that you have to enable.
24:01
Tony Cochrane: Um, then there's the testing of the business model.
24:04
Tony Cochrane: So it's all about risk mitigation.
24:06
Tony Cochrane: So the first is how do you minimize the technology risk in the eyes of the customer?
24:11
Tony Cochrane: Then there's the market risk question.
24:14
Tony Cochrane: Is there a market risk that you reasonably need to digest?
24:18
Tony Cochrane: And working on the business case itself can sometimes be part of that collaboration.
24:24
Tony Cochrane: And then there's the execution plan, the implementation risk.
24:28
Tony Cochrane: So how do you convince everyone that they can execute against the market risk?
24:33
Tony Cochrane: the embedding of the technology into the product, and then they're ready to sign the contract, and then you're negotiating the contractual terms.
24:41
Tony Cochrane: And so if you can imagine all of those ingredients have to be part of a collaboration prior to signing, um, you're, you get quite intimate with your partner before they actually sign on the, on the dotted line.
24:56
Tony Cochrane: And in large contract selling, which At least in our business model, that's what you do.
25:01
Tony Cochrane: It's, it's, it's, it's quite a heavy business development investment of time.
25:09
Tony Cochrane: I wouldn't quantify the hours, Chris.
25:11
Tony Cochrane: I would, I would, I would say it's, uh, at least, you know, weekly meetings of twice a week, two hours, uh, yeah.
25:20
Tony Cochrane: You have to expect that's quite a regular practice with each partner that you're courting.
25:26
Chris Reichhelm: And you, I'm assuming we're taking this up and down the value chain as well.
25:32
Tony Cochrane: Yeah.
25:32
Tony Cochrane: In some cases, you know, you've got to bring, as I said, their customers, if it's a deep value change, uh, you've got to bring some of their stakeholders along as part of the journey.
25:43
Tony Cochrane: Now, some of the relationships are confidential until they're signed.
25:46
Tony Cochrane: So there are some disclosure barriers that prevent too much of that happening.
25:52
Tony Cochrane: There's, you know, when people are building a product, they need to know that the supply chain can support their growth.
25:58
Tony Cochrane: So there's sometimes suppliers that you have to bring into the foray to help, uh, everyone understand what the supply chain risk is involved with scaling.
26:07
Tony Cochrane: And so you're, you're building a business together.
26:10
Tony Cochrane: And my, my approach is always that the best thing to do is to eliminate your, your company boundaries and look at the business that surrounds both companies.
26:22
Tony Cochrane: And if you can create good margins and good values for both entities, then all you have to do is figure out how to share that value in an equitable manner.
26:32
Tony Cochrane: Eliminating the company boundaries doesn't provide enough value, then there's not a deal to be done because there's not enough to share.
26:42
Chris Reichhelm: So it's about looking beyond just this one contract with one partner.
26:48
Chris Reichhelm: You've got to see the entire impact across the value chain and understand the distribution of value along that chain.
26:56
Chris Reichhelm: And so in a way, if I'm understanding you correctly, and, and then you've got to make sure there's enough value to be distributed equitably along that chain.
27:06
Chris Reichhelm: And if there isn't, then maybe you've got the wrong solution or you need to go back and you need to refine whatever it is you're working on.
27:14
Tony Cochrane: Yeah.
27:14
Tony Cochrane: Look, everyone in the value chain will only do it if they make money.
27:18
Tony Cochrane: And understanding who is essential to get to, to that value chain for your technology to reach the market.
27:28
Tony Cochrane: It's really important because if there's any piece of that value chain where there's no money to be made, it's going to be a missing link in the chain.
27:36
Tony Cochrane: And so how do you then motivate that link in the chain to be active and interested in the business?
27:43
Tony Cochrane: And the only way you do that is you have to share some of that value with that link.
27:47
Tony Cochrane: And so the best approach that I've learned is.
