Transition From a PhD to a Deep Tech Founder

The Transition From a PhD to a Deep Tech Founder - Ouwei Wang's Startup Story

Can you share your journey on how you started Pow.bio?

"Yeah definitely. I'm more than happy to share about my personal experience, kind of how we started this startup journey. It is kind of an N equal to 1 experience. It's like they were not like I'm not an investor right? So I can only talk about our kind of a biased perspective. I don't know if you know Chong from Skedec. He's kind of like one of the investors here. I think he's based in China but he's Taiwanese. So he is one of the one of our early investors. So I definitely think he's deeply embedded in the UC Berkeley deep tech ecosystem. And then maybe he has like a better perspective. Tom Tom is his name I think. Personally I think we started this. I think I started this company I think I was the very first person really because I was really lost in life. I think this is very common for every PhD student. We're basically starting since like six years old since we're in school until like 30 years old and I'm about to get out of school. It was a very long journey and the goal was very linear right? It's like okay just do research you know learn knowledge. Solving problems that was fine but at the end of the tunnel is basically you know this is a PhD like we're kind of at the end what I'm gonna do you know. Professorship is difficult to acquire at the time and I didn't really want to do a postdoc because the pay is really bad. I also didn't really want to get an industry position. I just felt like it's not super exciting. The life feels pretty dull if I just go working in industry. I just don't see myself having a nine to five kind of a job. It really doesn't matter how much the salary is. It's just very difficult for me to see myself having a predictable life working under a big corporation. Because of that I had basically I was going through a life crisis like what am I going to do with my life this is so crazy there's no clear next stage. And then I spoke with my professor at the time and he was like oh you should you know it's common everybody go to this space especially as a PhD student you really like. Everybody joining a PhD program wants to change the world and in the end of the day it's like oh I guess haha we did some research published a couple of papers that's the end. He basically was like oh you know let's do this. You should your research is very applied and maybe you should consider doing a startup. And then I think I might be the first. I think there's another person from my year but before my year we didn't have any person start a company. In our department you either go to just find the industry position or do a postdoc and find the professorship elsewhere. So he basically was like you should try to start a company and see what happens. And then he introduced me to a lot of resources here at UC Berkeley. The ecosystem is very established here. I believe UC Berkeley is the number one. If you just look at founders kind of like a pump out the most founders every year. So the ecosystem is very established around here. We have Skedec which is like the UC Berkeley accelerator. UC Berkeley has Berkeley Catalyst. It has some sort of like a National Science Foundation-based programs that basically the NSF found the market researchers because they know us. All the scientists have a lot of great ideas and great technologies but whether the technology can be turned into a product that's a different thing."

How did you decide to work on continuous fermentation?

"We started off. When we raised our pre-seed round that was the case. My PhD topic was on contamination control. Long story. My PhD topic was on perchlorate respiration which is an environmental science topic. And then as part of that research we also discovered a contamination control technology that never made it into a scientific publication for a lot of random reasons. We basically convert that to a patent and then that patent became our core technology. And then we use that to raise money. So it was I would say directly related to my PhD work."

What were the factors that informed that pivot to continuous fermentation?

"It was mostly due to that experience from the National Science Foundation but it wasn't a short experience. It wasn't like we took a day and then it's done. It was like I forgot it was one month over three months of experience. We had to go talk to a hundred different potential clients and then kind of gather their feedback. It started as like is contamination a problem? They're like nah not really. And then kind of like what is the problem? What is the biggest pain? And they're like oh you know if we can product an economy or like speed to data speed to revenue you know things like that. And then that kind of informed that kind of led us to the path of continuous fermentation. Initially it was really just contamination control stuff like that. And then that program also paired us with because it happens all the time like especially I think in the U.S. in academia a lot of professors work on very metaphysical problems that are too fundamental and very difficult to translate. Because of that NSF saw a lot of that and knew that technology does not equal to product."

How did you set up the conversations with industry folks to interview them about the problems they have?

" I was cold calling people. It was a pretty aggressive outreach. People yelled at me. They were like who are you? Why are you calling me? I don't want to talk to you. You know that definitely happened. So it was just cold email. Cold email connection obviously. We have friends, friends know friends, and then at the end of every interview we'll also ask people could you introduce us to three other people that you know? It's kind of this not pansy scheme but kind of a similar idea. And I was a student so it was easier at the time. It was basically hey I'm a student doing market research which is the truth at the time. And then I had a berkeley.edu email that also opened many doors."

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Can you share milestones needed to raise various rounds?

"I think every investor looks for different things. Some people really like market size. Deep tech investors a lot of them have this thinking of they prefer to catch the horse that's running versus the horse and the jockey analogy. The product market fit and traction is more important to them. For us it was more about the technology I would say. The technology is quite unique. We have a lot of people interested in the technology side of things. We also have some investors who are more interested in the vision of continuous fermentation. To answer that question I think it's a little bit different from case to case. I have to say for pre-seed round it was kind of like having a very promising vision that excites people and that's good enough. And then the second thing is get as much feedback from investors as possible and then start refining the pitch and the deck and also the message. Those are the things we did to get the first funding."

What advice would you give to someone looking to start a company in a deep tech space with zero experience?

"I would say first thing is know yourself and then know what excites you. It's going to be a very long journey. I don't think a lot of people can finish it. It's like 90% of startups fail. So I would say the most important thing is know what excites you and make sure that's aligned with your goal and then make sure you have enough runway to pursue that. The second thing is be very scrappy. Get a lot of feedback and then keep refining. The third thing is talk to as many people as possible. I think the term people use here is mosquito bite, dog bite, and the shark bite. We usually only focus on the shark bite problem and then also get the sense of what are nice to have. Nice to have means people will never, ever pay for that. Like a nice to have is like we don't want to solve anything that is like fix anything that is nice to have because nobody paid for nice to have. And then get a good team. I think that's also a very important thing."

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