Out of the Lab Bountiful.Work

Yaron Daniely is a Partner & Head of aMoon Alpha and an investment leader at aMoon Velocity, an early stage investment fund that pursues dis-ruptive, cutting-edge technologies with the potential to accelerate cure. This is a fast-paced, high energy discussion from someone who has seen all sides of the ecosystem, from PhD researcher and post-doc, to entrepreneur and public company CEO, to the world of tech transfer at a top university, and who is now bridging all of the gaps in between as an investor at a fund with more than $1B AUM. 

We get into how he developed an interest in translational research, taking that to industry, developing curricula for scientists to learn about business, and how he helped to transform the tech transfer industry, including filling the proof of concept funding gap. He goes into how to identify what technologies and investigators have the highest chance of creating commercial success, how to incentivize tech transfer employees and increase the volume of licensing deals they do, and how to attract high-caliber entrepreneurs to join commercialization spinouts.

This conversation is beyond worthwhile for anyone interested in translational research, entrepreneurship, or working in the field of technology transfer. Enjoy! 

More about Yaron

Born in Israel and raised in Florida, Yaron was fascinated by science, medicine and tech-nology from a young age. Driven by a passion for discovering and creating novel solu-tions, and a persistent quest for challenging the status quo wherever he went, Yaron spent much of his career leading innovative health tech companies. He brings to aMoon a wealth of hands-on experience as a business leader in both the private and public sec-tors. In return, aMoon fulfills his craving for cutting-edge science and strategic thinking, applied to the creation and mentorship of young companies focused on impacting people’s health.

Prior to aMoon, Yaron was the President and CEO of Yissum, Hebrew University’s ac-claimed Technology Transfer Company, and Co-Chairperson of the Israel Technology Transfer Network (ITTN), where he converted academic research into practical prod-ucts and technologies. Before leading Yissum, he spent 14 years as a senior executive - and 10 years as CEO - of private and NASDAQ-traded Biopharma and Biotech compa-nies. He also co-founded and served for ten years as the director of Israel's first and leading MBA program for professionals of the local Biomedical industry at the College of Management Academic Studies.

Yaron earned his PhD from the Sackler Institute of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at the NYU School of Medicine. Following his doctoral program, he served as a Visiting Fel-low at the NIH, and as an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow in the Depart-ment of Molecular Cell Biology at The Weizmann Institute for Science in Israel. He also holds an MBA from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology.

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Alex is the co-founder and President of Fluence Analytics, a technology startup that provides real-time analytics solutions for the optimization of manufacturing and R&D processes. His vision and leadership took the Tulane University spin-out from patented laboratory concepts to a company delivering innovative hardware and software solutions for process monitoring and optimization to chemical and biopharmaceutical manufacturers. 

I love this story because Alex, without a technical background and technology commercialization experience, was able to build this company from the ground up to where Alex is now a named inventor on several of their patents, he has led the company in raising millions of dollars, hiring dozens of employees, and is selling multiple products into different verticals around the world. He discusses everything he learned via "trial by fire" including bringing in the right expertise and mentorship, best practices in team building, working with tech transfer offices, customer development, and how to fund the early operations and R&D of a deeptech startup. Alex's journey definitely has the power to inspire more people to commercialize deeptech research. Enjoy! 

More about Alex

Prior to founding Fluence Analytics, Alex worked as the Associate Director for Operations and Strategy at PolyRMC, a Tulane university R&D center that is active in fundamental and applied polymer research. Alex is listed as an inventor on several patents and has served on the boards for the Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition and the Applied Polymer Technology Extension Consortium. In 2016 Forbes recognized Alex as a 30 under 30 recipient, and he has been recognized with several regional awards for entrepreneurship and innovation. Alex also regularly mentors entrepreneurs, students and faculty on the commercialization of technology, as well as entrepreneurship.

Connect with Alex on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-reed-504/) 

More about Fluence Analytics

Fluence Analytics has raised over $13 million in equity funding from institutional venture capital (Energy Innovation Capital, Diamond Edge Ventures – strategic venture group for Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings, Yokogawa Electric Corporation and JSR). The agile company has more than 25 team members, and it has several multinational chemical and biopharmaceutical companies as customers. Additionally, Fluence Analytics’ products are now in use on three continents.

