Katherine Keddie: So welcome back to Scaling Green Tech with me, Katherine Keddie and Matt Jaworski.
Matt Jaworski: Hello. Hello.
Katherine Keddie: We are here with Dr. Simon Thomas. He is the co-founder and CEO of Paragraf. And we are here today to explore how he's taken his company from a startup all the way to a very substantial series C tech company.
Thank you so much for joining us, Simon.
Simon Thomas: Thank you for the opportunity, Kat and Matt. It's lovely to meet you.
Katherine Keddie: So our first question that we always ask, which I think stumps some people, is how would you describe your technology to a 5-year-old?
Simon Thomas: Wow. To a 5-year-old? Have you ever asked for a 10-year-old before or a five year old?
Paragraf is all about materials. So one material in particular at the moment is called carbon. So we produce massive layers of carbon onto substrates that we can then turn into chips. Carbon's a really interesting element if you like, because if you think about it. You use it in pencil, so it's really soft in certain forms, so you can write with it.
It's in diamonds, so it's really hard in other forms when you think about it. And we're all made of carbon. So it's a really interesting element. So when you use it the way we do in very thin forms, you can make very fast electronics. So for a 5-year-old, this means even better games machines or even better mobile phones as five year olds seem to have mobile phones these days.
So yeah, we're working in a material sphere that's trying to advance electronics so that your 5-year-old can have better games time. I guess
Matt Jaworski: I remember my grandfather explaining to me graphene when I was 10, 12 years old. So some of that rings a bell here. Now what about the adult version of the overview.
Simon Thomas: Sure. So Graphene has been around since 2004. It was isolated in the University of Manchester, and it was the first time that somebody had made a single layer of atom material. When they did that, they realised that when they tested the properties of it, it was the best conductor in the world.
So we had an explosion of experiments and investigations and inventions in labs that showed that graphene, when you put it into electronics, could do amazing things. But all those amazing things couldn't come out of the lab because the graphene itself was very difficult to manufacture, or USP, if you like.
And our invention was the ability to create the graphene directly on a substrate that you could then insert into the manufacturing chain of chips. So it's that core ability to make the graphene that really kicked off Paragraf. Beyond that, we started to invent the ways that you could use the graphene in those chip building systems.
So there's lots of IP in how you actually apply the graphene. There's lots of IP in how you actually get it to work as a device. But essentially, if you boil it down, what we've done is we've put a new material into electronics replacing things like silicon and gallium nitride and compound semiconductors.
And we're using the properties that graphene delivers very high conductivity to create much high performance and much lower energy consuming devices. So really, we are akin to a semiconductor company, but we go all the way from the materials construction through to the end chip. We call it an integrated device manufacturing company, and we just launched our first foundry here in the UK at the end of last year.
And in fact, it's the first graphene foundry in the world.
The "lab to fab" challenge and why graphene commercialisation has stalled
Katherine Keddie: Why has it been so hard to commercialise graphene up until this point?
Simon Thomas: It really goes back to that graphene manufacturing point. Imagine graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms and you want to make a very large area of this.
How do you make a very uniform, large area of single atoms? So the challenge was how do you make that crystalline material across this large area that you can then use in electronics? So that breakthrough of being able to make that really uniform, really high quality graphene was you. You often hear about this challenge of lab to fab, and it's the same for a lot of materials, and it's a really difficult challenge.
Even if you look at silicon going back into the 1950s and sixties, it took a long time before people got really good devices out of it. The same with compound semiconductors in the seventies with indium gallium arsenide. It took a long time for people to understand how to use it properly and create photonics, for example.
Same challenge here. Overcoming that ability to go from the small scale device that you can get PhD students to make into that large scale that everybody wants to buy is a really difficult challenge. Because if you think about it, Paragraf's one of the hardest prospect companies you can think about.
You want to make a new material, you then want to make a device out of it, you then want to scale it. You then have a manufacturing company and then you have a global commercial organisation. So it's got all the challenges. We're not just making one widget. I like to think that we're actually creating a whole new industry.
And so the challenges have been quite big to go through each of those gates, but really we wind it all the way back. It's that invention that happened in Cambridge University that really started it all out.
Katherine Keddie: When you began your journey with this company, did you originally imagine this very kind of complex business with multiple layers of manufacturing capacity?
I think a lot of early stage companies come in with new materials and they say, I'm gonna stick to being a materials innovator. That's what I'm good at. That's what I've built. Did you start there and then grow or did you have this vision from the beginning?
Simon Thomas: That's a really interesting question.
It really goes back to when we spun out of the university. After we first created those layers of graphene, we weren't really thinking about making a company. What we were thinking about was the breakthrough we'd made. University is all around all about creating new knowledge, new innovation, putting it into papers, sharing it with the world.
What we realised though, is that had already happened. There'd been lots and lots of papers written about graphing 'cause it'd been around for 15 years. People had already done that innovative publishing, nature, publishing the science journals. So we looked in and went what are we gonna do with it?
We could of course, publish and show the best quality graphene ever, a new technique. But we started looking at those inventions that people had made and we went if we went a bit further, we could actually start making those really great innovations into things the whole world could use. And so at that point in time, we started to think about what you were saying there about having graphene, but then having devices.
So I, I guess the inception of that idea that we would have a company that wasn't just materials was there to start with, whether we actually thought about how wide it would go, I would say probably not, because once you get to the company level and you've gone through your seed financing and you are able to show the world that you are really, you've done the tech transfer from the university, you then get lots of people asking you to do lots of different things.
And of course internally you have a lot of scientists that have a lot of great ideas as well. So focus becomes, at least in the early years, a really difficult thing to keep. But then you look at the markets, they come in, people start demanding what they want from the graphene, and then you start to go down different commercial avenues.
So it's like a tree, you start with the graphene, which is the trunk, and then it starts to branch out into, oh, we could make this and we could make that. But honestly, no I don't think we did understand just how far it would branch, if you like, over the coming, over the years that came after that invention.
Founding Paragraf and the transition from scientist to CEO
Matt Jaworski: And when you were starting the company having been a scientist, how did you find the switch from being a founder to being an entrepreneur?
