Innovation 10

Innovation 10

The Innovation 10 podcast features founders and technology leaders across industries talking about the paths that shaped them, the problems they're solving, and what they believe is coming next. Each episode is ten questions in thirty minutes - tight enough to stay focused, personal enough to get past the rehearsed answers. For listeners who want to understand how the most interesting people in tech and business think and build, without the hour-long runway most interviews need to get there.

Episodes

  1. Sep 14

    Episode 2: Why Every Founder Is Secretly Winging It with Jenya Meydbray

    What if the thing holding most founders back isn't a knowledge gap, but the assumption that successful people have it figured out? Jenya Meydbray has spent 20 years at the center of one of the fastest-growing industries in history, and his most useful realization had nothing to do with solar. Jenya Meydbray is VP and GM at NextPower, a leading global solar energy company. He founded PVEL, the solar industry's go-to independent reliability testing lab for institutional-scale investments, and has been building in the solar space since 2006, when the industry barely appeared on a forecast chart. In this episode: ■ The realization that changed how he thinks about starting companies ■ Why the most technically perfect innovations keep failing once they touch the real world ■ How solar went from powering California pot farms to becoming the world's dominant power source, and why almost nobody predicted it ■ Whether innovation is something you're born with or something you can build Innovation 10 is a short-form interview series, 10 questions, one guest, about thirty minutes. Subscribe to make sure you catch every new episode! For all booking inquiries shoot us an email at team@innovation10.com 00:00 Intro 00:36 20 years in solar 02:38 The patent lawyer plan 04:07 How he found solar 06:03 Everyone is winging it 09:55 When theory meets the field 13:12 The advice that stuck 18:30 Solar's unlikely ascent 22:02 Innovation: born or built? 23:46 How he generates ideas 34:53 Favorite city

  2. Sep 11

    Episode 1: Why the Best Battery Needs Table Salt with Antonio Baclig

    What if the clean energy bottleneck isn't solar panels or wind turbines but the battery sitting behind them? Antonio Baclig is building a grid-scale battery out of iron powder and table salt, and his answer to "why do we need another battery" might change how you think about the energy transition. Antonio Baclig is the CEO of Inlyte Energy, a battery startup developing sodium iron chemistry for grid-scale storage. He studied physics at Harvard, shifted from carbon capture research to batteries after watching solar costs collapse in the early 2010s, and earned his PhD at Stanford. Inlyte has since partnered with the original inventors of sodium metal chloride technology, a UK team that has worked on the chemistry since the 1980s. In this episode: ■ Why the "we already have batteries" argument misses the real problem ■ The discovery of a 40-year-old technology that became Inlyte's foundation ■ How Antonio gets good ideas, and why writing matters more than ever in the age of AI ■ The one question he thinks every innovator should ask themselves more often Innovation 10 is a short-form interview series, 10 questions, one guest, about thirty minutes. Subscribe to make sure you catch every new episode! For all booking inquiries shoot us an email at team@innovation10.com 00:00 Intro 00:35 From engineer to commander 02:06 What Inlyte Energy does 04:02 The book that changed it all 07:59 Finding the original inventors 09:39 The naysayer problem 11:44 Hire for integrity 14:17 Changed his mind on AI 16:25 Innovation: innate or learned? 18:10 How Antonio gets good ideas 20:30 Writing beats passive research 21:48 Assessing ideas on merit 23:33 Write down your predictions 26:15 Who inspires Antonio most 28:02 Favorite city: Kailua, Hawaii

About

The Innovation 10 podcast features founders and technology leaders across industries talking about the paths that shaped them, the problems they're solving, and what they believe is coming next. Each episode is ten questions in thirty minutes - tight enough to stay focused, personal enough to get past the rehearsed answers. For listeners who want to understand how the most interesting people in tech and business think and build, without the hour-long runway most interviews need to get there.