Green Giants – Episode 82

Wes Ashworth (03:49)

Yeah, what a cool story. Also, getting started really early on how you kind of got pulled into it and really found that passion there. And I agree, like electrification is so cool because it solves so many problems and some of those things that we don’t even really think of. But awesome journey. I love that you’ve stayed with it. Obviously, you’re one of the originals, right?

Joe Adiletta (04:08)

There’s certainly an A123 mafia that runs around, in those days, right? There weren’t a lot of US battery interests, right? So, the people who’ve been, A123, I think started right around 2000 or 2001, something like that. I joined in 2006. So, the people 20 years ago, 25 years ago in the US who started doing batteries. I mean, that’s like the foundation of battery expertise here in the US now. So, it’s great to see. I mean, batteries in general are like super, super technically interesting. And that’s kind of, you asked like what keeps you here, right?

There’s always another layer. I’m not an electrochemist, I’m not a PhD battery scientist, but there’s always something else to learn. And then you’ve got sort of like the high value that it has and the vision of electrification and what it can do to just transform everything that you’re seeing today. From cell phones to cars to really the future of warfare that you see happening over in Europe.

Wes Ashworth (05:03)

Yeah, so through your career, obviously, we talked about it. You’ve been in it from really early on and worked and are working through the rise, fall, rebirth of clean tech in the United States. How do those early cycles really shape how you now lead and build companies?

Joe Adiletta (05:18)

Yeah, great, great question. There are two things that really stand out to me. I think the first is what you just referenced, which is sort of the rise and the fall. This happens at the macro, but also at the micro level, right? Startups are hard. It’s a roller coaster. So, one of the things you kind of have to take away is you’ve got to set your course. You’ve got to stick to the course. And you’ve got to do your best not to be blown off course and sort of imbue your employees with that same philosophy. Which is, we know where we’re going. It’s going to be hard. Don’t get too excited. Don’t get too depressed. But just kind of keep going. I think that’s the first point.

The second, I would say, capital planning is hard. Especially in not just batteries. But like hard tech more broadly. it’s hard to build things. And that’s true both on the fundraising side and on the business forecasting side. So hard to plan, hard to raise money, hard to raise money today, was hard to raise money back then. But forecasting in new spaces is also really difficult.

Everything takes twice as long as you think and costs twice as much as the general gist. So, you’ve got to try to be as conservative as you can when you plan these things.

Wes Ashworth (06:29)

Yeah. And maybe you just shared it there, but I am curious. Thinking about a founder that’s entering the space today and they’re the early, early Joe just getting started. What’s an important lesson that maybe the industry has taught you that every new founder today should understand?

Joe Adiletta (06:51)

Yeah, great. Another great question. a wise man once told me that in batteries, you can do anything with 10 years and a billion dollars. So, I think when early-stage founders like myself look at it, if that’s the prior operating model, you gotta try to conceive of a way to not do that really. The space isn’t ripe for that kind of battery timeline and capital outlay today.

So, in batteries in particular, I think that’s what you have to keep in mind. I think more broadly in hard tech, the same type of thing applies, which is gotta get to market, gotta be capital efficient. And there’s really pressure today to do it quickly.

Wes Ashworth (07:29)

Yeah, absolutely. Good advice there. And I love kind of just starting with the bit of your story and some of the lessons learned there. I do want to get into now just what Volexion is doing differently. The company’s graphing coding approach has been getting serious attention lately, including global sample shipments announced this summer. But for listeners hearing about Volexion for the first time, how do you explain what the company does and why it matters?

Joe Adiletta (07:51)

Yeah, so let me, I’m going to start a little anecdote before I really dive into the technical aspect of it. was, it was at two investor conferences over the last month, one in Canada, one in Spain. And I stood up quick pitch session. It’s like six minutes. You get to pitch your stuff. And I was talking with my wife about it beforehand. And I was telling her, explaining how I’m going to pitch it, what we do. It’s just like, dude, you can’t do that. I was like, you can’t do what I don’t understand. And she’s like, you can’t say cathode active material. And I was like, what do you mean you can’t say it?