27:51
Tony Cochrane: Look at the whole value chain and how much value can be created by your technology.
27:57
Tony Cochrane: Look at all the players who have to be active and engaged in that value chain and decide how much they're going to need to earn to be motivated and how much risk they're going to have to take and how much investment they're going to have to make.
28:12
Tony Cochrane: And if you can't see a benefit for everyone in that value chain to participate, then you've got a problem you need to solve.
28:22
Tony Cochrane: You either need to convince people to give something up to that entity, Or you have to create more value as a whole, right, so that there's more to be shared.
28:31
Tony Cochrane: So it's not just about selling to the interface you have, it's actually looking at the entire value chain that you need to enable and make sure it spells success for everyone in some way.
28:43
Chris Reichhelm: Yeah, I think that's a golden piece of insight, Tony, that I think a lot miss.
28:50
Chris Reichhelm: Maybe it's just me, but I think that most people, when they're thinking of value propositions, are thinking about.
28:58
Chris Reichhelm: A value proposition that extends between one and one, you know, between two people or between two parties.
29:04
Chris Reichhelm: They're not considering the broader impact across an entire value chain.
29:10
Chris Reichhelm: Um, when you, when you think about the time you joined, you were commercial person number one at Ceres, was that right?
29:20
Tony Cochrane: Uh, yeah, there was a, uh, regional representative doing some work, but in terms of, you know, the, the true build of the commercial organization, I was.
29:32
Tony Cochrane: I was really the first of a new, new era of commercialization at that time.
29:36
Chris Reichhelm: Yes.
29:38
Chris Reichhelm: Can you walk us through a little bit the development and evolution of the commercial group and, you know, and also expand on, you know, your views on how you, how and when you build teams and the kinds of skills and experience and talents you're going to need in a business like this?
29:57
Chris Reichhelm: Sure.
29:57
Chris Reichhelm: Thank you.
29:59
Tony Cochrane: Yeah, so the, the trick is to make sure that, um, you, you manage.
30:07
Tony Cochrane: the near term expectations well of what do you want to achieve near term?
30:13
Tony Cochrane: What does the business need near term?
30:16
Tony Cochrane: And again, how, how do you scale so that the longer term growth aspirations can also be fulfilled through some investment today?
30:27
Tony Cochrane: And so I, I knew already that the sales process for large contracts involving licensing are not, you know, short term transactions that you just hire 20 or 50 salespeople and put them to, to work on.
30:43
Tony Cochrane: It doesn't, it doesn't work that way in the kind of business that, that I was entering.
30:48
Tony Cochrane: And, and I knew that it was a partnership relationship type sale that required some intimate knowledge of the technology and how it, it could be used as well as some of the commercial acumen.
31:03
Tony Cochrane: that it takes to sign the contract that, that, that packages that result.
31:09
Tony Cochrane: And so what we did is we, we were very targeted about which partners met the kind of criteria of a first licensee, because that couldn't go wrong.
31:24
Tony Cochrane: If you're a technology company and your first customer fails, it doesn't matter if it's their fault, the whole technology gets tarnished.
31:33
Tony Cochrane: With a brand of failure and you can't sell another contract thereafter.
31:38
Tony Cochrane: So we were quite deliberate about not trying to go with a broad business development approach, but instead we targeted two regions, which were, we felt were strategic, which were, had the right ingredients for early adoption and had the kind of partners that we thought would be the best custodians of our brand in terms of how they would use the technology.
32:04
Tony Cochrane: and how they would be successful.
32:07
Tony Cochrane: So we went to Japan and Europe and one of our first partners was Bosch.
32:15
Tony Cochrane: That's no secret, that's public domain.
32:18
Tony Cochrane: Why do you pick Bosch?
32:19
Tony Cochrane: Well, Bosch has got the balance sheet, they've got the manufacturing pedigree, they've got channels to multiple markets, they've got material scientists who needed to be conversant in our ceramics based technology.