Simon Thomas: Actually I was very fortunate because before I joined Sir Colin Humphreys at the university, I spent 12 years in industry. So I worked for a semiconductor equipment supplier, but my role was in material science.
So I'd spent quite some time in the industrial commercial environment. So it's not like I was a PhD or postdoc that just spent out with no experience of the commercial world. So I think it was a little bit different for me than I, I either have a normal spin out but still, it was a challenge, right?
Even when I was working for the equipment company, most of my time was spent in fabs in labs doing technical work. In fact, a lot of it was spent on getting machines to work. So when you turn, if you like your attention away from the technical side into leading the business it is a challenge. It's a mindset change.
You've also gotta remember in the first few years, I was still heavily technically involved in the tech transfer from the university, gaining the first layers to work on the graphene, getting the first devices made. I was still really embedded in that. So it's not one day you're doing tech and the next day you're turning around and you're running a company.
You're actually in a situation where you, if you're lucky, like I was, you start to feather away from it. So it doesn't feel like such a massive impact, but still do miss it though. And I guess you mentioned their mindsets changed. So what exactly was it? There's a few factors that come in. The first one is you've got people's money that you are looking after and they should
Matt Jaworski: Sorry, that is after you raise that money from those people, right?
The mindset shift from technical founder to business leader
Simon Thomas: Yeah. It goes through stages and I think the mindset change of understanding what is a valuable asset yeah. Is probably the first thing that you have to do. And universities are doing really good things on that at the moment with the tech transfer offices, helping people that want to spin businesses out, understand what that business plan means, what the asset means.
And so that first part already starts changing your mind because you're not just thinking about being in the lab in Cambridge University, you think about. How do I convert this into a plan? How do I put this in front of somebody and make them believe I can achieve it? So you get that wind up at the start, but then when you get past the financing, you end up in a situation that is, I went through an experience that was quite interesting.
When we closed our financing round, our first financing round, we went for dinner with all the investors and I invited all of the investors to come. And we had some institutional investors. So we had some VCs, but we also had some people that had put money from their own pocket in. And I remember sitting there at that first dinner going, this person's put money into a company and I'm running.
I started to get those like cold sweats of what if it doesn't work?
This person's just given me some of their life savings. So you go through a kind of worrying period to start with, and then you start to realise that actually they're putting trust in you. Which is a great thing. They may still put some pressure on at a later date to make sure you're moving in the right direction but that first realisation that, this is serious, this is real.
People really believe in what we're doing. They really believe enough to take some of the things that they have, some of their value and put it into our business and into the people. You'll have heard that saying before.
That VCs and angel investors generally don't invest in the idea, they invest in the people.
So when you start to realise that and you start to, okay, we're trusted, we're gonna move forward, then it starts to become a little bit different. But then you start employing people and then all of a sudden you've got a different concern because actually you've got people's livelihoods in your hand. So from day to day, you start to learn how to cope with not worrying too much about their livelihoods, but worrying about whether they're having an exciting time.
Because at least if you can't, if you can't give them a 10 year or 20 year job, what you can do is at least give them some fun to work. Give them a place where actually it doesn't feel like they're working and they're enjoying themselves. So you start to turn from worrying about yourself and the invention and the technology into actually being much more focused on people and what they can deliver and how you can help them.
And then you start to grow the business a bit more and more financing comes in, it becomes more serious. And then you're dealing with a lot more people, investors or more employees. And then you're dealing with customers. And so before you know it, that technical part of your brain is being pushed back by the other stuff because you've got to look after the business.
The fiduciary responsibility as the CEO.
Katherine Keddie: Yeah, I, whenever anyone asks me, when did our business feel like it was real and substantial? Like when did you feel like a business owner or an entrepreneur? I think it was absolutely when we hired our first people, because it's just such a big transition.
Like the business is bigger than yourselves. And then your concerns get greater, but your opportunities get greater, et cetera.
Matt Jaworski: Yeah.
Fundraising stages from seed to Series C
Katherine Keddie: You've hinted a little bit about your fundraising journey, but I'd love to hear a bit more about it. Who did you raise from? When did you raise from them? Have you got any lessons for people listening who are founders looking to raise series A, B, C?
Matt Jaworski: Something that I would be also interested in from the marketing communications angle is how your sort of messaging positioning changed between the rounds to match what investors are looking for.
Simon Thomas: Wow, that's a big one. Generally the financing rounds as the business has grown I generally look at different phases of the company.
It aligns quite well in the growth spurts that you have. Of course it would because the capital injection is what allows you to then to grow further. The seed round, which was our spin out round, if you like. I know there's a lot of companies that have pre-seed rounds now. There's good reason for that. I guess
Matt Jaworski: I heard also in states especially some companies do pre-seed rounds because then it makes their seed and round a rounds sound even more impressive.
Simon Thomas: There, there are multifactors, actually that is one of them definitely. But also the parameters that are being applied to each of those named rounds are different now from what they were 10 years ago. So if you want to raise a series A today. Most investors expect you to have revenues. That wasn't the case.
It used to be series B or series C, you were in the revenue stage. But because of the changes in the financing landscape, particularly from 20 to 24, maybe into 25, the investment landscape became very strange. And so now even early stage investors are looking for revenues as a start. If you're looking at Series A, let's put another round in front of the seed so you've got more time to get to that point.
There were a few other factors as well. But yeah that ability to advertise the massive series A is obviously one. But yes, when we spun out the university from a seed round, the narrative was very much around making the material, having the ability to transfer it from the university into a stable business.
So our narrative was really around that. We could take what was in the business and put it somewhere else. And if you think about it, that's a really big milestone because if we can do that, the value of the material production, the value of those early stages could very easily be realised by somebody else.
We're a university spinner If somebody like Samsung decided to do it. And so the investors see value in that, even if we were to not do so well, there's an asset there that can be. And so the narrative's really around the, your capabilities as the team and the people you bring as your first employees, very fortunate in Cambridge that there's a deep tech investor environment that's so deep.
It's not surprising being around Cambridge University. It's the same in Oxford as well. And of course down here in Imperial though where you've got those experts, they can understand the technology that you are trying to bring to market. And so you have tech funds that can really understand what you're saying.
