The Inventivity Pod

Computers and smartphones are about to get a lot faster. If Roger Tipton succeeds with his invention, light will replace copper wires as connectors of computer components. This will be like using fiberoptic cable to access the web instead of a dial-up modem. A recent arrival to the University of South Florida, Roger was inspired to invent during high school shop class in Cleveland.

Computers and smartphones are about to get a lot faster. If Roger Tipton succeeds with his invention, light will replace copper wires as connectors of computer components. This will be like using fiberoptic cable to access the web instead of a dial-up modem. A recent arrival to the University of South Florida, Roger was inspired to invent during high school shop class in Cleveland.

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01

Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade a podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida, the museum is named after James Robert Cade, who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We’ll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them, we’ll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work, and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Richard Miles: 0:39

Traveling at the speed of light, right from the comfort of your own keyboard. Is that the future of computing? I’m your host Richard Miles. My guest today is Roger Tipton, CEO of Path Optical Systems, which has developed optical interconnects to replace copper wires on computer chips. Welcome to Radio Cade, Roger.

Roger Tipton: 0:56

Hi, how are you?

Richard Miles: 0:57

Uh , so I’m going to start with a really basic question. What on earth is an optical interconnect? What does it do?

Roger Tipton: 1:02

What it does is it connects different components on a PCB board. So if you’ve got to get information from the processor to the hard drive or from memory or wherever that information has to travel, that’s an interconnect and most of them are copper interconnects at this point.

Richard Miles: 1:18

Okay. So if I could actually look at the chips, if I had the ability to do that, all those connections are being made by essentially tiny copper wires right now.

Roger Tipton: 1:24

Yeah. Yeah. And you can actually see it on the green PCB board. That’s inside the little copper traces running everywhere.

Richard Miles: 1:30

So your technology in place of those copper wires, it’s actually flashes of light?

Roger Tipton: 1:35

Yeah. That is actually how it works. And I think a good analogy of this is if you remember dial up internet that was on copper wires from your phone line, and they replaced that with fiber optic cables. And that is the exact same technology and some similar materials. And that just sped everything up that allowed Netflix and YouTube and videos and downloading and all the amazing things we have. And we’re bringing that same exact technology to your phone or your server or your laptop. And those are the kinds of speed increases that we will see on those devices with these new interconnects.

Richard Miles: 2:12

Roger tell me, is their a reason it hasn’t been done already? What was holding that back? Was there a technical or physical reason why? Because fiber optics has been around a while, right?

Roger Tipton: 2:21

Yeah. 30, 40 years. And really it’s 3D printing has allowed this new technology, 3D printing is opening up all kinds of opportunities and all kinds of new things. And I think we were the first to apply 3D printing to this challenge. And so I think that’s why we’re first.

Richard Miles: 2:37

So this will make computing faster, but by how much faster? And then is it a degree of magnitude that your average user is going to notice right away? Or is this just something that tech nerds are going to get excited about? But your average consumer is not going to really know?

Roger Tipton: 2:50

It is actually going to be a huge difference. We’re looking at like seven times faster. You can just get so much more information through these. And as we think of big data now, and we have smart cars. So if you can get data transferred faster from the sensor on your smart card and your Tesla to the computer, it can process that information faster and mean it’s safer and they take less power is another thing that is going to be a huge difference. They put server farms in the Arctic and underwater and things like that to keep them cool. And that’s because you have all this electrons moving on copper wires and generating heat. Well, that all goes away. So it’s not just going to be faster computers is going to be less power required, computers and less heat generated computers. There’s kind of a knock on of all different kinds of cool things.

Richard Miles: 3:39

I thought, I understood this but now I’m getting really excited about it. I mean, this sounds like one of those enabling technologies, right? S ort o f like the internal combustion engine a nd that it enabled all sorts of different sectors to do different things or better things or, o r faster things, b ecause this is coming along at the same time. And tell me, this is contingent upon something like a 5G network or the speed at which 5G gets introduced, doesn’t really a ffect this development or are they both related? How d oes that work?

Roger Tipton: 4:04

I think they’re complimentary. You have 5g. This is wireless between devices that are not connected. And then once it gets inside the device, we’re talking about the speed inside the device at it. So it just going to make things faster.

Richard Miles: 4:16

So our devices are faster and they use less power. Have you done any mind experiments in terms of the types of applications , what will people start doing with faster devices that don’t need as much battery power?

Roger Tipton: 4:28

This is, we look at your watch is a wearable device. And we look at all these healthcare applications where it’s about battery life. And if you have pacemakers inside your heart and you have to go in and change things, or you can maybe detach wearables from battery life issues, that’s a pretty awesome application.

Richard Miles: 4:46

Pretty exciting. So information technology is one of those industries t hat is pretty competitive. And usually when you have this breakthrough, like you described 3D printing, making all these things available, usually there’s some other person out there that has thought of something very similar. Tell me what the competitive landscape looks like, are there other people now starting to do this as well? And if so, what sort of advantage o f lead do you have over those o ther people.

Roger Tipton: 5:11

MIT and IBM actually built the world’s first, fully optical computer a few years ago and they didn’t have this 3D printing technology. And so they built this incredibly fast computer. I mean, it is just mind bogglingly fast, except it’s as big as a house. And it’s kind of that same computers in the fifties and sixties used to be huge and

Richard Miles: 5:32

So very capable, but not practical for a normal consumer or even a normal business.

Roger Tipton: 5:36

Right, right. Right. And they came back and said, okay, when the next bit of technology comes along, we’ll come back. And how do we shrink this and shrink this and shrink this. Uh , as far as I know, we are the first to do this and it’s kind of exciting and scary. And now that we’ve got our patent filed and we’ve built a functioning working prototype, we’re kind of coming to the market in the world. And that’s kind of exciting, about like the Cade Prize and things like that. We’re kind of publicizing all of a sudden what’s happening. We’re going to find out.

Richard Miles: 6:01

Good point and I neglected to congratulate you and your team for making it to the finals of the 2019 Cade Prize. So congratulations.

Roger Tipton: 6:08

Thank you, thank you.

Richard Miles: 6:10

We had a lot of very good entries this year and you’re sort of clearly one of the very best. Tell me about the company at this point. Who’s a member of it. What are your next steps? Are you, are you looking to stay the CEO? Were you looking for outside management? And then where are you in terms of investment?