32:37
Tony Cochrane: So they, they had Such strategic ingredients as the right partner for that first commercialization license that we felt we would focus on that first.
32:52
Tony Cochrane: And what that, what that did was it sold the next wave of licensees.
32:57
Tony Cochrane: So, you know, once, once you've sold the technology to someone who's highly credible in the industry, then the fact that they bought it is already part of your sales process.
33:08
Tony Cochrane: It's part of how you, you reach what I call external endorsement of your technology.
33:16
Tony Cochrane: And so then we expanded into Korea, which was also a, a strategic market for us, signed a relationship with Doosan, signed a relationship with Weichai in China, who actually came to us with a strategic interest, and then we've built the business since.
33:38
Tony Cochrane: And what we try to do is focus on a region that was strategic, Build a representation in that region to look at the primary candidates in that market, and then, um, qualify a few candidates and ultimately work through the new licensee in each region.
34:01
Tony Cochrane: And our goal, and it's still our goal, to put a strategic partner in each and every region, and in each and every market, that deserves to grow.
34:13
Tony Cochrane: and access for our technology.
34:15
Tony Cochrane: We're not done yet.
34:16
Tony Cochrane: There's still work to do, but, but it's a very much a win and build approach rather than hire 50 salespeople and, and, and throw them out into the world and hope you, you know, you, you reel in some, some, some partners.
34:34
Tony Cochrane: I think you could do that if you had a huge amount of sales budget.
34:38
Tony Cochrane: Yeah.
34:38
Tony Cochrane: Most startup companies don't, we didn't.
34:41
Tony Cochrane: So we had to adopt a, you build it, you grow, you build it further, you grow further.
34:46
Tony Cochrane: And now we have, you know, 25, 30 people in the commercial organization.
34:50
Tony Cochrane: We have regional representation, uh, you know, across the globe.
34:55
Tony Cochrane: Um, and we've also, what we've done is we haven't only hired our own employees.
35:01
Tony Cochrane: We've also used agencies in some areas to minimize the employee burden on the company.
35:08
Tony Cochrane: And it can be quite effective depending on the type of business you're in.
35:11
Tony Cochrane: You don't necessarily have to hire everyone.
35:14
Tony Cochrane: You can do some business development through agencies and other representation, if it makes sense to your business model.
35:22
Chris Reichhelm: In Asia, that's quite popular.
35:24
Tony Cochrane: Yes, exactly.
35:26
Chris Reichhelm: Okay.
35:26
Tony Cochrane: There's also some, some taxation.
35:29
Tony Cochrane: Reasons to do that.
35:30
Tony Cochrane: Um, you consider things like permanent establishments and you, you sometimes want to avoid those in certain countries.
35:38
Tony Cochrane: The best thing to do is actually to use agencies to avoid some of those problems.
35:43
Tony Cochrane: Yes.
35:43
Chris Reichhelm: Yes.
35:44
Chris Reichhelm: Securing Bosch as a first customer is the dream for so many, uh, similar types of businesses.
35:53
Chris Reichhelm: If you were to put yourself in their shoes, evaluating you, Tony.
35:58
Chris Reichhelm: And, uh, and Ceres generally.
36:00
Chris Reichhelm: What was it about you guys that ultimately made them sign?
36:05
Chris Reichhelm: What was, what did they see from Ceres?
36:08
Chris Reichhelm: What did they get that made them say, okay, we're going to do this deal with these guys?
36:14
Tony Cochrane: Yeah, look, without revealing some of the commercial circumstances of those decisions, they, as I said earlier, they already had a practice in the same technology domain as us, so Solid Oxide.
36:29
Tony Cochrane: They had a team that was doing some of their own work.
36:31
Tony Cochrane: They knew how hard it was.
36:33
Tony Cochrane: They already have products.
36:36
Tony Cochrane: that use similar manufacturing processes to us.
