Today my guest is Mattias Josephson, a serial entrepreneur and the cofounder of Epishine. Mattias is a wonderful and very humble human being, but he has set himself and his company a very ambitious mission: he wants to scale the manufacture of his solar cells to make it one of the largest energy systems in the world.
A few years ago, he founded Dreampark, a leading software provider who was sold to Motorola in 2011. After that, he worked as a consultant and started a company helping with fundraising for charities and associations.
Then in 2016 he started Epishine. Epishine helps harvesting light to create a sustainable world. To describe it simply: They make printable solar cells, fully organic with no toxic nor expensive raw materials.
They have made manufacturing breakthroughs that allowed them to scale up a R&D product at low cost. Their first product is a small, thin and flexible light cell, printed on recyclable plastic and easily integrated into wireless products where it convert the ambient light into electricity. The light cells can be used instead of batteries on wireless sensors and similar devices in our increasingly connected world.
The company has now 23 employees and they are growing quickly.
Mattias shared 7 Do’s and Don’ts about his experience of entrepreneur, and specifically about
“How to scale up an R&D product and build a market that doesn't exist, in particular in this case how to build electronics in a new way”
Very often, new materials get out from the R&D lab too early to be able to scale properly. Founders choose applications that are too far away and they don't have the right business case to scale. This is the pitfall that Mattias avoided with Epishine and this is what we are going to talk about today.
You will learn a.o:
- How to be prepared to start a company developing an advanced material (especially on the funding part)
- Where to look for your first customers
- How to have a big inspiring vision but an achievable first business case
- How they proceeded to formulate the values and a strong why of the company, that really works to attract top talent and to which everyone refers to in the company
- How and why he stepped down as a CEO to give his place to a new CEO
If you are into technological breakthrough, finding product-market fit, and scaling up technologies, this episode is for you!
Mattias Josephson and Epishine:
- Mattias on Linkedin
- Epishine’s website
Resources and recommendations from the episode:
The gifts of imperfection, Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are.
The seven habits of highly effective people
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