Just because you CAN create a product doesn't mean you SHOULD. What Scaling Problems Can You Find In SBIR/STTR Product Commercialization? While small batches may work in the lab, commercializing will require large quantities and unexpected issues from supply chain through chemical reactions may change. The results from these issues may well prove the venture impossible to complete under current conditions.

David Driscoll of Storm Castle joins Cold Star Project host Jason Kanigan to discuss a real life example of struggling with scaling for commercialization. While the concept had been proven to work, making it happen at a scale that would make money turned out to be a dead end.

Jason asks David:

Q: What professional roles have you held? From what context are you speaking to these challenges?
A: Glacigen (Founder), Montana State University (Senior Research Scientist), Storm Castle Technical Products (Current; Founder)

Q: What was Glacigen all about?
A: Commercialization of an advanced manufacturing technique; freeze tape casting. FTC is a hybridization of an industrial processing technique with well-established lab scale technique. It produces large area sheets of materials with highly engineered microstructures. Materials which have been known for a long time can exhibit great performance enhancement with new processing. (Flour, baking soda, eggs, sugar, etc…..could be awful or masterpiece it’s all in the processing. We tend to focus too easily on exotic alloys and entirely new materials (good and valuable), when opportunity is left on the table with respect to using existing ingredients better.

Q: What kind of applications were you looking at?
A: Started all over the board. FTC arrived as a solution looking for a problem. Composites of high temperature materials (hypersonics), solid oxide fuel cell electrodes, catalyst scaffolds, thermal interface materials, actuators….finally battery electrodes. In my eyes, battery electrodes represented the convergence of good technical fit with strong merit, market of relevant scale, and opportunity to address true customer pain point.

Q: Which pain point is that, exactly?
A: Specifically for customers of high performance applications: energy density (without destroying power density). Cost is important even for those with performance applications.

Q: How did you realize commercializing this as a product, rather than having it remain as a lab invention, was important?
A: That was intrinsic, and a primary motivating factor of launching Glacigen. I saw potential for real impact in the FTC process which obviously couldn’t be realized within academia. There was a commitment to commercialization from the outset, but some learning required to understand how that looks.

Q: What steps did you take towards commercialization? What did you learn? (eg. would you start the process earlier?)
A: Early steps were technically focused: scalability, repeatability, application-based proof of concept.

Early strategic steps came after technical work, but work focused on matching applications with strong FTC applicability with customer needs ‘pain points.’ We began working with a company building EV batteries. This led to a great deal of learning that springboarded us towards conversations with larger and more established manufacturers.

Engaging with the customer more intentionally, and much earlier would have been critical. The first level is understanding need, which we did reasonably well. We misidenitfied barriers to adoption, which could have - in retrospect been identified much sooner. Same applies to thinking you understand strength of market pull, pain points, value propositions etc. Those things need to be constantly tested and when necessary, iterated.


USEFUL NOTES:

Storm Castle Technical Products: https://www.stormcastletechnicalproducts.com/

OpEx Society: https://www.opexsociety.org

America's Future Series: https://www.americas-fs.org/

Talk to Cold Star: https://coldstartech.com/talk