36:39
Tony Cochrane: Um, and so they understood not only what we're doing, but why we're doing it well.
36:46
Tony Cochrane: Um, even compared to some of their own practices, which have hundreds of millions of euros of revenue attached to them.
36:54
Tony Cochrane: I think they saw an organization that, um, adopted good practices in technology development, but also retained its nimbleness.
37:05
Tony Cochrane: So in other words.
37:06
Tony Cochrane: You can't be just a lab company and be seen as a bit of a bunch of cowboys.
37:15
Tony Cochrane: You have to actually be able to show that you have a mature approach to maturing the technology, that there's business processes behind that, which aren't very expensive to invest in, but they need to be credible in the eyes of the big companies.
37:30
Tony Cochrane: Like what kinds of
37:31
Chris Reichhelm: things?
37:32
Tony Cochrane: Well, just, you know, the way you release your drawings.
37:34
Tony Cochrane: So, you know, they took a lot of drawing packages and how we release drawings.
37:38
Tony Cochrane: They took a look at our testing protocols.
37:41
Tony Cochrane: Do, did we have, you know, a statistical approach to our testing or was it just we built a sample, we didn't really know what it was and, and we got a good result but we can't explain it.
37:52
Tony Cochrane: I mean, sometimes companies, they, they get lucky but they can't explain why they got lucky and that's, that's too much risk for, for an adopter.
38:02
Tony Cochrane: I think if a company can show.
38:05
Tony Cochrane: They knew why the technology works, or why the technology works now, and that they considered some of the failures that, that resulted in that success, and learned from them, and institutionalized the practices of, you know, proper failure analysis, proper, you know, qualification and verification of your results.
38:29
Tony Cochrane: proper documentation of some of the results, then you, you minimize the risk, right?
38:36
Tony Cochrane: And it's all about minimizing technology risk so that people believe that they can count on your technology for a business case.
38:46
Tony Cochrane: And if you can institutionalize those practices and make them visible, then you, you can give confidence.
38:53
Tony Cochrane: And I think Bosch saw that in us that we had put in good practices.
38:58
Tony Cochrane: Good test infrastructure, good validation practices, good engineering documentation, and they could read all that and see all that and go, okay, this is real.
39:07
Tony Cochrane: And that's really important.
39:09
Tony Cochrane: That built trust.
39:11
Tony Cochrane: Absolutely.
39:13
Tony Cochrane: Yeah.
39:13
Tony Cochrane: And sometimes sharing what you learned in your failures is actually quite important as well.
39:17
Tony Cochrane: It's not just about sharing success.
39:19
Tony Cochrane: About being able to share that we tried some of these paths and they don't work and here's why and this is why our technology is unique because we've solved some of these problems.
39:32
Chris Reichhelm: So there's a, you know, there's a, there is a level of professionalism that is required operationally and technologically in terms of the way things are developed and the way the technology, you know, the way data is captured, the way testing is handled, uh, and, uh, and ultimately.
39:52
Chris Reichhelm: I'm guessing too, in the way that the whole engagement is approached, which is led by commercial.
40:00
Chris Reichhelm: The, and in making that, in making that journey, one thing we see companies struggle with is understanding when to wrap in or fold in some of those practices that will take you down a more rigorous line.
40:17
Chris Reichhelm: And some may argue, may, may stifle a little bit, but are so important in order to build that level of credibility.
40:24
Chris Reichhelm: Okay.
40:25
Chris Reichhelm: Do you have a view on when you introduce those?
40:29
Tony Cochrane: I think it costs you very little to introduce those quite early.
40:34
Tony Cochrane: Um, a lot of people think that's documentation burden.
40:38
Tony Cochrane: I, I don't believe that's the case.
40:39
Tony Cochrane: I think that you can implement these, those practices and that culture very early in, in a company and it, it doesn't slow you down.