So sure enough, I asked the audience at these forums, who knows what cathode active material is? And room for 200 people, think I got five hands. So, from your audience’s perspective, let me start with that, right? Which is to say, everybody can pick up a consumer alkaline battery, a Duracell, and an Energizer. You got the pointy end; you got the flat end. The pointy end is the positive side; the flat ends are the negative side. Each of those sides has a very bespoke powder that does the heavy lifting inside of the battery from the electrochemistry side, right? The positive side, the cathode side, the cathode active material is that powder.

So, we deal specifically with that powder. And we do two things really as a company. The first thing we do is make a low-cost, high-performance graphene material. And that’s important because historically you’ve only been able to get one of two things, either a low-cost, low-performance material or a high-cost, high-performance material, neither of which is okay in a battery.

So, the first thing we do is we make that material. The second thing we do is we take those individual particles and we wrap them in a very, very thin coating of graphene. I mean, you’re talking about 10 to 10s of nanometers, less than the thickness of human hair, kind of stuff.

Wes Ashworth (09:41)

Super cool. And it’s a clear way to frame it, bringing the chemistry down to something anyone can visualize. Admittedly, I don’t think I could have answered your question either before we started, and I did some research, but you have a great way of breaking it down. And I love, so you described your technology as a wetsuit for cathodes. I love simple, basic analogies, but can you walk us through that analogy? What’s actually happening inside the battery? And you just shared a bit there, but anything else to add with that analogy?

Joe Adiletta (10:09)

Yeah, yeah, sure. I mean, the battery environment, the electrochemistry, it’s a relatively hellish place to exist. Batteries, it’s all about kind of interface management. One thing touches another thing and those things don’t like each other. So, this analogy of a kind of wetsuit is relatively appropriate. What do you do when you put on a wetsuit? The idea is to keep the water out. Basically, keep your warmth in. And protect yourself from an environment that would otherwise be unkind for you to be physically in. And that’s kind of what we do with these coatings.

We’re trying to keep the electrolyte away from the surface of the cathode active material while keeping things like the metals that make up those materials in place where they’re supposed to be.

Wes Ashworth (10:40)

Yeah, the wetsuit image really sticks. I’ve remembered it since we first talked about it. But again, it makes the science tangible and you get it. Probably not an absolute, as you said, concrete perfect analogy, but it gets the job done, helps us understand. So, I appreciate that.

Joe Adiletta (11:08)

Certainly, the layperson can understand what that might look like, right? Rather than thinking about it in a microscopic sense.

Wes Ashworth (11:11)

Yeah. And so, for what you’re doing, what specific problem in the current lithium-ion battery supply chain or performance are you solving?

Joe Adiletta (11:25)

Yeah, so I mean, not to be overly cliche about it, but more is better. So, more cycle life, more power, more energy density. All lower cost. All of these things are conventional battery problems and not necessarily problems in the sense that you can’t deploy them today because everybody’s carrying around cell phones, plenty of people drive EVs, and there’s plenty of grid storage out there. But there’s always improvement, and that’s been sort of the steady march or cadence of battery development for the last three decades. It’s something like 7 % year on year improvement in cost structure and energy density. So, you’ve got to find ways to innovate and keep that progress going.

Wes Ashworth (12:08)

Yeah, and it’s striking too, just as you said, how focusing on just one underdeveloped part of the system, the cathode, which we’ll get into in a moment, but just can unlock such broad performance gains. And for you, too, why focus on the cathode side when, as you shared, so much innovation and attention have gone to the anode?

Joe Adiletta (12:28)

You said it. So much has gone to the anode. It’s all the silicon guys, it’s all the solid-state guys, it’s all the lithium metal guys. Because historically that’s been a real ripe area of opportunity specifically for improving energy density, right? And to that end, the cathode has been relatively underinvested in, I would argue.

So, there’s an opportunity there, right? And there’s an opportunity there for technology development and improvement on the cathode side that can have a material impact on the battery. And again, that’s what we do.

Wes Ashworth (12:59)

Yeah, it’s cool. The strategic focus is interesting, kind of like the less glamorous side of the cell that people haven’t really focused as much attention on, but really seeing that the highest leverage side of that, honestly, and some of the gains that you’re seeing, which is it’s incredible and just open your eyes, think outside the box, maybe look at different areas that somebody hasn’t focused on. So, I do love that a lot.