Roger Tipton: 6:25

We formed a company last year, we fought our patent this year two co-founders at, at this point , uh, myself and Venkat Bhethanabotla. He is a professor at the University of South Florida. We’re at the functional prototype stage. And we’re actually looking at the end of the year to have prototype boards that are completely optical and ready to go to market and for testing and evaluation. So we’re kind of very early NASA has given us a little bit of money. We’ve generated some interest from , uh , Harris on a proposal. And Cisco Systems is kind of involved, other customer research lab is kind of involved with us and we made our first VC . We asked for no money. We just kind of pitched and said, okay, this is kind of what the technology looks like. And immediately the phone started ringing and the emails, and it’s been a bit crazy. It’s it’s early days. We think we’re six months away from actually going out and taking that next step. But it’s kind of awesome.

Richard Miles: 7:24

Tell me a little bit about your experience at firstference for the venture capitals. And the reason I ask is , uh, when we, when we started the Cade Prize few years ago, or actually 10 years ago now, and we started recruiting VCs as some of our judges, and we were always really surprised. We would read the application go, this is just wonderful. What a great technology, this is going to change the world. And this steely-eyed cold-hearted VCs would look at it and go, eh , and they tell you five problems with it and why it wasn’t really that big a deal. And how was it going to change the world? And I just remember thinking, like I would be crushed if I were the inventor and I had this guy telling me, you know, a woman telling me like, eh, it’s not that big a deal. And other people doing the same thing. What was that like? Was that terrifying? Was it inspirational?

Roger Tipton: 8:10

Yeah, it was at the early stage Florida ventures forum in Orlando just two weeks ago, I think now. And we had judges and I was up on stage and we made our pitch and the j udge was like, yeah. Okay. Or whatever. And then the moment I stepped off the stage, there was a VC standing there going, okay, we have to talk, we have to talk.

Richard Miles: 8:30

Well that’s generally a good sign that the VC is pursuing you rather than the other way around. So you cleared your first hurdle. That’s good.

Roger Tipton: 8:35

Yeah. Uh , I didn’t ask for any money. I think that kind of threw people off too . That kind of made me a bit of a challenge. I think that was kind of interesting for them that they asked me, well, how much money do you want? I said, well, nothing. We don’t need it yet. And they’re like, Oh wow, now.

Richard Miles: 8:49

You described for me , the patent arrangements and the, your initial steps, is this something that you envision staying on a CEO? Because a lot of times the, the model is the original founder and venture. We’ll get it going. And then they’ll bring in other management and they keep doing other research or stay in technical capacity. Is that something you see yourself doing for the midterm or longterm ?

Roger Tipton: 9:08

We’ve got an interesting product, an interesting bit of technology. And I think it’s going to take a lot of resources and a lot of talent, and I want to do what’s best for the technology to get it out there. And that’s probably bringing in a professional management team and money and the things to do it right. I’m excited, and I want to do my part, but we need the pro’s I think.

Richard Miles: 9:28

Right. Well, you’re already ahead of a lot of inventors because we see a lot of types of vendors and the ones that generally have the most difficulty are the ones that they thought of this beautiful idea. And they are in love with their beautiful idea and they cannot let it go. Roger, tell me a little bit about your background. I know you live in Wesley Chapel now just North of Tampa, but are you from Florida? Where did you grow up? Where did you go to school?

Roger Tipton: 9:50

I’m from Ohio and I started off in small town. Went to Ohio state, started working in Cleveland and just eventually the weather just took it out in and like a lot of people up north,

Richard Miles: 10:03

It’s amazing how many people come to Florida for the weather. So,

Roger Tipton: 10:06

Oh no , that’s fantastic. So , uh, I had relocated down here about four years ago. At the same time I came back and started working on my PhD at the University of South Florida. And that’s been the , the launch pad for this stuff we created in the lab there .

Richard Miles: 10:19

Uh , Roger, what were you like as a kid? Were you a really good student in school, top of the class and science and math, or?

Roger Tipton: 10:25

I was the kid that was out playing and sports an outside all day long. And I had a great professor in high school. It was CAD and shop class where we designed things and made them,

Richard Miles: 10:35

And this is in high school?

: 10:35

This is in high school and that’s kind of where it kicked off. I hate to say it’s that shop class guy that was making stuff. And that kind of was the Genesis of some of this engineering that I went on to become a material science and engineer at Ohio state, and then Honda and rubber made little Tikes professionally, and eventually ended up back in school, down here. And,

Richard Miles: 10:56

Did you ever tell that teacher that they were sort of an inspiration? You know, this is , this is the one thing teachers would love to hear, right? Somebody comes back 20 years later and go it’s all because of you.

Roger Tipton: 11:04

I need to do that. I absolutely need to do that. That is fantastic. I didn’t think of that until we just started talking about it here, but yeah .

Richard Miles: 11:10

And what about the entrepreneurial side? I mean, were you the first kid on the block with lemonade stand or did you ever have any interest in business until the development of this ticket?

Roger Tipton: 11:19

I’m actually a bit of a, an entrepreneur. I’ve had three companies before this. I kind of fell into being an entrepreneur. Um, company was closed and went to China and it was like, okay, I can do something on my own and not get laid off and fired because,

Richard Miles: 11:33

This was an Ohio company?

Roger Tipton: 11:35

Right, I’ve had three companies. Uh, I sold one down here to a local company, you know, I’ve had two fail. So that’s kind of gives me a good perspective on it’s okay to fail and try and learn and do better next time and that kind of stuff.

Richard Miles: 11:51

Right. Does this run in the family, did either of your parents, were they either in the business world or in the, in the science world at all ? Or what did they do for living?

Roger Tipton: 11:59

My mother is a bit of an inspiration. The fact that she went to nursing school in her forties, she went back and she wasn’t afraid to change and do something new and different. And I think part of my entrepreneur spirits from, you know, it’s never too late or too big of a challenge, you just go and try and it’s alright.

Richard Miles: 12:18

Right . Interesting you say that, I’ve talked to number of entrepreneurs and often their parents were in the business world and sometimes one of the most inspirational examples, or certainly o nes t hat y ou remember n ow when their parents succeeded, but when their parents failed and how their parents dealt with that and came back from either business being shuttered or whatever. And that’s kind of like what you said this experience with failure is often much more formative and instructive than a success and going forward. Do you have other ideas that you can talk about on the horizon for other directions, other technologies that we need to get in on the ground floor? I guess you couldn’t tell me. Right? B ut b ecause we go off and patent them, right?