40:50
Tony Cochrane: It, some of those practices are actually enabling of better development, more credible development, because the worst thing you can do is, is achieve a successful result and not understand why, or achieve a successful result and not be able to replicate it.
41:10
Tony Cochrane: And not only replicated within your company, but when someone says, I don't believe your PowerPoint, I would like to replicate this within my company.
41:20
Tony Cochrane: If you can't share all the documentation on how you achieve that result, including the testing you did, and they fail to reproduce that result, they're not going to believe your technology.
41:32
Tony Cochrane: And so many big companies demand it.
41:35
Tony Cochrane: That they should be able to replicate your result, uh, if you know what you're doing.
41:41
Tony Cochrane: And so I would recommend that those, those practices be institutionalized very early in a way that doesn't slow the company down.
41:51
Tony Cochrane: And that's, that's the magic to it is don't, don't go so big on process that it slows the innovation, but make sure that the underpinning of good practices is built into the organization very early on.
42:05
Chris Reichhelm: Yeah, it's going to help business development enormously, amongst other things.
42:11
Chris Reichhelm: Um, the commercial role itself, what are the skills and experience you think are needed in order to be able to handle the job that you've performed?
42:27
Tony Cochrane: Yeah, look, I think, um, because the subject matter here is deep tech, right?
42:32
Tony Cochrane: It's technology companies.
42:35
Tony Cochrane: I think the commercial role in In the companies that I know of that are involved in Embedding deep technology into the value chain.
42:46
Tony Cochrane: First of all, the commercial really needs to understand the benefit of the technology in the eyes of the market, not, not in the eyes of the company that's trying to sell it.
42:58
Tony Cochrane: But how does the end user interact with the technology in a way that matters to them.
43:06
Tony Cochrane: And so, I mean, I have an engineering background.
43:10
Tony Cochrane: I ruined my engineering by taking an MBA.
43:13
Tony Cochrane: Um, and, uh, I'm now spending, you know, part of my time pretending to be a lawyer with, with contracting.
43:20
Tony Cochrane: Um, so, you know, those are the ingredients I bring to the table.
43:26
Tony Cochrane: But I rely very heavily on my What I call technical commercial interface that I, I use my technical background to understand the, the technology, but with the market lens that I feel is going to matter to the end user.
43:46
Tony Cochrane: And so what features are going to be experienced?
43:51
Tony Cochrane: So, so, you know, there's many products where the technology doesn't actually, isn't actually known by the end user.
43:59
Tony Cochrane: So, you know, you buy a new phone and, you know, Apple might market a chip with a code name to you.
44:06
Tony Cochrane: And that means absolutely nothing.
44:08
Tony Cochrane: And in reality, um, what matters more is probably the quality of the camera or something like that.
44:16
Tony Cochrane: Um, so the people who are developing the chips think that it's really, really important that people know how many, I don't know, graphics processors are on and all that.
44:25
Tony Cochrane: It's really important to the technology people within the company.
44:28
Tony Cochrane: But it's not experienced by, by the end user.
44:31
Tony Cochrane: And so I think the commercial role in a technology company really needs to help the organization understand what really matters in the eyes of the end user and how that translates back through the value chain to the commercial interface that, that you're trying to broker.
44:50
Tony Cochrane: And, and that skillset of, of filtering out the noise.
44:55
Tony Cochrane: And some of it is noise.
44:57
Tony Cochrane: To distill it to the sort of essence of value, it's probably the most important skill any commercial person can bring to a, to a technology company.
45:09
Chris Reichhelm: How, what is your audience?
45:13
Chris Reichhelm: If you look at the evolution of the contracts you've put together, the development of them, your audience as you're developing this, you know, tell me a little bit about their backgrounds in these organizations.
45:25
Chris Reichhelm: Is it starting with R& D and then moving through different layers of the organization, different areas?
45:32
Tony Cochrane: Yet it changes over the course of the selling process.