So our first investor, if you like, or first believer, was a deep tech company in central Cambridge called IQ Capital. When we pitched to them, they were very interested in what we were doing. And that then snowballed into talking to other investors in the Cambridge ecosystem. So our first round was focused around those early stage VCs in Cambridge and in London as well.
You don’t have to travel around the world to find all your investors. You can get on a train and all within a triangle. You could easily do it in a day and then they can all join you for dinner. Yes, they can. Whenever they want.
Katherine Keddie: Bang down your door.
Simon Thomas: Yes. That's the other problem. They're only a car journey away. We have a great relationship with our investors, which is one of the things that's helped us a lot through our journey. Keeping your investors on board, keeping the people that are also carrying your belief out into the outside world as well is a really important factor.
So that first round Drew in Parkwalk Advisors and Amadeus and the university investors as well through Cambridge Enterprise which was great. So the narrative there was about showing capability for us to be able to spin a business out, but in such a way that what we were doing in the university existed outside.
There were a few complications that probably we don't need to talk about today, which are to do with tech transfer offices. I know it's a whole subject that people like to talk about, but I got much better now. But back then it was a bit of a challenge. We then went into our, very rapidly, we went into our series A.
Series A was closed about 18 months after our seed round. And the reason for that is that we managed to do very rapid tech transfer into the. Into the facility we've got. So our messaging then started to become around what's the product we're gonna take to customers. So we wanted to raise that series A round to bring in the talent and the equipment in order to be able to get product at the end of the line that we could put into the first customer's hands.
'cause if you're, if you think about the graphenes, not really a product. It could be, you could be a material seller, but that's at the low end of the value chain. So we wanted to push beyond that. And so we raised some capital, raised about 16 million in capital to bring more equipment in, to bring more people in.
And that was all about having the objective of getting those first MVPs into customer hands. And so it's a very clear story at this point. We've got the graphene, we're gonna do the tech transfer. We've done the tech transfer, we're gonna raise some capital to get some product out. Nice and easy. And so talking to more investors that understood deep tech and most of all of our investors followed on at that point.
And then we brought in some other people, which turned into a widening of what I would call the UK ecosystem investors. So Molten Ventures joined us then, or Draper Spray, as they were at the time that allowed us to get our product into market, take it to our first customer, get it tested, and allow people to understand that what we'd actually done was real.
So I thought, just pause at that point, because you may or may not know Graphene had a really bad reputation. So after it was created in the university, a lot of people put a lot of money into it because they thought we could make all these fantastic things. And a lot of people lost a lot of money.
Overcoming graphene's reputation as overhyped technology
Matt Jaworski: It reminds me of the stories I heard from scientists who are in any way involved with synthetic spider silk, that there was a lot of hype, a lot of money raised, but so far no real world results and it doesn't want to come together.
Simon Thomas: Yeah. We have absolutely, and we have another technology adjacent to that called carbon nano tubes, which actually were invented in the nineties and they are fantastic, but manufacturing them in a way that can incorporate them into chips or electronic technologies is really difficult. Even when you've made them, incorporating them is even more difficult.
You can't use standard equipment sets, which again, comes back to the big USP Paragraf. We can use standard equipment with our graphene and that, that's the breakthrough, if you like.
Simon Thomas: But yeah that, you're absolutely right. Getting past that mindset of we can make chips now and we can. We can have a customer that can tell us whether they're good or not.
Fortunately, they said that we're good. So at that point, it was going through those gates, those early stage gates of product proofing. We then came to our series B round, which turned into a $60 million raise. The reason for that is because we needed to then push on and create not MVP, but a qualified product.
And this is where we started to engage with the world and the world came back to us and said can you do this? Or can you do that instead of the device that you are making? This might be more profitable. And this is where that tree started to grow. And we ended up with some serious decisions to be made on where we wanted to take the product route, where we wanted to take the company.
And that's where the inception of the Foundry model came in. So Paragraf's vision is to bring graphene into the world of electronics so that everybody can use it so everybody can harness the properties. You can't do that if you're selling a single product. You have to be able to offer the underlying technology to create the graphene and to put the graphene into end products.
So that round of 60 million was the start of Paragraf's real vision, which was creating a foundry where people can come to us and say, can you build this for us? So that was a $60 million round. Yes, I'm quoting dollars because we had to get an American lead, which is not unsurprising. The capital landscape in the UK is fantastic, as I've just explained for our first two rounds for early stage innovation, not so great for when you're going to the largest scaling problem, risk appetite is very different.
So we brought in a lead called New Science Ventures. Who basically led that round and all of our investors, again followed on, which was great. Again, that's where I talk about having the great support of the investors. You've got us at those early stages and a couple of other people joined. So we then looked at how we were going to turn Paragraf into not just a Graphene electronics company, but a Graphene Electronics Foundry company.
So that's when we acquired our, at least the building for our first foundry, which is in Huntingdon now. Went through a lot of processes of getting that sorted, getting the equipment into that second site. And in that, at that point in time, we also then went through a process of acquiring a US company.
There's not much graphene expertise in the world. There was a company in the US that had a lot of expertise and we thought this was an opportunity.
And they had an adjacent technology to us and they had some IP.
They just didn't have the way to make the graphene like we did. We had that advantage and we bought that company and expanded into San Diego.
That was a quite difficult time for very different reasons because we're scaling something that really is difficult to scale in the uk. There isn't really the infrastructure or the landscape or the talent to be able to do that easily, which then led into our series C round. So our series C round, which we closed last year, was another $55 million that was led by Mubadala who are Emarati. We're looking now at how we roll out that foundry model.
So we have a manufacturing site here,in the uk. We've just opened up a subsidiary in Shanghai. We're opening a subsidiary in Abu Dhabi. And so we're going global now. So this raise was all about getting our product to a high yield in a foundry. But also expanding Paragraf’s reach around the world, customer base and also partner base as well.
You don't have a foundry without partners. You can't just have a customer that goes, I want that. You have to work together with them and say how would you want it? How would you like it made? What's your end goal? And so that's what we're doing right now. And our first, I'm very happy to say we closed our financing round last year and we also got our first wafers through the foundry in December.
So we have true proof that you can make commercial scale graphene electronic devices, which has been the journey for the past eight years.