As I shared too, recent coverage highlighted that Volexion is now shipping graphene-coated cathode those samples globally. What does that milestone just represent for you and your team?

Joe Adiletta (13:32)

Yeah, I mean, think the first thing that it represents is really external validation that the path that we’re taking is the right path, or one of the many right paths. That external validation, whether it’s third parties or customers, is really critical in the battery business for a number of different reasons. There’s sort of an old self-deprecating phrase in batteries, which is liars, liars and battery suppliers.

So, nobody believes you out of the gate. So, you have these initial conversations and the logical first step is that sounds great. Can you give me X, whatever X is? So, in order to advance those relationships and frankly, to help facilitate funding for the company when we go talk to the VC space. You’ve really got to deliver those materials to end customers so that they themselves can validate the performance claims.

Wes Ashworth (14:25)

Yeah, it’s a real proof point as you shared validation. I guess, what does it take to move a material innovation like this from a lab success and an idea to commercial shipment?

Joe Adiletta (14:36)

Oh my God, the hurdles are so many. I’m gonna lean back on one of the industry greats, founder of A123 and 24M, MIT professor, Yet-Ming Chiang. He’s great with customers and customers come in and you’d have development meetings, technical meetings, and he’d say the really hard thing about batteries is that it’s not the 19 specs that you meet. It’s the one spec that you don’t, that ends up making it not applicable to a given application. And that’s really, from an early-stage startup perspective, not understanding it.

You may think you have great cycle life improvement, and then you start talking to them about the other things that are important, and you don’t hit one or two or three of them. And then all of a sudden, it’s like back to the drawing board in square one, and you’ve got to start the whole process all over again. That’s the biggest hurdle in battery development, which is really meeting the breadth of requirements to get into any of these applications.

Wes Ashworth (15:36)

That behind-the-scenes reality check is valuable and obviously seeing what you really do have to meet. So, we talked a bit about what you’ve done in Volexion, sort of like their place in the market, but kind of broader batteries, power everything from electric cars to grid storage, but innovation in the field doesn’t move as it does in software. And I do want to spend a little time on that and just the comparison.

So, you said that, in more than 30 years, there’s been almost no true step-change innovation successfully commercialized in batteries. Why has progress been so incremental?

Joe Adiletta (16:07)

Yeah, great question. I think that there are, what I just talked about is certainly one point, right? Which is to say that you may think you have the great next thing and then all of a sudden you don’t. I think that there’s some risk-reward calculus in it to some extent. So, you, 7 % year on year, competitively gets you where you need to go. And industry, not just batteries, but industry as a whole can be a bit of a herd kind of mentality. Everybody’s gonna go invest in AI now, as an example, right?

And to that extent, you look at adding silicon, or you look at lithium metal, or you look at the steady progress of, you know, nickel, manganese, cobalt, cathodes from 111 to 532 to 622 to 811, like everybody can see the logic to that path. Again, one of those kinds of old cliches. Nobody ever lost their job for saying, let’s go buy IBM. It’s a conservative choice that’s defensible. So, there is a risk-reward calculus to it, but I also think that it can be slow because there’s so much repeatability in batteries that’s been just, for lack of a better expression, repeated

So, we’re reinventing the wheel company to company, kind of over and over again. So, you move from early R&D in coin cells to pouch cells and everybody’s got to put in a pouch cell line. And you’re validating that all over again and then you’ve got to make slightly bigger cells and you’ve got to validate that all over again. And I think this is why you’re seeing a lot of talk about and a lot of rises in these sorts of regional battery development centers, if you will, that can provide an accelerated path to larger-scale validation.

This could be, Rochester Institute of Technology, RIT, has a lab, University of Michigan has a battery lab, the Battery Innovation Center, the BIC, has a lab. And they all provide startups like us the opportunity to avail ourselves of larger-scale equipment, which offers a faster path to market.