Roger Tipton: 12:53

Well , there you go . Uh, but yeah, I don’t think this is the end. I think this is just another exciting chapter.

Richard Miles: 12:59

Well, I already mentioned on another show recently that few days ago, one of our previous prize winners from 2013 coming in called Nanophotonics i s kind of three and a half million dollar investment from Samsung. So we’re hoping to see your company do well. And hopefully in less than seven years, i t took them a while, but they’re doing quite well. But that has often happened with the companies that we see take part in the Cade Prize a t that the quality of the idea is really good. It’s not immediately rewarded often, but after a few years they get some traction. Roger, again, congratulations on making the C ade Prize final four a nd wish you the best o f l uck.

Roger Tipton: 13:31

It’s exciting. And thank you for the opportunity. I can’t wait to find out who the winner’s tonight.

Richard Miles: 13:36

Great, I’m Richard Miles.

Outro: 13:39

Radio Cade would like to thank the following people for their help and support Liz Gist of the Cade Museum for coordinating and vendor interviews . Bob McPeak of Heartwood Soundstage in downtown Gainesville, Florida for recording, editing and production of the podcasts and music theme, Tracy Collins for the composition and performance of the Radio Cade theme song, featuring violinist Jacob Lawson. And special thanks to the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention located in Gainesville, Florida.

2019 Cade Prize runner-ups Joe Sleppy and Isaiah Oladeji have invented a wire-shaped supercapacitor. Unlike batteries, capacitors are not used to store energy, but to deliver it quickly and in dense amounts. Using wires instead of plates or boxes greatly reduces the space needed on things like circuit boards. Isaiah, raised in Nigeria, said he was “a very bad student.” His parents received no schooling at all, but Isaiah eventually got a PhD in the U.S. Joe progressively lost his hearing by third grade and had to get cochlear impacts to hear again. At age 16, he won a $10,000 business plan competition and started his own company.  

2019 Cade Prize runner-ups Joe Sleppy and Isaiah Oladeji have invented a wire-shaped supercapacitor. Unlike batteries, capacitors are not used to store energy, but to deliver it quickly and in dense amounts. Using wires instead of plates or boxes greatly reduces the space needed on things like circuit boards. Isaiah, raised in Nigeria, said he was “a very bad student.” His parents received no schooling at all, but Isaiah eventually got a PhD in the U.S. Joe progressively lost his hearing by third grade and had to get cochlear impacts to hear again. At age 16, he won a $10,000 business plan competition and started his own company.  

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01

Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade and podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida, the museum is named after James Robert Cade, who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We’ll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them, we’ll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work, and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Richard Miles: 0:39

According to philosophers, we’re all hungry for power. That may be debatable, but what’s not in question, is it the machines we build are hungry for power of the ACDC variety. I’m your host Richard Miles. My guests today are Joe Sleppy, and Isaiah Oladeji of CapaciTech, which has a wire-shaped supercapacitor. Joe and Isaiah welcome to Radio Cade.

Joe Sleppy: 0:58

Thanks for having us.

Richard Miles: 0:59

I’m deficient in actually many things, but probably a more so in anything to do with electricity. So the first thing let’s start out, walk me through and our listeners, what is a capacitor and what is a supercapacitor.

Isaiah Oladeji: 1:10

Capacitors and supercapacitors actually doing the same things, storing energy. You can store energy in them fast and you can get those energy out faster. So supercapacitor probably has a more storing capacity than the actual capacitor.

Richard Miles: 1:27

Got it.

Isaiah Oladeji: 1:27

And that’s the simple difference between the capacitor and the supercapacitor. At the end of the day, they store less energy compared to standard battery .

Richard Miles: 1:36

Got it. Okay. And capacitors have been around in one form or another for a while . I mean the ability to store energy, right?

Isaiah Oladeji: 1:43

Yes.

Joe Sleppy: 1:43

Right. Well, the one thing I want to point out the difference between s uper apacitors and a normal capacitor is in a normal capacitor. You have two electric plates, there’s an electric field between them. And that’s what storing the energy wi th t h e s upercapacitor. You add an energy storage material between those electric plates to further enhance that energy storage ability. So it’s not a battery, st ores, less energy than a battery, but it can deliver that energy really, really quickly, which means it has a high power density, which is what makes it the difference between a capacitor, a su percapacitor a nd a battery.

Richard Miles: 2:10

Okay. So what you have is a wire shaped supercapacitor and again, for listeners who are not familiar with, at all with any of this, what is the current standard configuration of capacitors and why is a wire supercapacitor such a big deal?

Joe Sleppy: 2:23

The standard configuration for capacitors is you typically have two parallel plates.

Richard Miles: 2:27

Got it.

Joe Sleppy: 2:28

And what they’ll do is they’ll wrap those parallel plates to make what looks like a little soda can, or they will compact it into a little box and these little soda cans and these little boxes all always get installed on circuit boards. A lot of times actually a third of the circuit board will have nothing but capacitors installed on it. So a lot of space on a circuit boards being wasted by these capacitors. And what we noticed is a lot of times the capacitors are connected to the input or the output of the circuit board. What we’re doing is we’re manufacturing, a wire shaped capacitor. So instead of it being soda can, it’s a long and skinny and flexible wire. And we’re going to take this wire and embedded inside the wires that are going into the circuit instead of on the circuit board itself.

Richard Miles: 3:10

In a way you’re talking about a size or a space savings right?

Isaiah Oladeji: 3:13

So even if you decide to put them on the circuit board, you have a lot of free space at the end of the day, which means that you can either shrink your circuit board or you add more functionality.

Richard Miles: 3:26

I’m tempted to tell our listeners to go to the nearest desktop, take off the back and then look at the circuit board. But then I’m afraid Radio Cade gets sued by all these people who couldn’t put their computers back together. But I think I get the concept. So Isaiah, you touched upon this a little bit in terms of space savings. And then Joe , you talk about power, but why is this such a big deal? Where do you see this going in terms of potential applications? Obviously the computer industry would be using this, but are there other things beyond computers in which a wire shaped supercapacitor , it’s going to make a big difference?