Learn more about Fluence (https://www.fluenceanalytics.com/) 

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Trevor Best is the CEO and Co-Founder of Syzygy Plasmonics, a startup pioneering a new type of chemical reactor driven by light rather than heat, enabling the potential for dramatically more efficient chemical manufacturing. Trevor and his co-founder, Dr. Suman Khatiwada, commercialized this novel photochemical tech out of Rice University. Trevor covers how he and Suman gained experience evaluating R&D while workign together at Baker Hughes, the methodology they developed to assess new technologies he calls TMI - technology / market / impact - and how to poke holes and find the big hairy problem that's going to kill your business. He covers everything from the very beginning - how they started reading journal publications looking for interesting technologies to commercialize, through their engagement with the inventors at Rice and their process in negotiating a license with the tech transfer office (TTO). Trevor goes into his past startups and why the failed and lessons learned. This convo is rife with good advice for grad-students and entrepreneurs looking to commercialize and I found it personally inspiring. With the right work ethic and the will/stamina to see things through, getting an impactful deeptech invention out of the lab and commercialized is achievable. Enjoy! 

More about Trevor

At Syzygy, Trevor has successfully raised three funding rounds. He is currently focusing on bringing Syzygy’s revolutionary photochemical technology to market. Before starting Syzygy, he worked for Baker Hughes.  There he steadily progressed into management, where he gained expertise in quality assurance (Six Sigma Black Belt), regulatory compliance, technology development management, project and personnel management, supply chain management, internal/external communications, and business process architecture.

Connect with Trevor on LinkedIn. 

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 is an associate professor and the Steve and Kristen Remondi Faculty Fellow in the Chemical and Biological Engineering Department at Tufts University. She is an entrepreneurial academic that keeps her home base in academia, but has been a founding scientist and inventor on two university spinouts in the water sector, the most recent of which, ZwitterCo, just raised $6M to continue commercializing their technology to use zwitterions to coat membranes that are resistant to fouling and can treat waste streams with fats, oils, grease and more. 

Ayse provided a ton of insight into conducting research with an eye towards scale and commercialization, including the importance of de-risking inventions at an early stage in anticipation of what investors and industry might ask. She spoke very candidly about her past experiences in spinning out technologies, what she has learned, what she would advise young inventors considering doing the same, the importance of the team, and much more. It's an encouraging episode for any listeners that want to invent for commercialization but still remain in academia, dedicated to research. Enjoy! 

More about Ayse

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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Ric Fulop is the Chairman, CEO and co-founder of Desktop Metal (NYSE: DM), a leader in mass production and turnkey additive manufacturing solutions. DM is changing the game in 3D printing with printers that can print a variety of metals, carbon fibers, wood composites, and more. 

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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Teague Egan is the founder and CEO of EnergyX, a company focused on commercializing the LiTASTM tech for lithium extraction and solid state battery electrolytes. The company was founded based on a discovery that metal organic frameworks, similar to membranes, can selectively separate monovalent ions like lithium in mixtures of high salinity. It's a spinout from the University of Texas Austin, Monash University in Australia, CSIRO (Australia's national lab) and others. Teague licensed and commercialized this technology which is the foundation of the EnergyX startup. 

This interview rocks for a few reasons. We really hear the details of how Teague decided to get involved in lithium ion exploration and extraction in the first place and how he discovered the core technology by reading an academic paper. This story is close to my heart as I had read the same paper and reached out to one of the inventors, Professor Benny Freeman, a few years ago. But Teague was the one who got on the plane, worked his butt off, and made it happen. In just a few years, Teague took a piece of research and built it into a technology company valued at $300M. He's raised money, executed collaboration agreements with leading lithium producers, and built a team of 15 people. 

His background before research commercialization is also fascinating. He invented a technology in textiles that he patented, founded and ran a record label, was the youngest certified NFL sports agent in history while studying entrepreneurship at USC, and more. 

His hustle, grit and determination are all inspiring and its exciting that his attention is now laser-focused on climate change, batteries and renewables. Enjoy! 

More about Teague: 

With a background of serial entrepreneurship, investing, inventing, and philanthropy, Teague has been investing in public sector energy assets and sustainable technologies since 2013. Prior to EnergyX, he started businesses in entertainment, music, and sports, and is also the inventor of energyDNA - a patented multi-component graphene textile fiber technology. In 2012, Teague founded Innovation Factory VC, a venture capital fund focused on tech, life sciences, real estate, space and consumer products.

Teague is actively involved in philanthropic efforts with the Thomas E. Smith Foundation. He is the co-founder of Dance For Paralysis, The Reality Ride Challenge, and The Kindness Project. Teague is a USC Trojan, and also studied exponential technology including artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, and nanotechnology at Singularity University.

Find Teague on LinkedIn.

Learn more about EnergyX on their website.

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