Katherine Keddie: Amazing. Congratulations.
Simon Thomas: Thank you. Thank you. It's been exciting, stressful, and interesting. And highly challenging for a few years, but to see what we get out the far end, that's the real goal.
Katherine Keddie: A lot of people said it couldn't be done. When you were speaking to those investors at each stage, do you think that the challenge of previous failed technologies and people being burnt, lessened as you grew more traction? Or even at your series C around you still getting people going, graphene doesn't work, it doesn't work at scale.
It's got this bad reputation. We've seen this as overhyped technology innovation.
Simon Thomas: No, absolutely. We've had the same challenge all the way through our financing rooms. Graphene has got a black mark against it. I think that's being carbon. I don't think you'd say a black mark.
So maybe it's got a red mark against it.
The belief that you can actually make things from it, not just the graphene itself, but you can actually make something from It was the real challenge. Over $2 billion was put into creating graphene by Samsung, and so when you look at that statistic, and there's a couple of other companies that spent billions as well, and then put on top of that, all the investment that went into graphene.
I understand why there is inertia, but we've always believed what we can do. We've seen what we can create as we go through each stage, and they are growth stages. The tech transfer was small. Going into our first device was small. Going into the foundry now, we're going to a larger scale. We've been fortunate with the investors that we've had.
We've been fortunate that they've understood our technology and our belief and our vision and the purpose of the company. To carry us through that path. However, what happened in December was the big trigger: getting six inch wafers of graphene devices through a full semiconductor line without any problems on the semiconductor line, and actually getting our first wafers yielding devices, which is almost near impossible, has changed that narrative overnight.
I now have investors approaching me continually. So I'm going into a series D round in the not too distant future, but it's a very different series D round. Instead of me having to really push the narrative, I have people knocking down the door and it's that crooks point, that point of showing it works.
That's been critical. It's taken $150 million to get it to the point where it works. But if you compare that to other semiconductor companies, that's nothing. So it's a new era for us now. It's a very exciting era. I'm not sure I can retire yet, but
Katherine Keddie: Just getting excited.
Matt Jaworski: Yeah. Why retire now? If that's what you've been waiting for.
Simon Thomas: No, it's there is still a lot of journey to to be run
Energy efficiency of graphene versus silicon in computing
Katherine Keddie: So I would love to hear more about what the applications of your technology are. Like what does it mean for everyday people, health-wise, climate wise talk about quantum, talk about ai. Tell us what that looks like.
Simon Thomas: Yeah, it's very exciting.
That hurdle I talked about putting graphene into devices is opening Pandora's box.
And the reason for that is the graphene material itself has got so many wonderful properties. That it can be integrated into so many different areas and give a performance advantage. So to just give you the underlying kind of parameters, graphene is about 150 times more conductive than silicon, which means you can have 150 times more.
The performance, if you can get it, it's perfect state, but also it uses a thousand times less power. So if you imagine today data centres are the big red flashing light that's going on around the world because of the amount of energy that they're using. The statistics are horrifying. I think it was in 2020 global data centres used more energy than the whole of the uk.
That was in 2020. Imagine what it is now. That was when data centres were just kicking off and we didn't really have all the AI stuff that we've got there. In fact, I think another statistic was that Bitcoin mining in 2020 used more energy than the whole of Argentina. So you can see the demands on computing tech.
If we could get graphene into those types of devices, into logic, into chips, into memory, the parameter that I talked about before of a thousand times less energy that we've actually proven in some of our devices will exist in whatever device you put it into. So 20% of the world's energy is being used by computing right now, less than 2% if everything was made of graphene, that's the impact we could have. Adoption of the material is the critical parameter. Going beyond that, graphene has properties that are more than just being able to create faster or higher performance or lower power devices because of the way in which the structure of graphene works.
You can also create devices that have been speculated for many years. One of them I've got in my pocket here. I don't know whether it'll show.
Matt Jaworski: Oh, I was wondering if you'll bring something to show us.
Simon Thomas: I humour. I did, but I carry it in my pocket all the time.
Katherine Keddie: Hold it up to the camera.
Simon Thomas: I forgot to bring a wafer.
In the centre of that black.is a graphene chip.
The rest of the PCB is meaningless, by the way. It's just so you can hold it and plug in. But right in the centre is a graphene chip. That graphene chip is set up to detect potassium in blood. So today if you want to have a potassium test, you have to go to a clinic, you have to withdraw blood, it has to get transported to a lab.
So generally everything is done in labs. Same for other tests. I'm sure you've been to doctors and clinics and hospitals and had blood taken before and it gets sent off to a lab and you get results later on in time. Depending on how critically ill you could be. That device allows you to put a drop of blood on it to detect potassium in 20 seconds.
So it's taking all of that chain of whether it's you needing to give two valves of blood, which is not nice, being transported from the clinic or the hospital to the lab. All the lab time and energy it takes to do that. It is then the computing power required to get all of the information back to you and then you understand the results, probably even involving a doctor to explain it to you.
That allows you to put a drop of blood on it in the computer, says yes or no, or whatever level it is or so that type of device can fundamentally change how we do healthcare forever. If you can have devices like that, you can monitor your health continually. You don't need doctors, you don't need to go to hospital unless you've got something serious.
That's what graphene can do, and that's just one simple example. So we're going through a process that's one of our main products at the moment. We're going through a process now, getting that out into the world. But if you think about it, it's not just about testing medical diagnostics, making sure everyone's healthy, you can put it into wearables so you're monitoring your health every day.
So it's about wellness as well. But we talked before about PFAS. So PFAS is a really big problem in the world right now. They're forever chemicals as people call them. They're very difficult to detect. If you can't detect them, you can't do anything about it. It can detect PFAS. So it's gonna impact in all different industries, in all different spheres of life and fundamentally change how we live.
And the only thing doing that, a layer of carbon atoms. So it is quite astonishing what you can do with material science. Crazy.
Prioritising markets when the application range is wide
Katherine Keddie: I think the range of applications of your technology is just quite mind blowing really. How when you are approaching the market, are you prioritising what to work on?
Because now you've opened Pandora's box of different application opportunities. How do you decide which is the right market for you?
Simon Thomas: I'd like to say we flip a coin, but.