Joe Sleppy: 3:56

So the deal here is that traditional capacitors all have to be installed on a circuit board. And as I’ve mentioned to you before, that is going to take up a lot of space on set circuit board. Maybe a third of the circuit board will be taken up by all these capacitors. And so with our innovation here, putting the capacitor in a different form factor, having the capacitor shaped as a wire, we can now install our capacitor inside DC power cords, connecting to circuits rather than on the circuit itself. Now there’s a lot of applications in that system. Okay. Might be for solar power systems. It might be for electric vehicles. It could be for wind turbines, everything has wires connecting it in one way or another. The bigger idea here is instead of being able to install more and more capacitors, and s upercapacitors on a circuit board, which makes the circuit itself far larger, far more expensive, we can offset those capacitors in the connecting infrastructure o f the connecting wiring, which then keeps the circuit small, keeps the infrastructure small a nd l imited while you’re also getting the advantages of having more capacitance in the system, which typically will improve the performance as well.

Isaiah Oladeji: 4:54

In short, it means that if you have an off-grid solar powered house, our capacitor could be part of that system. It could be part of an electric car. It could be part of a drone wherever you have a battery, as a matter of fact, where you want to extend the life of the battery, these capacitors can readily go into it and extend the life of the battery.

Richard Miles: 5:18

Whenever a battery is involved, particularly a large battery or large power requirements . Seems to me, that is the value proposition of your company. Let’s talk a little bit about that. And I know you’re still very early stage and you’re still doing a lot of your due diligence on the technology itself, but in terms of potential markets, you listed at least three that I heard solar power, electric vehicles and things like drones. Is there an obvious advantage in picking one of those three? Where would you go first where you think t hat this would make a bigger difference as opposed to the other ones?

Joe Sleppy: 5:51

Right, so I will say that as a capacitor there’s hundreds of applications, every electronic circuit has a capacitor or capacitance in one way or another. That h as actually been a challenge for the company as an entrepreneurship company t o decide which one do we want to do first? Now it’s not just about which one is the coolest. It’s not just about which one does the entrepreneur like myself and Dr. Oladeji here. It’s not just about what we want to do. I think that we would both love to g o put this into an electric vehicle and start working with Tesla today. But the feasibility of that is not so great. So what we’ve done is we’ve spent about a year or t wo years and a lot of customer discovery trying to figure out what value our technology can really add. And our first focus is going to be on the solar power market. And specifically within that solar power market is residential solar power homes. We’re going to be able to do two things for them. One, if they have a battery, we can connect our cable capacitor into the DC power cords to ma ke that battery last l onge r and have better performance. That’s going to save the homeowner money because they don’t have to replace that battery every five years, seven years, whatever it is, the second thing that we can do for solar power systems, as we can connect our cable- based capac itor again, inside the DC power cords, you don’t need any other ugly boxes hanging off your roof. You don’t need to make your garage cluttered, none of that, but we can connect our cable based capac itors into the DC power cords, connecting everything together, and we’ll be able to compliment the solar panels to have more power. The way that we do that has actually nothing to do with the power itself. But when you have a shadow, for example, go over your panels, there’s been a sha r p drop in the power output. Our capacitor will m ake sure that that drop is filled in so that the power going to the home is as constant as possible. Having constant power, at lea st a hig h e r efficiencies to the inverter. And it means that t he m aximum power point tracking devices will have a higher efficiency and be able to get more power out of the panels.

Richard Miles: 7:36

So you’re in this really interesting inflection point, I guess, the development of your idea and that the energy market is one of those markets. It’s like, it’s g ot a l ot o f big players. There’s a lot at stake and I’m sure you’re probably getting a lot of advice. Free advice, wanted advice, unwanted advice. I forgot to mention. I forget every single time dimension, t he, you are actually finalists in the 2019 C ade Prize. So congratulations to that reason. We have you on the show this morning, you are already doing well and you’ve already done well in other pitch competitions, but you’re now moving beyond that. Like how do we develop this idea? Tell me what the next year looks like. What are your near term milestones in terms of developing the commercialization of this idea?

Joe Sleppy: 8:15

The thing I’d say is I started getting very, very focused and very, very specific about what we were doing over the last six months or so. And what I did specifically, as I started going to a customer and saying, I have this product, what do you need to see to buy it from me? Tell me exactly what specification you want. Tell me exactly what certifications I need. Tell me exactly what kind of fill in the blank you need to see in order to actually fulfill an order. I noticed that as a startup, a lot of people want to watch you and customers that watch you don’t necessarily buy from you. And that doesn’t help the company that much. It just makes it sound like a theoretical potential sale in the future. And so I started going to our customers in the solar industry and saying, I have solution. We think it’ll do that. What do you need to see? And that laid out our most immediate milestones, which are, we need to scale our manufacturing right now. Dr. Oladeji is making them by hand in his lab. It’s not very scalable in that sense. And so we just recently invested in some equipment to scale o ur manufacturing line up to 50 units a week. So that’s a big deal so that we can actually on a regular basis, put out samples, put out p roduct fulfill orders. The second thing that they’ve all told us is you need to have this be certified under a UL listing, which is kind of like FDA approval. But for electronic components, those two things have become the very clear milestones that if you do those two things, we will be able to fulfill orders and generate revenue. And so that’s what the media focus is.

Richard Miles: 9:38

So most young companies, one of the things they really need the most is money, right? Because as you d escribe going into a manufacturing process, even an initial manufacturing run doing the other things y ou’ve described, somebody’s got to do them and turns out a lot of people don’t work for free, right? So you’ve already pitched this idea. I know in competitions, but tell me what it’s like sitting in front of a potential investor. And w hat’s some of the feedback you get and what kind of experiences that like, d o you come out of there walking on a cloud or is it kind of terrifying?