Wes Ashworth (17:57)

Yeah, it is cool kind of looking at the evolution, it’s steady, rather than just a full disruption type of environment as you see in software and some other things. But what does it tell you about just how real innovation happens in hard tech compared with software?

Joe Adiletta (18:31)

Lots of history here. When I was at 24M, I used to have, I’m a Cornell grad. I used to have some of the Johnson School folks come down for like a tech track or whatever. Come on, you give them a whole presentation and you show them around the office and do the bit. And I always used to start that way. If you wanna make money, go do software. Hardware is not for the faint of heart; just go do software.

I think it really comes down to, technically, it’s all about iteration and spin time. So, like in software, you can cut a new one, I don’t know, you wake up on your phone and you see a whole bunch of updates for the apps that you have. Spin time and iteration and release time are so fast, arguably, that deployment becomes easy, relatively speaking.

In batteries, spin time is so long. If you need somebody, if you need a thousand cycles on a battery to demonstrate to somebody, it might take you three months to get that. So, you get four spins a year at something. And that’s really, really difficult to operate like that. For me, it’s a choice at the end of the day. And actually, the very first startup I did was a software company. So, I’ve done software stuff before and I’m gonna lean on what the CEO of that startup at the time used to tell the new bootcamp full of all these grads. And he used to say, if you wanna be involved with something that you view as so important that you’d rather your worst enemy be successful at doing it than for it not to be done at all.

And I think that really cuts to the core of why a lot of people do hard tech stuff and startups. It’s not for financial glory. It’s because ultimately, we believe in the value of it to society and wanna put the work in to get that done.

Wes Ashworth (20:19)
Yeah, it’s really important work and obviously the values are there and I agree you have to the heart in it. But I think there’s a power in just having something tangible, even if it is a little slower, requires more patience and persistence and those kinds of things as well.

Joe Adiletta (20:38)

Yeah, hey man, I’m a mechanical engineer. So, like having something that I can hold in my hand and understand the bill of materials is, it’s how my mind works.

Wes Ashworth (20:45)

Yeah, absolutely. I love it. So, thinking about, when you hear some big promises about solid state breakthroughs or a thousand-mile electric vehicle batteries. What’s your take on those kinds of claims?

Joe Adiletta (20:58)

Yeah, I mean, I think, to go back to something I said earlier, everything kind of takes twice as long and costs twice as much as you think it would. I think the vision is certainly there and the vision is important. And also, the sum total of novel innovations that have been brought to market in the battery space in the last 30 years is effectively zero. Step change innovation.

So, you have to take it all with a grain of salt. I think in that direction we’re moving that way. And at some point, there will be enough money and enough time and you’ll start with a niche market and over time, that’s gonna continue. It will happen. It’s just unlikely it’ll happen on the time scale with the performance and cost that sort of is advertised.

Wes Ashworth (21:28)

Yeah, it’s a refreshing perspective. You have to balance optimism with realism, obviously in the industry and know that that comes with it. So Volexion specifically focuses on making manufacturer improvements that deliver measurable value. Why is that approach so powerful from both a technical and a business standpoint?

Joe Adiletta (22:04)

Great question. I think what we try to focus on internally and what I try to keep the team focused on is small change, big impact. So, it’s not a, we don’t need new manufacturing processes. We don’t need new manufacturing equipment. It may be viewed as incremental change, 10 % here, 15 % there, 20 % there. But it’s easily implemented today, on all the existing equipment and product lines. And that’s powerful from a technical perspective because it lowers the bar to getting to market.

From a business perspective, really, one way to view our company is as a specialty materials company, not so much as a battery company per se. And we’ve got the business fundamentals in terms of product margin and stuff like that to back that claim up. And that’s to say that our margins are quite a bit better than conventional battery margins. So, it’s great from a business and a technical perspective.

Wes Ashworth (23:03)

Yeah, and a cool reminder, progress doesn’t always have to mean reinventing everything. It can mean making what works better and those small changes, big impact. So, love that, love the business model as well. So, I wanna spend a little time and talk about what it takes to build companies like this from your perspective, and you’ve done it in the United States and abroad, but not just in the lab, but in the market. So, you’ve spoken about the missing middle of funding between early-stage research and commercial scale. How does that gap show up for companies like yours?