It's a difficult one, honestly. It really is. And you, there's an extra kind of dimension to that, which is even when you have graphene and you have a product, there is still the reticence to adopt that product because there's never been a product like it before. So qualification and certification by companies that what you are making works is a real challenge as well.
It's not as simple as just saying, oh, that opportunity is great, we're gonna go straight after that. That could be, for example, with medical diagnostics, a five year FDA cycle. That's not really what Paragraf wants to do. Wait for five years to see if something's gonna be qualified.
So there's a lot of, if you like, overlapping circles in a Venn diagram that kind of point you towards.
What should we do, what's valuable right now? What's near term valuable? What's valuable for the future, what can make the biggest impact? What's got the biggest benefit to the world? All of these things get thrown into a bucket and then we. We go into a boxing ring and have a fight
Katherine Keddie: Arm wrestle.
Matt Jaworski: Should play darts.
Simon Thomas: Yeah, I think the one that everyone's doing at the moment is Mario karts. Everyone, whoever wins Mario Karts gets to pick Yes.
We can make Mario karts faster with faster computers.
Katherine Keddie: Goes all the way back to the description for the five year-old.
Simon Thomas: Exactly. Exactly. But it is, you're right.
It's the most difficult challenge of a business that's got such a horizon of opportunities in front. How do you really understand what's best for now and what's best for the future? And we still have that challenge now. But really, there's an anecdotal example here. We also make magnetic sensors.
We started to put 'em into the automotive industry and the first question that we were asked was. Sorry, can we have the 10 year data sheet for the performance? Please? We only made these two years ago. How would you provide a 10 year performance qualification data sheet for something that's only two years old?
And they're the challenges we go through. Again, in the medical industry. Is this material appropriate for being near somebody's body, for example? I hope it is because there's a very good company called INBRAIN at the moment. They're putting graphene into people's brains, so I'm assuming it's good. Yeah. It's a challenge. And we'll hopefully pick the right horses.
Katherine Keddie: Watch this space.
Matt Jaworski: What do you think about those more, let's say visionary, almost sci-fi let's call it visions for graphene that came into sort of public light 10 years ago when there were some breakthroughs in space.
Like I remember reading some popular scientific newspaper as a teenager, and there was like an aeroplane made out of graphene concept that would be like, transparent. You could see everything that you're flying through. See, I don't think passengers would really like to do that on a normal commercial flight.
But there were all sorts of those ideas. Do you think that there's still something that someone could imagine would happen or. Too far into sci-fi territory?
Simon Thomas: I've gotta ask a question. So when you were younger, were you reading a, were you reading a scientific journal or were you reading Wonder Woman? She had an invisible plane.
Wonder Woman had an invisible plane. So I was wondering when it was the DC comic you were reading.
Matt Jaworski: No, it absolutely wasn't. It was called Science and Life I think. So it wasn't like Nature. It was a Polish thing that was gathering the latest scientific discoveries and then packaging them into a two page sort of article with some visualisations, something that was appropriate for a teenager and inspired a lot of stuff that we're doing now.
Simon Thomas: I think this is the wonderful thing about the human brain is that we have this incredible ability to. To imagine what could be possible. Unfortunately, science in the real world gets in the way of that.
Matt Jaworski: Yeah.
Katherine Keddie: 10 year data sheet gets in the way of that.
Simon Thomas: Exactly. Exactly.
Matt Jaworski: This would be like a hundred year data sheet I think.
Simon Thomas: Graphene has some incredible opportunities. If I step outside of our sphere for a second, which is into the area, you were talking about materials for what I would call mechanical applications.
There's lots of companies making mechanical composites, lots of companies making additives into materials that will achieve some of the things that you read about.
I believe that graphene will be in a lot of composite materials in the future because it's electrically conductive. The idea for the aeroplanes , by the way is, all around, can you make very lightweight airframes?. But also graphene is conductive, so it's very good. Should you be flying three night lightning storms, for example, discharging energy?
Matt Jaworski: Yeah,
Simon Thomas: So there is science-based in the sci-fi there.
Matt Jaworski: Yeah. But it's not gonna be like all graphing aeroplanes or none of that stuff.
Simon Thomas: No, unfortunately not. Not in our lifetime anyway.
Katherine Keddie: Yeah.
Matt Jaworski: That would be a big wafer to make.
Simon Thomas: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. But there are a lot of things that are considered sci-fi now, and if you go back in the years when people were using vacuum tubes as diodes, did people ever think about having silicon transistors and chips?
Probably not.
But it's the same today. That device, if I take this device as an example, solid state interaction with biological agents in a chip has been theorised since the eighties. People try to make it out of silicon, but the materials just weren't available. People have tried to since, tried to make it out of compound semi conduct.
Graphene bridges that gap of saying yes, you can make it, but there's a material that's good enough for it to function properly. And so that was sci-fi. You might remember back a term called Lab on a chip, maybe not, maybe I'm a bit older. But this way you would put a sample onto a chip and it would have the ability to tell you what was wrong with you.
Matt Jaworski: Yeah. Like a doctor in your pocket sort of a thing
Simon Thomas: Exactly. Exactly. And that's what people have been speculating about. Could we have something, even if it's something simple, like you've got a chip that can tell you whether you've got a virus or a bacterial infection, because if it's a virus, don't go to hospital.
If it's bacteria, get to the hospital quite quickly.
But those types of. Tests are normally done in a lab. So the lab on the chip, that's what this is about to open up because that's testing for one thing. But if we line a load of chips together and they're all testing for different things, then you've essentially got that capability and that was sci-fi and now it's becoming real.
But to go back to the point about the different applications for graphene in, let's call 'em Extraordinary spaces. I was contacted in the early days of Paragraf when we put out some press releases about the Wafer scale graphene. I was contacted by a company that makes briefcases and they said to me, can you make a Graphene briefcase for me, please?
And we said, it's not really what we do. Can I ask why?
Katherine Keddie: Yeah.
Simon Thomas: And they said we know that graphene is bulletproof. If we put something in a graphene briefcase and we're transporting things around the world, I didn't ask what their business was, then we can have bulletproof briefcases. And that's one of the things that's come out with graphene over the years.