Joe Sleppy: 10:08

Use to be terrified when I was 19 and asking for money for the first time? And I realized now that I was terrified about it because I was totally not ready to be raising money, but the good thing out of that, as I started getting a little bit of insight, talking to investors and learning how they thought, and I actually didn’t ask for money for the first year and a half, two years, the company was alive. I was in pitch competitions. I was awarded a grant. I was in different programs. I was in different accelerators, but when it came to talking to investors, for example, the Florida angel nexus i n Orlando, I would go and I ‘d never specifically asked for money. I would just pitch what I’m doing and listen to their feedback so that I could actually understand where they thought all the flaws were so that I could address them. One of the biggest flaws I needed to address was the initial pitch was w e’re a capacitor and we c ould be used in everything. And that didn’t go over very well. Right? I had to pick something and that kind of spurred on more focused, more specific customer discovery so that we can put together a more clarified business plan and a business case from there. I went out and I did the same exact thing over again. And I started realizing t here w as this sense of, okay, sounds good. Why should I believe you? And from there I realized that we really needed to get those customers to start writing letters saying, we’re willing to do this, but you need to do A and B t here’s a mentor of mine named Dr. Pape. He works at the University of Central Florida, part of the UCF Blackstone Launch Pad Program. And what he kept telling me i s Joe, what are your value generating milestones? And he is a former investor. And what he would always say is I would look at what money the company is raising. And I would look at what things they want to accomplish with that money. And my question to myself was always does accomplishing those milestones add value to the company? If the answer is yes. Okay. I can consider it. If the answer is yes, significant value, t hen I’d really consider it. And so that I was able to go get a letter of support from a customer saying, Joe, you need t hem, you owe this thing and you need a s caled manufacturing facility. Great. Now that I have those two milestones, I could go ask for money to accomplish them. And now I had letters of support saying, do those two things, and we can fulfill potentially millions of dollars worth of orders.

Richard Miles: 12:09

Right? Cause it’s not just two things that you picked at random, like, Oh, these are nice to have t hey’re measures of value added.

Joe Sleppy: 12:16

Value generating milestones. That’s Dr. Pape’s favorite term.

Richard Miles: 12:19

I say, obviously you all are confident in the technical merits of the idea. Is this the sort of thing that you’re going to continue to make iterations, not just on the manufacturing end, but are there things you want to do to it to improve it, that you’re going to iterate your way to a better wire supercapacitor say in a year or five years from now?

Isaiah Oladeji: 12:35

Yes, certainly because right now the operating voltage of ourselves now is around 1.6 volt . The desire is to raise it to maybe three volts, maybe even more than that. So as we are trying to market this in the other research that we’ll be doing in the background is trying to raise the voltage, the operation voltage of the cell.

Richard Miles: 12:56

So what you have now is sort of like an iPhone, but one day you can have an iPhone four and five and six.

Joe Sleppy: 13:01

You know, one thing I’d add to that is the specifications that we have right now. They’re good enough for our customers. If we make them better, the customers are only more excited, right? Right. On the 1.6 v olts cell, we connect multiple cells together in series or in parallel to meet different specifications. But if we were able to raise the voltage rating or increase the temperature rating or increase the capacitance of the cell, of course, we’re going to continue improving that product. But if we’re able to do that, it allows us to deliver the same value at a lower price, which potentially opens up the market more. So we’re going to continue iterating. We’re going to continue increasing the voltage rating most likely by using a different types of materials inside. And that w ill accomplish different specifications that open up new markets, potentially DOD markets, potentially automotive markets. But right now we’re staying very, very focused on residential solar power. And if we increase those specifications, we can only sell to those customers even better and open up new markets in the process.

Richard Miles: 13:53

And increasing the voltage ratings. Is that a function of just time and effort, or is more research involved? Do you have a clear path on how to do that?

Isaiah Oladeji: 14:01

Surely that part doesn’t actually involve too much research in the sense that what dictates the operational voltage of a capacitor most of the time is the electrolyte that you’re using inside , which means that by simply changing the electrolyte, it changes everything. It just is simple thing that we need to do that, that doesn’t even involve research that much, just okay . Finding an electrode that could be more compatible with our electrodes .

Joe Sleppy: 14:25

Dr. Oladeji is awesome. And I like him because together we tend to avoid a friend of mine actually just said this word, an Edisonian approach to the way that we’re dealing with this. We’re not just trying different materials and seeing what might happen. We’re not rubbing sticks together and hoping for the best. He does have a list of very specific materials that we’re targeting, that we know that you add this material and it will increase the voltage rating. So it’s a matter of having Dr. Oladeji have the time to do that because right now he’s manufacturing these cells by hand. So once we implement that manufacturing process, his time is freed up to go improve the products that we’re manufacturing.

Richard Miles: 14:58

But the only downside to that is then you don’t have a great quote like Thomas Edison’s, I found 10,000 ways to fail, right ? Your post will say, well, we found three ways to fail.

Joe Sleppy: 15:05

We found three ways to fail, but I would tell my investors, we found a faster path to revenue.

Richard Miles: 15:10

Okay. So behind every invention, there’s an advantage behind every business plan. There’s an entrepreneur let’s hear about sort of your personal stories of how you arrived, where you are today. And I’m not so much interested in the last year or two, but let’s go further back t han that. A nd let’s start with you Isaiah. Sort of, how did you end up here? What were you like as a kid? Were you a great student in school? Did you have great mentors and teachers tell us a little bit about t hat.

Isaiah Oladeji: 15:31

I was actually a very, very bad student somehow. And my father especially has been so hard of me at that time, because I was really about saying , I just go to school for the sake of going to school. Okay. I have , I mean, I go to school. I hardly pay any attention to what the teacher was saying in the class.

Richard Miles: 15:53

So that you weren’t thinking about capacitor?

Isaiah Oladeji: 15:56

No , no, no, no, no, no. So I did not start to get my beer in until probably I was in elementary in the U.S. that would be around grade five.

Richard Miles: 16:06

Wow. And where were you raised?

Isaiah Oladeji: 16:07

I was raised in Nigeria.

Richard Miles: 16:09

And when did you, or when did your family move to the United States?

Isaiah Oladeji: 16:11

It was not until I finished my master’s degree in Nigeria teaching the university because I was best man in my class when I was completing my master’s degree. So the university decided to retain me and turned me into an assistant professor or assistant lecturer. So, and the requirement to stay in the university was me , you for me to get a PhD. So actually I got the Fulbright scholarship to come to U.S. To come and do my PhD. And my interest at that time was to be in solar cells to develop solar cells . So I came to do my PhD to get my specialization in solar cell.

Richard Miles: 16:46

Now, Nigeria, did that have a British school system or what is sort of that?

Isaiah Oladeji: 16:51

Well, the system is British, but a corrupted British system by the American system.

Richard Miles: 16:59

The reason I asked that is that we lived in Barbados for a few years. And our son, when he was young, went to a British system school there. And the one thing I remember is that unlike American schools, the teachers give the parents unvarnished feedback about their child. They don’t sugar coat a thing. So they will say your child. And f rom an American perspective your shocked, like what do you mean? And I d on’t k now. They tell you how it is sometimes a little bit too much. Anyway. So t hat’s interesting t his, any of this run in the family Isaiah? Did, w here your parents in business, were they in science at all?