45:38
Tony Cochrane: Um, look, the, the early audience is someone who believes there's a business and a technology advisor who believes that the technology is enabling in some way.
45:51
Tony Cochrane: You normally start in a, in a, an embedded technology sales process.
45:56
Tony Cochrane: You have to, you have to make sure there's money behind the, the, the question.
45:59
Tony Cochrane: So, There's the business owner who thinks they're going to build a business or a better business because of your technology.
46:07
Tony Cochrane: And there's usually someone in a technology advisory role, um, who needs to validate that what your technology does is indeed true and differentiated.
46:21
Tony Cochrane: And so the relationships start there and then unfortunately they do go into a prove your technology works phase.
46:29
Tony Cochrane: So the, the.
46:30
Tony Cochrane: If the business case is sound, and the assumptions about the technology result in a positive business case outcome, the next question is, can we believe you?
46:40
Tony Cochrane: And so you end up in a technology interface for a period until the technology advisor says yes, the technology is better than our own or someone else's, and it's differentiated in the way that's proclaimed.
46:57
Tony Cochrane: Once you get through that gate.
46:59
Tony Cochrane: Then you'll get into, back into the business and commercial forum, which says, how are we going to share the value that each party deserves because we can enable this business outcome for you.
47:12
Tony Cochrane: But then it goes very much back to a commercial terms relationship.
47:18
Tony Cochrane: Usually people like to use heads of terms or some summary of the commercial terms.
47:24
Tony Cochrane: And then once that's agreed.
47:27
Tony Cochrane: The last step is obviously the legal work, and then you're into teams of lawyers digesting fairly nuanced contractual language, and it's really important that before you start that process, That the commercial terms are clear, understood, and agreed, because otherwise you can waste a lot of time decoding that through legal language, which takes a lot more time and energy if you haven't done it right at the commercial level.
47:57
Chris Reichhelm: How much time does that legal process add on to the entire thing?
48:02
Tony Cochrane: Well, in our business model, because it's a licensing contract that's quite complex, um, months.
48:08
Tony Cochrane: But I'm not suggesting that every tech company would need to digest that kind of contractual complexity.
48:13
Tony Cochrane: It really depends on what you're trying to put into that contract.
48:17
Tony Cochrane: We have licensing terms, long term royalties, uh, you know, performance obligations in the implementation phase.
48:24
Tony Cochrane: So our, our contracts tend to be very complex and require that kind of effort.
48:30
Tony Cochrane: But I imagine that there's many businesses that could do it in a lot less time.
48:35
Chris Reichhelm: But you've, you know, you've got this engineering background and appreciation, which you can bring to discussions, which are important in the early stage.
48:46
Chris Reichhelm: I suppose in order to set out the case, and I'm guessing that during that phase, it's really important that you're not, you really want to be careful with the claims you're making around the technology, because in all of this, you're trying to establish credibility.
49:04
Chris Reichhelm: Yeah.
49:04
Chris Reichhelm: So you have to really have a sense of what, is possible with the platform you've got at that moment in time.
49:12
Chris Reichhelm: So that as much as possible, again, the results they create with your sample, you know, in their sampling process of your technology are going to broadly replicate what you've created before, hopefully.
49:26
Chris Reichhelm: So again, that that trust is there.
49:29
Chris Reichhelm: It's hard to do that, I would think, without being able to communicate well enough.
49:37
Chris Reichhelm: with that audience.
49:38
Chris Reichhelm: And so some engineering or a technology affiliation or background, some comfort level with that is going to be important as part of the mix.
49:50
Tony Cochrane: Yeah, absolutely.
49:51
Tony Cochrane: I mean, look, our, at least our transactions are not just a commercial supply transaction.
49:59
Tony Cochrane: They are 25 year partnership, not, not only for the generation of technology that's.
50:06
Tony Cochrane: available today, but also to build the belief system that our technology in future iterations will continue to be competitive long term.