If you remember those early publications, there's a picture of a bullet and graphene stopping the bullet. It's not true. It's not true at all, but it made people think it was true.
And so we've been down a few of those routes. I've had a few very strange requests for where we can use graphene.
But I think that's our job as scientists and engineers actually. And that's what I truly believe in. We are supposed to be pushing to turn sci-fi into the real world. And this is another step forward
Climate applications including batteries, solar cells, and EV technology
Katherine Keddie: In terms of the climate angle on your work, obviously your work is. Substantially more energy efficient.
That's the foundational piece. But in terms of climate tech, there's lots of potential applications as well where I'm sure graphene could have a huge impact. So thinking of EVs, for example, what are your thoughts on that in terms of that kind of wider market?
Simon Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. So the firstpoint I'll go back to is the energy efficiency of the material.
So anywhere you can put that material, you are gonna have that energy efficiency. And so maybe I can make a comparison to that today. There is a type of sensor called the Hall effect sensor. It's a magnetic field sensor, and there's about 8 billion of them sold every year.
They go into mundane things. They go into laptops to show you the position and sensing of your laptop. They go into cars to monitor your rotational speed of the wheel. So to give you your velocity, if you could take a single horse sensor and make it out of graphene, you would reduce its power.
Power by about tenfold doesn't mean much because they're only using milliamps. So then you are using 10 times smaller. But if it happens for 8 billion sensors, you can shut the power station, and that's just one single sensor, a magnetic sensor. So the possibilities are huge just from reducing power.
If we flip it the other way around, which I'm guessing where your question was coming from, there are companies now making graphene based batteries.
Because the power density and energy density is so much higher. So we're able to transport energy a lot more efficiently, which means that we're not having the power losses that we had before.
We're not having the energy losses we had before. There are also people putting graphene now into batteries for next Gen EV batteries where you're getting higher efficiencies. So there's a whole host of different areas where we can see graphene coming in to not just lower energy, but make everything more energy efficient.
And I think that's probably one of the biggest impacts graphene is gonna have in the world. It will certainly in device form change how industries work, but it will also have a huge impact on how energy is thought about in the world. We are working on next gen solar cells using graphene. Probably some, something I shouldn't talk about at the moment, but.
But they are photonic absorbers at certain frequencies. So you're talking about material that at the moment we worry about carbon dioxide going into the environment is a really big problem.
Graphene is using carbon to solve those energy problems. So it's a, it is a really exciting material, really exciting technology and it won't not be done by Paragraf.
We're opening the door to hopefully having other people use the same types of technology and hopefully we can build an ecosystem and a community around the world that can really harness that power and that capability.
Katherine Keddie: So you said you're creating the market.
Simon Thomas: Yeah. Trying to,
Commercial strategy and identifying early adopter customers
Katherine Keddie: Yeah. Exciting. Let's talk a bit about the commercial side of your business. I think it's been really fascinating to hear about the journey and the innovation journey that's brought you here looking forward. How are you building your commercial strategy? How are you getting customers? Who are those customers? What does that look like for you?
Simon Thomas: Yeah that's our, if you like, that's our challenge now. That's what we're going through in the immediacy. In fact, I had a very long commercial strategy meeting yesterday.
Katherine Keddie: Perfect. Just ready for this question.
Simon Thomas: Exactly. I knew it was coming actually. It's about finding those, what I would call early adopters, that are large enough to be of interest for us to create a volume product, but also agile enough to be able to bring the product to market that they're using fast enough.
So a lot of our effort goes into identifying not just the technology that people want. The types of companies that we can work with. You can't go to some of the really large corporations without you having to go to a department that then needs to make decisions and then needs to put budgets into things.
Before you know it, you end up with a really long qualification chain. You end up with a really long purchasing chain as well. So our thoughts are really around who are those innovative companies? I don't mean we, we work with a lot of startups and a lot of r and d facilities, but what I really mean is those mid-level companies that are looking to overtake those top level companies.
So you can go to 'em and say, if you adopt our tech, you can get to where they are and circumnavigate 'em. And that's our real strategy really. How do we entice people to take that risk of using our technology? We don't see it as a risk. They of course do because they have to qualify a whole new material.
Again, that wasmentioned before. So most of our commercial efforts focus on where can customers use our graphene, but where can we use that graphene with customers? That gets us to market quick, gets us getting revenues quick because as you may have worked out, my next financing round is gonna be very much about revenues.
There are a lot of technology companies right now looking for new solutions. The world is a very strange technology landscape at the moment. There's a lot of focus on AI and quantum. There's a lot of focus on new diagnostics, but a lot of the other technologies are getting left behind and people are seeing opportunity.
So as I was talking about with the magnetic sensor there, you can't go to an automotive company and say, oh, if you replace all your sensors, you're gonna save this much energy. What you need to do is go to the tier one and say you want to embed our sensors into your. Systems that are gonna go into the automotive market, which means you can offer advantage to that automotive customer.
So we have to position ourselves in the supply chain as well. We have to make sure we're not just talking to end customers that want to use graphene. We're talking to the partners that are gonna deliver the subsystems that are going to go into those end customers. It's quite a complicated landscape.
Most of the time they shouldn't really say this, but most of the time the customers that are becoming big customers come out of left field. But that also highlights how much you need to advertise your company and what you are doing and how you need to get product marketing out there, because it's not always the people you target that jump first, but people that have been adjacent and watching them move first.
So there's a lot of time that goes into product marketing strategy. There's a lot of time that goes into corporate levels, marketing, so I do a lot of events just to get Paragraf known. I carry around things in my pocket so people get excited.
Matt Jaworski:I was going to ask actually, was it like specifically for today or do you just have it in, in the pocket of your every suit?
Simon Thomas: I have different things in different pockets of suit, so I'm not quite
sure what I'm gonna pull out at any one point in time.
Katherine Keddie: I looked at something else the last time we saw each other.
Simon Thomas: I should have brought the wafer with me today. Unfortunately the wafers we have now are highly valuable.
So when I talk to my operations team, they don't want me taking it out of the building.
Katherine Keddie: Yeah. It’d just fall out your pocket
Matt Jaworski: Unless you carry them in their bulletproof graphene briefcase.