Isaiah Oladeji: 17:31

No, actually my mom never went to school. My dad did grade one or grade two and then stopped going to school. Yeah. So basically my parents did not go to school, but my dad has a big drive to have all these kids educated.

Richard Miles: 17:46

Are you the only of your siblings that became an academic?

Isaiah Oladeji: 17:49

Well, actually I have three of my siblings that have PhD too. And I’ll do, none of us are in academia.

Richard Miles: 17:57

I think your dad needs to write a parenting book, Joe, let’s turn to you. Where are you from? What were you like as a kid? Were you always an entrepreneur or did you have an entrepreneurial bent?

Joe Sleppy: 18:05

I was born in St. Petersburg, Florida. I was born in 1996, so I got to grow up living and watching the greatest parts of the Yankees in modern history. So that was great, but my childhood was a little different than other people’s in the sense that I was actually a deaf kid. And so I progressively lost my hearing from age two, three. And by the time I was in kindergarten, my right ear was all pretty much shot. And so second grade I got cochlear implants installed and that was really exciting because now I potentially could h ear, but second grade didn’t really go. I was h omeschooled during that time, third grade I went, but I wasn’t hearing very well. So I would leave every third day to get basically physical therapy for how to talk and how to hear and around the time I was in fifth grade, I was back. My math was okay a nd things were all right, but I couldn’t really spell i t b ecause I couldn’t hear so not a fantastic elementary school student, but when I got to middle school a nd I got to high school, i t seemed like every year I started to progress and be closer to the top of my class. When I was in high school, I had awesome opportunity to be taught by fantastic teachers. My English teacher had a PhD, all my math teachers and physics teachers all had a m aster’s degree. That was really exciting because I actually learned from people who loved what they were doing rather than just teaching it. And so I did AP calculus and I did AP physics and I took classes and it was all great. But to be honest, I did not care about school because it was really boring to me when I was 16, in fact, I got so bored that I j ust s tarted to start my first business. And I competed in this competition put on by the Pinellas Education Foundation where the winner would get $10,000. So I won the $10,000 and they approached me and they said, so, J oe, what college do you want us to send this to? And I was like, you told me I could use this money for my business. And they were like, you could also use it for college. I’ll get Bright Futures. I’m not worried about college. I want it for my business. And so they gave me $10,000. I used it to start Slepp Solutions, which was a hands-free fitness equipment for amputees sold a few products here and there and made a couple of thousand dollars in reoccurring revenue. It was pretty great, but come freshman year in college, t here’s not very much money. And so I knew when I came into college, I really had three options. One was to get a PhD. One was to go work for somebody. And one was to start another business that could potentially scale and generate revenue to support a lifestyle. So on the working for som ebody fr ont that wasn’t going to happen. I worked for Publix for a couple of ye ars and working for Publix was really great. But I do remember this one moment where I sold $500 of groceries and made $2.50. I was just on the wrong side of the register. And then I was looking at my dad and my dad worked 35 years to get towards the top of his company. And I didn’t really feel like waiting 35 years to get to the top of the company. And I was imagining it like a chain. And I kept saying the fastest way to the top of the chain is to just start your own chain. Great reincarnate. All the entrepreneurial spirit I had when I was 16. And I started a bu s iness beca use I w anted to help people and cau s e I w as bored with school honestly. And so in college I realized, wanted to either get a PhD or start a business. I started doing that by getting involved in undergraduate research. The lab I did undergraduate research in is the lab that invented our technology here, the cabl e bas e d cap acitor while I was still in high school. And the professor said, Hey, I would really love to see this be a real thing one day, but I don’t have the entrepreneurial skill set to d o that. I hear you started a business when you were 16. What can we do? And that pretty much set off the story for capacity tech. We joined the ICorps Program. We joined the local level, the national level. I got involved with Firespring Fund and Starter Studio. I got involved with venture scale -up and the catalyst program. I got involved with UCF Blackstone Launchpad. I won the UCF Joust. I mean, I got every entrepreneur resource I could find in Orlando and I used it and I used it hard. And so that’s really what ended up spear ing off CapaciTech, becau se I al so realized that I go t my name on a few academic papers and that was great. And I actually used them on my resume and I was proud of them, but I didn’t have the same fulfillment that I got when I was starting my business. And I generated revenue and I created wealth and I helped spur on jobs. And now with CapaciTech, we’re doing all of th at same exact thing while I’m also getting to be involved with really cool technology, potentially completely world chan g ing tech nology. And that’ s real ly excites me and it really gets me going. And that’s why I do this becau se I lo ve it.

Richard Miles: 22:03

And those are both really great stories. Before I forget Joe, one thing we always advise is go back and tell that teacher what an inspiration they were to you. Teachers love hearing that if you haven’t done it already highly advise it.

Joe Sleppy: 22:13

I won’t say any specific details, but one of my high school teachers actually invested in CapaciTech. I absolutely am grateful. My high school was a special type of high school, r ight. It was called a fundamental system. So they did things a little differently, but the academic success was very, very high on their list of priorities. And that distilled into me. And when I got to college, I felt like my first year of college was just another year of high school because my high school was so intense with the way that they were teaching us in terms of calculus and physics. A nd when I got to the college version there was some new things introduced, but the underlying structure was already there b ecause I had such great passionate teachers in high s chool.

Richard Miles: 22:48

So this is a part of the show where we offer the guests the opportunity to dispense wisdom to other entrepreneurs, other inventors. I’m sure you’ve already been asked probably for advice from other companies are getting started because they’ve seen you and in the work that you’ve done. So Isaiah, let’s start with you, as you’re trying to move a great idea out of the laboratory into the marketplace, one a re t he sort of things that you would avoid if you had to do it over. And what are some of the things that you think have been instrumental to your success so far, if you were giving advice to say someone a few years behind you in terms of their development.

Isaiah Oladeji: 23:16

Well, if I have to use my own experience, I realized that so the experience that I had in the big companies that I worked for in the past, I probably contributed a lot to the success we are currently having in capacity. So if I have to do it again, I’ll probably prefer to do it that way. That is how I’ve experienced work with bigger company to get those essential experience that could come really, really handy because this is not my first company. I started several companies in the past and most of their field after I left working for places like Bell Labs and Lucent Technologies, Surpass Semiconductor in Singapore,

Richard Miles: 23:55

Not insignificant companies.