50:17
Tony Cochrane: So we're not just selling a trust in what we say today, we're selling a trust in the capability of the company itself to iterate on the technology and advance the technology long term so that the partnership remains healthy long term.
50:32
Tony Cochrane: So it's, again, it depends on your business model.
50:35
Tony Cochrane: It depends on the commercial transactions.
50:38
Tony Cochrane: That you're trying to broker.
50:40
Tony Cochrane: But, you know, in our case, in the licensing business model, we not only have to sell the technology, but as I said, it's a new market, so we've got to understand the market risk that we're asking our partners to digest and help them mitigate some of that through, you know, agreements, for example, to Learn from the market and embed those requirements in our next generation designs.
51:04
Tony Cochrane: So we have to make some commitments around if we learn something together about what makes you even more successful, we will take that on and we'll build it into R& D processes so that you get a better version of the design in three years.
51:19
Tony Cochrane: We also build detailed implementation plans to help people build factories.
51:24
Tony Cochrane: So again, the knowledge of what does it take to build a factory, what capabilities does our partner have, how do we complement those, without a good understanding of Each party's strengths and how they can be combined.
51:38
Tony Cochrane: You don't end up building that confidence and trust and mitigating the risks.
51:44
Tony Cochrane: And again, it's all about getting people comfortable to take the step to adopt the technology and invest in its commercialization.
51:53
Tony Cochrane: And risk is a big, big portion.
51:56
Tony Cochrane: Mitigating risk is a big portion of the sales process.
51:59
Chris Reichhelm: Yeah.
52:00
Chris Reichhelm: It's a big thing that keeps coming up on this podcast and people we talk to, especially those from corporates.
52:05
Chris Reichhelm: But these skills, that technical appreciation, obviously the commercial piece.
52:11
Chris Reichhelm: The, the strategic relationship development, uh, moving that process along and the legal piece together, particularly in this model, licensing.
52:20
Chris Reichhelm: Yes, you absolutely have to have an appreciation for the legals as well.
52:25
Chris Reichhelm: It, at, at some point, and in the early days when you're establishing those early beachhead customers and partners, I can understand how you need that and how you need that blend that we've just discussed.
52:40
Chris Reichhelm: At some point, at what point do you think you're able to relax that, if at any point, and maybe start to look towards more sales oriented?
52:51
Chris Reichhelm: People that may not have those full backgrounds, but because you've got such a track record, you may have standard terms, you've got the confidence to wheel out standard terms, you've got precedent, etc.
53:03
Tony Cochrane: Yeah, look, I think, um, every technology company should look at their commercial trajectory and about, you know, who are the early adopters.
53:15
Tony Cochrane: And how do you motivate them to take the appropriate risk?
53:20
Tony Cochrane: Because there are still some unknowns.
53:23
Tony Cochrane: And how do you make sure they're successful?
53:26
Tony Cochrane: Because your early adopters have to be successful.
53:28
Tony Cochrane: Can't, I can't emphasize that enough.
53:31
Tony Cochrane: You can't afford to let an early adopter down in any scalable business model, because you, you, you totally lose confidence in the market when you do.
53:41
Tony Cochrane: So you have to pick your early adopters carefully.
53:44
Tony Cochrane: You have to invest heavily in their success, and there are still, in that relationship, some unknowns that require that confidence building, that more nuanced approach.
53:57
Tony Cochrane: But you're right, Chris.
53:58
Tony Cochrane: I think once you've done it a few times, and the market validation, not the technology validation, but the market validation proof points are all there, then the technology starts speaking for itself.
54:12
Tony Cochrane: in some respects.
54:13
Tony Cochrane: And then you get the later adopters who aren't really taking as much risk.
54:18
Tony Cochrane: They don't need as much persuasion about the risk mitigation, and you get into more standardized, repeatable sales era.
54:28
Tony Cochrane: Now, Ceres isn't there yet, we're still, you know, in the adoption phase and primarily early adopters.