Joe Adiletta (23:31)

Yeah, it’s a pretty good gap too. I feel a little bit lucky to be frank in that we feel like we can get to market on relatively capital efficiently, relatively little capital as compared to some of the other battery companies that are out there. But the reality is, in early-stage work, there’s a lot of opportunity here. There’s a lot of SBIR-type funding, STTR, a lot of government early-stage funding, ARPA-E out of the DOE is great with that kind of thing.

So, if you need a couple of million dollars, you need seed stage capital, that’s all available today, as it’s really like a lot of series A-type capital. So early, higher risk, higher reward type capital is still available. Once you’ve got commercial traction, right? And you have a plant in the ground, growth capital, project finance, debt capital, that sort of stuff. Once it’s proven, I mean, you can get that funded. But that gap, putting your what’s called FOAK funding, right? First-of-a-kind facility funding is incredibly difficult today.

In the previous administration, there was a ton of loan program office work done specifically around clean energy type stuff, whether that’s solar, wind, batteries, so forth and so on, but that’s really been curtailed as of late. It’s the venture guys aren’t really into, footing the bill for high tens to low, nine-digit kind of millions, a hundred-million-dollar first-of-a-kind type facilities, with rare exception. But it’s tough out there. So, finding access to that sort of missing middle of capital is critical for small businesses like ours.

Wes Ashworth (25:18)

Yeah, and as you said, the gap is so real, but what kind of investors or partners does hard tech innovation actually need that it doesn’t have today? And then your thoughts on what it takes to get those?

Joe Adiletta (25:30)

Yeah, I think that in that, in a similar vein, I think what you’re seeing is really more of the corporates and the corporate venture arms looking at doing additional investments and supporting companies where they have the strategics. Where they have a potential strategic advantage from those types of relationships or partnerships. And I think that’s good.

I think it’s good for the industry because it provides a sort of fast track, if you will, to application deployment. I would say it’s not the fastest access to capital. And it often requires existing or ongoing relationships, which, as a small tech company, you may or may not already have in place. So, I think it’s good. And I think it can also, it can be difficult to navigate.

Wes Ashworth (26:19)

Yeah, and like for you, obviously, you’ve been through five startups, I think I said, you’ve obviously navigated this and you’ve overcome it and figured it out. But what do you think sort of lessons learned or what has personally helped you navigate those capital constraints the most and for somebody else that’s listening who hasn’t quite gotten there, like what advice could you give?

Joe Adiletta (26:38)

I think startups are not for the faint of heart. I’ve been as close as literally the next paycheck, not having funding ready. I think every startup that I’ve been at has been close-ish, right? And that’s just the reality of kind of startup life. I’ve also iterated seven times now in terms of finding a different or new job. So, I guess I have a level of comfort that perhaps not everybody would have with that type of uncertainty, but it’s gonna be okay.

I think that’s kind of like the end result of it is like, it’s gonna be okay, whether it’s raising money internally, deploying the technology, or finding another great place to go do the work that you feel like you’re called to do.

Wes Ashworth (27:04)

I’ll ask you a follow-up question about that. So, for you, when you’ve had to pivot, what sort of thoughts go through your head, or when do you know? Because obviously resilience is a huge piece of it, sticking with it, just gutting it out, getting through it, but sometimes it’s not gonna work out. So, I guess for you, is there anything that you use to sort of gauge, maybe it’s time to look at another startup or another technology or pivot?

Joe Adiletta (27:51)

Oh man, I think it’s a difficult thing to generalize. If I look back at each of the reasons that I left a specific company, they’re all kind of different. You can get career growth signals, you can get just overall corporate signals, or you can have management troubles. There’s a whole bunch of different reasons, but I think when it gets to the point where you hit some sort of inflection. And you feel like it’s not going in the direction you want it to go. Again, whether that’s personal or corporate, it’s time to start looking around.

I mean, like A123 is a great example because it’s double inflection. It was a rocket ship; we were off and running and then all of a sudden you inflected the other way. But at both times, you could feel that that’s what was happening. And I don’t know if it’s a specific milestone or anything, but there’s definitely a feeling to it.