Simon Thomas: Now there's an idea. I'm gonna have to start working.
Matt Jaworski: Cut. We cannot talk about the bulletproof briefcase. It's not a real thing, guys.
Simon Thomas: Yeah. I'm gonna have to start working on that now. We have a use for it ourselves.
Marketing a deep tech product when the market does not yet exist
Katherine Keddie: So commercial is I guess something that is becoming much more of a focus for you before the next funding round. On the marketing front, you said you do corporate, you do product marketing. What does that look like for you and how has that created a positive outcome?
Simon Thomas: There's a common factor between those two, whether it's corporate or product or marcoms, even internal marketing.
There's a common theme that runs through all of them, which goes back to the graphene challenge, which is getting people to understand what graphene is and what it can do. So if we take it from the corporate side, when I go and talk about Paragraf, most of the questions I get. Not usually from the audience that they usually happen afterwards.
What's the graphic gonna do? How does the technology work? Is it real? I invested in this and it didn't work.
Matt Jaworski: Is it real this time? I heard it five times.
Simon Thomas: Exactly. Exactly. So it's educating people on the graph. So you then go to the product marketing where you're talking to customers, you're talking to potential partners.
The questions are the same. Does it really work? We've tried this before.
What are the properties that graphene delivers? And then you move into the general marks of things and you're talking to, whether it's to magazines or whether it's to general outreach. You get the same question. Is this graphene going to work?
And even when I'm talking to technical marketing publications now. The conversation will finish and the article's ready to go, and I will still get the same question. Does this graphene really work now? Okay. And so there's a narrative that underpins every bit of marketing that we do. And even internally, if you think the commercial team goes out to the customers, our staff still want to know that the customers believe that the graphene works.
So it's the same question, just in a different order. That's something that we've had to cope with and understand and actually spend time, energy, and money on to get over not just one hump, but several humps in all of those marketing spheres. We're almost there. I would say. We have customers that come to us now asking for us to do things.
As opposed to asking what graphene does.
Katherine Keddie: Yeah.
Simon Thomas: I go to corporate events now where people will come to me before I've done my talking, oh, I've seen the P graph. You're doing graphene and you're doing it on wafer. So there's been a. A cycle we've had to go through, if you like. But once you've gone through it, you start to get to a world where you're not talking about what graphene is anymore.
You're talking about what Paragraf's going to do, you're talking about what the product's going to do. You're talking about the applications to a technical forum of what things are gonna happen. And the staff are going, we've got customers, so we don't need to ask whether they understand it or not.
And so that's been the real challenge in the marketing sphere, if you like, for us, making sure the world understands what we're doing and making sure they understand that no, this is not another graphene that is, you can put money into or buy into, you're just gonna throw in the bin.
Katherine Keddie: Yeah. It's a common pattern that we see across all of the businesses that we work with too. The transition between being early stage and discussing the technology and the innovation, and then moving into just talking about customer problems and how you fit and how you solve those problems.
I think it's just a sign of commercial maturity and growth.
And like I say, very common with deep tech companies that we work with. Do you find that often when people are coming to you, they're coming to you having followed your work throughout the period, or you are meeting new people now that are hearing of you because of this more recent breakthrough?
Simon Thomas: It's definitely the former. It's rare for us to have a direct outreach. That doesn't know Paragraf already or hasn't known of Paragrafs technology before that. That's becoming very rare now. Most of the inbound that we have from customers, they will actually say just what you said. Oh, we've been looking at you for a couple of years and
Matt Jaworski: We've been thinking about graphene.
We've been wondering, and now with those breakthroughs, we just couldn't resist getting in touch.
Simon Thomas: Exactly. I need to make a see-through aeroplane.
Matt Jaworski: And if possible, the briefcase.
Simon Thomas: Exactly. Exactly. So yeah it's definitely a situation now where the world knows that we're doing something. We do get the odd communication of, we've seen you in this location, or you've, we've seen you doing this.
Can we have an opening discussion to see what it's all about? But it's very rarerly, what's this graphene stuff anymore? It's nice to see that the energy that's gone into that is now paying dividends.
Because it's taken seven years. But there's also, I, the point you were making about deep tech adoption, you've also gotta remember that as much as we like to think we can embrace change, the human mind doesn't naturally embrace change.
So even when you are working in an high tech industry, you know the saying, right? No one ever got fired for buying from IBM. We don't like to change. And so that's the deep tech challenge. Half the time, getting people to change their thinking, getting them to change their mind and go, oh, actually that might be good.
And that's been a big part of our journey for the past few years.
Katherine Keddie: Identifying the champions that will bring you in internally,
Matt Jaworski: And again, it goes back to the concept of early adopters and those companies that see it as their competitive advantage over the incumbents.
Simon Thomas: Yeah. That's a really good point.
If you can invigorate somebody that sees that they can use your tech to get ahead on some, beyond somebody else's tech. They are the kind of goldmine customers
Matt Jaworski: And again, they will have a bigger risk appetite.
Simon Thomas: Yeah, absolutely.
Katherine Keddie: Yeah. We always discuss with our customers, when you're identifying the champion what is in it for them?
What are you selling to them? It might be their promotion, it might be the company's one up on a competitor in some area. It might be a specific company policy that's been publicly announced. So finding what that value point is for the individual and then using that person to help you reach into the company more generally and be introduced in a warm introduction is invaluable.
Simon Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. We when we approach companies, we look at it as three different levels, right? So you have the person that's going to do business development coming and finding out about your company, and quite often can hand cards internally and say, oh yeah, I went to a, I went to an event and I found Paragraf, and would this be interesting?
Then the next level is the tech champion like you're talking about, which is the person that really gets what you're doing will go to his colleagues and go,
Matt Jaworski: This could go,
Simon Thomas: this could work really well. And then the next level from that is the person with buying power. And so if you can get in as those three points, I'm not saying you should do it for every company, 'cause you can annoy companies by doing it too early or too late.
But having those three champions, if you like, the business development person wants to make their sales bonus. So if they can bring you in, they will. The tech person wants to know they've invented something new and created something where they are. And of course the buyer wants to make sure that the top line of the company is, or the decision maker I should say, wants to make sure the top line of the company is good and they get the reward for that.