54:36
Tony Cochrane: But I imagine that some years from now, once those factories, some of the first factories are all producing volume successfully, rewarding those early adopters, there's a wave of follow on customers who don't have anywhere near the same barrier to entry.
54:53
Tony Cochrane: that you have to digest early on.
54:55
Tony Cochrane: And then you, you probably don't need the sales sophistication that we're applying today.
55:02
Chris Reichhelm: Ceres was your first startup, I think.
55:07
Tony Cochrane: Uh, yeah, certainly in the capacity I'm in now.
55:10
Tony Cochrane: Yes.
55:11
Chris Reichhelm: Yeah.
55:11
Chris Reichhelm: What are, if you look back, what have been the biggest lessons for you?
55:18
Tony Cochrane: Yeah, look, I, I think the, the biggest lesson, uh, I've learned is to really focus on the entire business risk reward equation that you're asking your customers to believe you about.
55:44
Tony Cochrane: And, you know, that sounds obvious.
55:49
Tony Cochrane: I think that when you start in a commercial role, and I was somewhat guilty of that, is you look at the commercial interface you have in front of you And you go, all right, if I can sell this contract, I'm done.
56:02
Tony Cochrane: And, you know, it's, it's in the public domain that some of the things that we hoped about the speed at which, you know, the factories would come online and the trajectory of the relationship have been longer than we thought.
56:18
Tony Cochrane: And I take huge responsibility for that, right?
56:21
Tony Cochrane: I, I really want the business to succeed, not just the product.
56:28
Tony Cochrane: the commercial contract terms be upheld.
56:31
Tony Cochrane: And so there's been quite openly quite a lot of adjustments to the contract that was signed originally were reasonable for us to make, given what we learned along the way.
56:44
Tony Cochrane: And so, and, and probably could have been avoided or better managed had there been a stronger emphasis on what does this entire business look like?
56:56
Tony Cochrane: And, Um, and how do we make sure that we think about all the elements, not only the, the, the commercial interface between our two companies, but, you know, what is the supply chain elements going to do to, to add or mitigate risk?
57:10
Tony Cochrane: What are some of the channel partnerships that need to exist?
57:13
Tony Cochrane: How might the market evolve?
57:15
Tony Cochrane: Um, you know, these, these are time horizons that could result in the market shifting on you, and is everything robust to some of those shifts?
57:24
Tony Cochrane: And, and it's a bit of a crystal ball, and I'm not saying there's a science to it, but you have to try.
57:30
Tony Cochrane: I think you really do have to try early on to think about all the things that could go wrong and make sure that what you put in place is robust.
57:39
Chris Reichhelm: And you've got to get alignment.
57:41
Tony Cochrane: Absolutely.
57:42
Chris Reichhelm: So whatever you come up with, also, you know, that view needs to be shared.
57:47
Chris Reichhelm: Yeah.
57:47
Chris Reichhelm: By your customer, your partners, and your other value chain participants as well.
57:52
Tony Cochrane: Yeah.
57:52
Chris Reichhelm: Tony, um, this has been a wonderful, wonderful conversation.
57:56
Chris Reichhelm: dive into, uh, into commercialization.
58:01
Chris Reichhelm: Uh, I can't thank you enough for joining me.
58:03
Tony Cochrane: No, thank you.
58:04
Tony Cochrane: It's fun to talk about these things and not everything I say, uh, is, uh, is right, but, uh, hopefully I've learned a few things along the way.
58:12
Chris Reichhelm: That's great.
58:13
Chris Reichhelm: Thank you so much.
58:16
Chris Reichhelm: You've been listening to the Lab to Market Leadership podcast brought to you by Deep Tech Leaders.
58:22
Chris Reichhelm: This podcast has been produced by Beauxhaus.
58:25
Chris Reichhelm: You can find out more about us on LinkedIn, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.