Isaiah Oladeji: 23:57

Corporation, the United Kingdom. So I worked for all of these big companies. And then after that I started my own company and then my technology got bought up by other companies and I was a big part of the company, but anyway it feel , and then somebody referred me to Joe and that was towards the end of 2017. And then we finally got together at the beginning of 2018. And I can say that the experience that I had in all those previous company that are actually coming together to help propel this company.

Richard Miles: 24:29

So in a nutshell, worked for a bunch of big companies until you get just smart enough to start your own.

Isaiah Oladeji: 24:33

Exactly.

Richard Miles: 24:34

Joe, how about you? You’re a pretty young guy, but it sounds like you’ve already had a lifetime of experience here. What sort of lessons would you impart to others who are looking to do the same thing or something similar?

Joe Sleppy: 24:42

I guess I have a few quick thoughts. I mean, one of them would be look at who you’re spending t he most of your time with n o, that when I was in high school, I was not just spending time with other students. I was spending a lot of time with this guy named K urt Long. K urt long, founded a company called F airWarning and they basically do cybersecurity for hospitals. W ell, Kurt long is who funded the $ 10,000 grant t hat started my business. So we would meet regularly maybe once a month and he would impart his wisdom into me. And that aged me up pretty quickly. And I remember this actually funny story after the fact, but I’m 18 and I go into his office and I’m like, Kurt, I made my first sale and he gave me a bottle of champagne. I’m like Kurt, I’m 18. He’s like, give it to your mom, this is so great. And so develop a relationship with somebody like Kurt, get involved in programs and just start doing something. So that was one thing surround yourself with people that are really champagne, you might get a free bottle of champagne. But then the other thing I would say is don’t be scared and just do it. My friends when I was 16, 17, 18, and they all had great ideas. Why didn’t any of them do it? Remember that program that I won in high school, I was the only kid in my class that submitted an application. There was something like 60 applications to this program and they were taking the top 10. So yo u h a d p retty good odds compared to like getting an SBI grant or getting a scholarship lik e yo u . Y ea h, p retty good odds. I had friends that were bullish enough to say all me n to ap ply to Harvard, but weren’t bullish enough to try and get an extra $10,000 grant. So what I always try to point out to people is, H ey, if you’re 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, you can start something and fail. And you’re right where everybody else is. So just try to do something. And I can tell you, there’s a g u y on Jeopardy named James right now. And he publicly said, the reason he’s doing so well on je opardy is because he takes all the bigger risks in the beginning of the game, bec ause he has time to recover. College high school. That is the beginning of the game. Go take some risks, go try to start something crazy. Surround yourself with people like for me, Richard Fox, Mike Pape, Cameron For d, K urt long. These guys will mature your brain to act a little bit further beyond your years. And then they also might connect you to people like Isaiah who hel ped yo u actually execute on your vision. Right? Don’t just be scared to do it because you’re just putting yourself closer and closer to having to take a job. Because now you have a mortgage. Now you have a car payment. Now you have whatever, if yo u’re 16 and it fails, you’re still a kid.

Richard Miles: 26:53

No morgage, no champagne either. But yeah , these are both great stories and you’re obviously a great team. And uh , I think you’ll do well, but I want to wish you the best of luck. Thank you for coming on Radio Cade. Again, congratulations for making it the final stage of the Cade Prize and look forward to having you on the show again.

Isaiah Oladeji: 27:09

Thank you very much.

Richard Miles: 27:10

I’m Richard Miles.

Outro: 27:12

Radio Cade would like to thank the following people for their help and support Liz Gist of the Cade Museum for coordinating and vendor interviews . Bob McPeak of Heartwood Soundstage in downtown Gainesville, Florida for recording, editing and production of the podcast and music theme, Tracy Collins for the composition and performance of the Radio Cade theme song featuring violinist Jacob Lawson and special thanks to the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention located in Gainesville, Florida.

Auxetic foam is an advanced form of padding for helmets and athletic shoes. The material, which has a honeycomb structure, becomes denser as more pressure is applied. Betsy Condon and her husband Joe have licensed the technology from Florida State University and are hoping for a breakthrough with the military or with shoe companies. Betsy and Joe had extensive experience working in the manufacturing industry but eventually started a company in their garage. “We have certainly ridden the rollercoaster,” says Betsy, “with stomach-dropping moments.”  

Auxetic foam is an advanced form of padding for helmets and athletic shoes. The material, which has a honeycomb structure, becomes denser as more pressure is applied. Betsy Condon and her husband Joe have licensed the technology from Florida State University and are hoping for a breakthrough with the military or with shoe companies. Betsy and Joe had extensive experience working in the manufacturing industry but eventually started a company in their garage. “We have certainly ridden the rollercoaster,” says Betsy, “with stomach-dropping moments.”  

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01

Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade a podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida. The museum is named after James Robert Cade , who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We’ll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them, we’ll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work, and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Richard Miles: 0:37

Padding the resume is a bad thing, but is it? In the case of our guests this morning, Betsy Condon, padding is literally her resume and I’m talking to her about a new kind of foam padding that can be used among other things and football helmets and athletic shows. So welcome to the show. Betsy.

Betsy Condon: 0:53

Thank you.

Richard Miles: 0:54

So before we get into sort of your story and how you arrived at this, let’s talk about the actual adventure that technology it’s called, auxetic foam padding, A U X E T I C for our listeners who aren’t familiar with that word. I wasn’t familiar with the word. So it’s foam padding. How exactly does it work? How does it differ than the padding? You might see, you know, athletic shoe today or a helmet today?

Betsy Condon: 1:19

So auxetic foam has been in laboratories for over 20 years. The problem was that no one could repeat the technology. Why would this be important? Because most foam padding is inadequate in applications where you need especially impact protection, or you need a little bit more advanced materials. And so auxectics have a negative poisons ratio. They actually function very differently than regular foam padding. You actually have had exposure to a uxetic materials and probably not even realized it in Kevlar. Kevlar is a type of auxetic fabric. Auxetics have been in laboratories for over 20 years, but no one could find enough repeatability in their processes to make the technology viable in the marketplace.