Wes Ashworth (28:47)

Yeah, which again, I think is part of being an entrepreneur, you have that intuitive sort of sense of feeling things like that. Not everybody has that. And I think there’s a lot of great careers, great places for all, you, no matter what, how somebody’s hardwired, what I’m trying to say. But I do think that being a founder or being in a startup, you do have to have a certain hardwiring and a certain passion and fire that, you know, maybe isn’t normal, but it’s good if you’ve got it.

Joe Adiletta (29:19)

Let me just, let me comment on that because you’re absolutely right. I feel lucky and privileged to have been through the experiences that I’ve been through and to be able to have that perspective. And I get former colleagues and younger people that I work with, they ask me for career advice, can you help me navigate this situation, or that situation, or the other? And I would encourage everybody to do that.

If you have a question, find someone you trust and ask. I’ve found in my career that people are overwhelmingly happy to help. Especially when you connect at kind of personal level. So, I think it’s really important. Don’t take it on your own. There are people out there who’ve been through it who are happy to help.

Wes Ashworth (30:01)

Yeah, I’m so glad you added that and I agree and I think anybody that’s had any measure of success has had people along the way that advised them and gave them counsel, and they were able to just go to and ask questions. And so, I think anybody who has gotten there also appreciates that somebody did this for me, now somebody’s asking for my help. Let me chime in and give some advice. So, I love that you added that piece.

So, just with the current state, when you look at the current policy funding environment. What signals do you see that give you confidence in building hard-tech battery-type companies in the United States?

Joe Adiletta (30:35)

Yeah, good question. So, I think that like there has been certainly meaningful policy shift over the last whatever it is, year and a half. But I think also that if you look at it, there is a lot of focus still on critical minerals. So upstream and we can argue about where exactly the dividing line is between being a critical mineral and not. So, there are certainly opportunities there.

I think some of the geopolitical positioning has perhaps changed, but no matter where you go, as I said, I was just in two conferences, one was in Canada, one was over in Europe. Everybody’s talking about self-sufficiency and resilience. And that’s gonna mean not importing all or materially all of your battery technology. And that’s an opportunity. It really is. So, I have confidence that we’re gonna do something here in the US, especially given that we have such an amazing innovation ecosystem that it’s hard to see us not doing that, to be frank.

Wes Ashworth (31:37)

It’s encouraging to hear and I’d agree. I mean, you start to see that alignment happen and you said sort of the focus on self-sufficiency and just aligning on that purpose. again, lot to be hopeful for and confident in as we move forward. I do want to transition a little bit. So, behind every breakthrough technology product are really the people building it. And I always like to focus a little bit on the people, so the timing that makes all that work. And your perspective here is especially grounded in your experience, which I also love.

You’ve said that startups are really all about people and timing. I guess explain that to us a little bit, and what do you mean by that?

Joe Adiletta (32:17)

Yeah, sure. I mean, technology is great and super interesting, but ultimately, it’s like it’s the people in the team that make the wheels go. And I’ve been, again, feel privileged to have been part of some really, really amazing teams. I mean, there’s a reason why the A1243 kind of name persists for through the last two decades. Some of the people there were really just amazing people and it’s not the only one. There are certainly other of my startups, have had some amazing people and have had some of whom have had a profound influence on my career, sort of philosophy and direction.

It relates directly to the timing piece that you mentioned, because finding jobs and success or not, so much of it is serendipity. A123, as successful as the IPO was in 2009, right? Flamed out, right there, bankrupt, acquired by a Chinese company. But that was like, that’s a timing problem. It wasn’t a tech; if we were doing that today with all of the LFP everywhere, it would be a completely different story. The reality is the market didn’t materialize the way everybody thought it was going to and everything, whole economy was down in 08, 09, right?

So, you really gotta find the foundation of the team. That’s a great people. We’re six people right now at Volexion. You wanna be able to go anywhere and do anything with those foundational folks, and then worry about the timing. And that could be capital, it could be market, acquisition timing, what have you. So much of it is serendipity and unplanned. So, it’s a bit of the opportunity favors the prepared mind kind of thing. You’ve got to be ready for anything if you can be.