So we always try to look at how we get into certain companies in those three different channels takes a lot of time. And again, in the early days, it meant we had to explain graphene at three different levels.
Matt Jaworski: What you describe, I feel like it's one of those most satisfying things that you can see on some marketing analytics tools when you're tracking, for example, what company servicing websites.
And that, okay, you had an event, someone came in through an event related resource from company or targeting. Then a few days later, another person, then three people at the same time. Then someone from the city in which there is the head office, and then someone from the big US office coming through a link through referral from internal Microsoft teams platform.
And then you know that, okay, you seem to be progressing somewhere in that company, maybe you should reach out again or maybe they will reach out to you.
Simon Thomas: Yeah. It's monitoring that traction level.
Matt Jaworski: Exactly.
Simon Thomas: And that's really important. And also then going back and looking at, how you achieved that traction level?
How did you actually make that happen? Because a lot of the time it's, what did you actually say to that person that was at that event or that was at that industrial forum? What words did you use? How did you portray what we were doing to get them to go back and talk to somebody?
Simon Thomas: It's an art, really. Commercial is an art. It's one of the most difficult parts to do, particularly in a deep tech field.
Geographic differences in sales and investor culture across UK, US, and Asia
Katherine Keddie: So you are also marketing across different geographies and particularly, let's take the UK and the US. There's been a huge change in administration in the US. How does your marketing strategy differ between the geographies in which you work?
Simon Thomas: We have an entity in San Diego, and we have US staff in the office.
It's an interesting question because a lot of people assume that the culture between the UK and the US is very similar. We speak the same language, but actually the cultures are very different. We don't sell a lot in the uk so marketing is not really targeted that much at UK customers. In fact, it's mainly targeted at Asia.
Where there are very specific marketing approaches and approaches to the different levels within companies that you have to apply. Japan is very structured. China, you need to get in with some of the local administration to, to make headway there. Taiwan is very straightforward. So marketing towards the east, if you like.
If I could take the question that way. Is really targeted specifically at countries whether we want to be very technical and usually it is in all of those countries. Very technical communication, very application orientated communication, very kind of immediate downstream talk of what we would do together.
The US is different. In the US you have to be very strong-willed. You have to be knocking down the doors. You have to be willing to pick up the phone. And that's a challenge for UK people picking up the phone and just speaking to somebody.
Matt Jaworski: I remember we had some conversation about that when we just started business with myself being Polish.
Simon Thomas: As British as they get it, it is a challenge because, and that's the cultural difference. If you are in the US, If I ask one of our staff in the US, oh, can you talk to this company? They'll go, yeah, just gimme a few minutes. I'll pick up the phone. They'll have a chat and they'll come back with the answer.
In the UK we'll send an email.
So you, the US communications, the US kind of marketing and strategy for the product is very much around making sure you have good dialogue, you have good conversation, you are very upbeat about what it is you're doing.
Not technically upbeat, but upbeat about this is what we can do together, this is how we can work together.
That wouldn't work in Japan. Japan, you have to have all the tech sheets, all the spec sheets, and. So there's a very different cultural alignment on product marketing. Now, if we're talking investment marketing, then that's different as well. So you have to have a big vision, big picture. When you're in the US you have to be able to commit to what you're doing, and people have to feel that you are committed.
They have to see it in your face. They have to see it in your eyes. They have to believe with you that you're going to do it in the uk. Nice business plan, nice hockey curve, nice set of statistics that you're gonna achieve. Here's our objectives. It's much more formal.
I'm not saying one is better than the other, but that's just, you've got to be able to communicate in those two different ways.
Because as I mentioned before, when you go from innovation capital, the early stages into the later growth capital, you're gonna have to be able to talk on both sides of the pond, or you're not gonna get there. So it takes a while to get used to a lot of psyching yourself up before you talk to an American investor.
And the other big thing, and maybe I shouldn't say this, but you get less time to talk when you're talking to an American investor than you do with a UK investor.
Matt Jaworski: Okay. So it has to be this very hyped up, like test of belief and communicating that belief rather than a deeper discussion and a debate on the topic.
Simon Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. The elevator pitch is a US thing. Three minutes, tell me what it is, get it all into that nice package and I understand what you're doing. I remember when we started Paragraf, people were talking about can you do an elevator pitch? And so you spend some time putting an elevator pitch together.
Not a single one of our first investors asked me for an elevator pitch. They wanted to get to know more about it. They wanted me to sit down and talk them through it. But when I've talked to American investors, US investors, then the elevator pitch is a really big thing.
Katherine Keddie: Yeah. They're like, are you worth more time?
Simon Thomas: Exactly.
Katherine Keddie: Than three minutes.
Simon Thomas: Exactly.
Katherine Keddie: I'm so sad to say that we're coming to the end of our time. It's such a shame 'cause it's such an interesting conversation. But before we finish do you have any shout outs for our audience? Where can people find you? Leave us with a message about Paragraf.
Simon Thomas: Sure. So I've talked about growing an ecosystem around graphene, about how we've had to educate the world. The big goal for me is to find partners that have got innovations that they believe graphene can help in. So electronics are mainly for us 'cause that's our fit. So if you've got any ideas about how you might want to bring graphene into photonics, into electronics, into diagnostics, or if you'd even like to just take a look at what we're doing and get a better idea, go to our website.
The products are there for you to look at, we even have data sheets now but we are really looking to expand the whole benefits that graphene brings to the world. And that's not just about having one target customer or one corporate customer. It's about spreading what graphene can do throughout the ecosystem, throughout the community.
So please come and visit us. Come and have a look at our website. In fact, if you want to come and visit us, we're an open door. We love to bring people around and show what could be the potential future using new materials
Matt Jaworski: idea for a company day away.
Simon Thomas: Please come. Our team would love it.
Katherine Keddie: Yeah, absolutely.
Okay. Thank you so much for your time, for your insight. This has been great. And thank you Matt.
Matt Jaworski: Thank you very much Kat
Simon Thomas: Thank you both. I really appreciate it.
Katherine Keddie: Okay. We're done enough, thank yous. Now I think we can catch everyone else on the next episode of Scaling Green Tech.
Goodbye.
Matt Jaworski: Bye bye.