Wes Ashworth (34:05)

Absolutely. Kind of like, right people, right place, right time, a little bit of luck. You gotta be doing a lot of the right things as well. And as you said, like, I think the unpredictability of you gotta be able to adapt, you gotta be able to change, you gotta be able to see what the market is responding to and what’s happening, and be able to adjust. But having the right people certainly makes that a lot easier to do.

So, what do you look for when you’re hiring or keeping the right people in a small, early-stage team? What are some of the most important traits that you look for in a person?

Joe Adiletta (34:36)

Yeah, I think with very little exception, cultural fit and the ability to be resilient, adaptable, and intelligent are important. In batteries, I would say the exception is if you need a very bespoke piece of expertise or intellectual knowledge. You need a PhD who’s done this very specific thing. There’s perhaps an exception to be made.

But when you look for people, especially at an early stage, it really is about that. Is this somebody who I’m gonna wanna say hi to and go out to lunch with, or do whatever every day in the office for the next X number of years through good times and bad? It’s because it is gonna be a roller coaster and you’re gonna wanna be able to navigate that roller coaster with those folks.

Wes Ashworth (35:10)

It is always amazing to me how much culture and chemistry really matter, especially when it is just a handful of people building the future and building a company. I don’t know where I heard it, but I heard somebody say the LAX test. It’s like, well, could you sit at LAX with that person for three hours and just have a good conversation and enjoy their company? That’s a good test of somebody you want to build your company around.

I’m also a sports guy too. And you see those teams that are like, they have the best talent in the league, but they’re not winning. Why are they not winning? And it’s maybe not the right chemistry or the right fit. And so, I think getting those pieces right is critically important.

Joe Adiletta (36:00)

Yeah, man, I saw my Philadelphia Eagles lose. And that’s plenty of talent. And the cohesion for whatever reason, this season is just not there.

Wes Ashworth (36:03)

Yeah, you’re starting to see it click a little bit. So hopefully it’ll continue. I brought up a sore subject for you there, though, just kidding. They’re not doing so bad, though.

Thinking about sort of leading through that, building an early company in an industry that often moves more slowly than investors expect. I guess, how do you lead through some of those emotional highs and lows? How do you help your people just stay on the same page and feel good about what they’re doing?

Joe Adiletta (36:13)

Yeah, I mean, I think the key as an executive is to project sort of consistency. I am sure my wife will tell you, like, it can be like this around here. And that’s what you try to protect consistency with kids. And it’s the same thing, it’s the same thing at the office, right? It’s kind of a, it’s just the facts, man. That’s the approach; we do data review stuff all the time, obviously, that I’m involved with as well.

The point is, there’s no good data. Data is not inherently good or bad. It’s the data, right? And you make the best decision you can based on the data available. And you’re sort of, that’s the line you’re trying to walk, is not projecting emotional highs or lows, just dealing with the situation on the ground. This is the direction we have to travel. These are the next tests that we’re going to run and we’re going to make a decision based off of that.

Wes Ashworth (37:31)

Yeah, I love that steadiness and kind of taking a bit of the emotional high and low out of it from a leader. I think that’s great sound advice anybody could use. It reminds me of like, we’ve all young kids that have fallen, and if you react really emotionally, you’re like, oh my God, what happened? Tear, waterworks are gonna happen. But if you’re just calm and collective and like, it’s all right, we’re okay. They have fewer reactions. These are kids, but people are people at the end of the day, at all, it’s all the same, stay steady.

What are some of the biggest timing challenges you’ve seen founders face in clean tech and how do you navigate those?

Joe Adiletta (38:02)

I mean, market, it relates all to the capital question. Which is, is the market going to develop on the timeline that you think is required for you to be a successful business? And can you get your material into the customer’s pipeline for qualification and deployment such that those things overlap. And if they both can be off and you end up with sort of a gap, and you land, and there’s nothing there to catch you.

So, what do you do? You go out, and you try to raise more money and you try to extend your runway. And that’s why what I said earlier, I really espouse trying to be as conservative as we can as a business with respect to our capital planning and our capital raise, so that if and when things go to the right, we have the ability to manage a little bit of that schedule push.

Wes Ashworth (39:00)

Yeah, I think that’s really wise. know, it’s timing and a bit of luck involved too and that timing lining up, but two things that you can’t control on that side, you can control the preparation and being prepared for when it does happen. So, I love that.

As we get closer, I want to touch on a little bit. So Volexion’s story also touches on something much bigger, which is how the US competes and collaborates globally in the new energy economy. So, you shared that Volexion was born out of Northwestern University. What does that story say about the power of the US university innovation ecosystem?

Joe Adiletta (39:32)

It’s the small business engine for tech here in the US, right? I mean, such an amazing asset that we have here in the US. I live in Cambridge, Mass, just outside Harvard Square, right down the road from MIT, where I got my MBA. And it’s just, it’s a powerhouse that we need as a country, really, to leverage. A lot of times, universities have a hard time pushing new tech development out of the lab into the market and have whole offices dedicated to trying to pair founders with technology.

So, it’s really an untapped resource in some sense that we as a country can really leverage to push out new unicorns, billion-dollar companies. It’s amazing.

Wes Ashworth (40:18)

Yeah, really cool and a great example of just how academia continues to seed the next generation of industrial breakthroughs and you’re seeing that happen a lot. I’ve had some of those people on the show, just tied to that university and then where they’re a founder now. It’s pretty cool to see.

One thing you’ve also talked about is the importance of collaboration across the United States and its allies to strengthen the global battery supply chain. What does that kind of collaboration look like in practice?

Joe Adiletta (40:42)

Yeah, so good question. I think that the way I like to view it is sort of this rising tide floats all boats kind of mentality.  There are so few battery companies and battery technology developers that are actually direct competitors. If you use company A, you cannot do business with company B. At least in the startup space, right? Sure, if you’re buying cells from company X, you may not buy cells from company Y, but oftentimes, even then, you’re dual-sourced or triple-sourced if you’re an automotive OEM.

So, I really espouse the idea that we can all help each other. We can all help with intros to customers with collaborative support, perhaps there’s even synergy between developing technologies. So, it really is about viewing the startup next door as a potential customer, collaborator, or success maker rather than as a competitor. And that’s super important if we’re gonna really take the US battery supply chain and ecosystem from where it is today into something that’s really globally competitive.

Wes Ashworth (41:49)

Yeah, I love that. It’s one of my favorite things about the industry is just that focus on collaboration over competition, per se, and just helping each other building it forward together. And I think a lot more that needs to happen.

So, looking toward the next decade, between industrial policy, defense applications, and advances in material science. What gives you the most optimism about the future of batteries and Volexion’s place in it?

Joe Adiletta (42:11)
Yeah, I mean, optimism about the future of batteries, I mean, it’s clear to me and I think it’s clear no matter who you talk to in industry, whether it’s defense folks, whether it’s consumer electronics, whether it’s automotive guys or grid guys, whoever. The electrification of everything is somewhat of a foregone conclusion at this point. They’re gonna be, let’s just take EVs as an example, they’re gonna be cheaper. Max torque at zero RPMs is fantastically fun, right? So, this stuff is going to get worked out and the products at the end of the day that are battery-powered are going to be better products than their counterparts today.

So, I think it is an eventuality, so that makes me optimistic. I think when I talk to people in the industry, that’s what everybody sees. For Volexion, again, I’ll go back to the small change, big impact. Small change, big impact with underlying business fundamentals that differentiate us from a lot of the industry. And that makes us, I think, a compelling investment and development partner. So, I look forward to the next decade, as you just said, and we’ll see what happens.

Wes Ashworth (43:20)

Yeah, I agree completely. And I think a really hopeful note to end on, not just for Volexion, but for the whole ecosystem. So, with that, we’ll wrap up today’s episode. But Joe, thanks so much for taking the time to share your experience and perspective today. It was a powerful conversation. I really appreciate the clarity and honesty you brought to it.

To everyone listening, thank you for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show, share it with someone who would get value from it, and leave a quick rating or review, and then check the show notes for some important links as well. With that, we’ll see you next time.