Richard Miles: 2:07

So Betsy, if I could interrupt you for a second, if I understand correctly, the difference in layman’s terms, is it conventional foam? Like if you put pressure on or impact it expands right? And auxetic, it actually somehow condenses.

Betsy Condon: 2:20

Right, it compresses.

Richard Miles: 2:22

compresses. Okay.

Betsy Condon: 2:23

Yes. Thank you. So with auxetics, the stronger, the load, the more compression that you actually get, and you actually absorb more of the energy. So more compression on auxetic foam makes it more durable, more dense and provides more protection. So it can be applicable in instances where traditional foam would quote, bottom out. If you squeeze a piece of conventional foam, you can feel your fingers at the bottom of it. If you squeeze a piece of auxetic foam, you won’t feel that it takes a lot to bottom out. And in fact, it’s very difficult to bottom out auxetic foam.

Richard Miles: 3:00

Right, I saw some of the videos you had where there’s one in particular. I was impressed. Somebody has her hand underneath a big piece of foam, is that your son or a neighbor or something? An d h e’s whacking it with a mallet. Bu t m y first thought was like, how’d you get this guy to do this?

Betsy Condon: 3:14

He’s an employee. So he’s covered under employment or he’s covered under workers’ compensation. But , um, he , I did hit that foam with that mallet at full force and could feel nothing underneath it. Just a little bit of the pressure of the mallet hitting the foam, but he certainly had no pain.

Richard Miles: 3:33

And Betsy, what is going on, what is happening as that force comes into contact with the foam, that’s different than conventional foam.

Betsy Condon: 3:41

So auxetic foams actually have a honeycomb type structure and that honeycomb can actually collapse on itself. So what you’re seeing is those little diamonds that make up the honeycomb, if you will, collapsing on themselves to give it more durability and making a denser place for whatever is hitting it to hit.

Richard Miles: 3:59

I see. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. If I think about a beehive or something like that, if you’re to punch it, presumably you get the same effect somehow, if you could withstand all the bees stinging you right.

Betsy Condon: 4:10

And so actually the way that auxetic foam works is that we’re actually changing the structure of the material of the polyurethane foam. It’s a clean process that we have patented and we use no chemicals. So it’s completely environmentally friendly. It leaves no residue in the foam. People often ask about that. It’s just purely that we’re changing the structure of the foam.

Richard Miles: 4:35

And Betsy, did you develop this actual processor ? Is this a licensed technology?

Betsy Condon: 4:39

It’s a licensed technology. So the VA actually funded $4 million of research at Florida State University, High Performance Materials laboratory, where they perfected making auxetic foam in a repeatable process. And they actually hold the patents where the exclusive licensee of that, the research, the VA originally funded was for a prosthetic sock . One of the problems for prosthesis w earers today is that the residual limb where they’ve had the amputation doesn’t function like our foot would, it’s not designed to carry all the load of the body walking on it. And t he, the constant compression well today’s solution that prosthetic w earers have is they put on and take off multiple pairs of cotton socks as the day goes on. And their residual limb swells, y ou k now, the swelling goes down based on heat and the amount of walking they’re doing and that kind of thing. So the VA wanted a better solution to one protect the wound site because oftentimes prosthesis wearers c an get wounds on that area that won’t heal. Auxetic foam doesn’t have any creases in it. It’s what’s called thin clastic. It means it can bend without creasing so it can provide better protection. Additionally, they wanted something that based on swelling or lack of swelling could either expand or compress based on the need of the body. So that’s what the research was originally for.

Richard Miles: 6:07

So the research was sponsored by the VA. Did you say the VA holds the patent or?

Betsy Condon: 6:12

No, Florida State University holds, they hold two of the patents. Then when we licensed the technology, it needed a little bit more perfection to actually get into manufacturability. And so oxidize actually holds additional patents that are part of the m anufacturer process.

Richard Miles: 6:30

And Betsy, do you know the actual adventures of the technology? What were they looking for? What were they trying to do? Did they have this end goal in mind and developing the foam? Is that what they set out to do?

Betsy Condon: 6:40

They really set out to one, develop a method of m anufacture for auxetic foam that could be more than just a laboratory one time and tw o to develop a prosthetic sock. So those are the two patents that Florida State holds. Additionally, we had to, I guess, tweak the method of manufacturer, add to it. And those are the patents that we hold.

Richard Miles: 7:00

Okay. So when you say we, in this case, it’s you and your husband?

Betsy Condon: 7:03

Correct. Okay. All right. Where I’m , I’m already sympathetic to husband wife team. So for some reason, I don’t know why. So tell me a little bit about your story, Betsy and your husband’s . How did you decide to acquire the technology? What were you thinking? And then what was your experience before that, in terms of, are you a scientist and engineer, a business woman? And tell me how that connection happened? Sure. So Joe and I have a combined 45 plus years experience in manufacturing, and a lot of that was in medical device manufacturing, and we decided we wanted to leave corporate America. We had a goal and we wanted to own our own manufacturing company. So we set out to try to find technology that matched with our backgrounds. And there was a three year period of time that Joe ran a prosthetics and orthotics company in Michigan. So when we saw the technology at Florida State University, we thought this is a great match. So we set out to acquire the technology, believing that we would be a little prosthetic sock manufacturing company in Keystone Heights, Florida, which is my hometown. And my dream was high tech , high wage jobs right here in North central Florida, where graduates of high school can go to the University of Florida or the other state universities, get these degrees and have a reason to come back and raise their families where I had the pleasure of growing up and now raising our family. So that’s kind of how we got started in that. What we didn’t realize is the applications of auxetic foam. We knew that we would have multiple applications. And so we started off and we thought, well, we need to pick three verticals. So our verticals are medical devices, sports equipment, and apparel and military, and first responder equipment. Our passion is making a difference in the lives of people. So we didn’t just want to make a product to make a product. We wanted to make a product that would make a difference in people’s lives. And it has been more than we thought it would be.

Richard Miles: 8:57

So Betsy, do you already have a manufacturing facility and it’s already cranking out some of these products?

Betsy Condon: 9:03

Four years ago when we started, we started in our garage just like Dell and Nike and Microsoft and several other of the big companies. So we’re hoping that our in game will be what theirs is. But , um, three years ago we needed a bigger facility. And so we acquired a piece of property in our hometown that had actually been abandoned. It was a hardware store that had gone out of business and had sat vacant for three years. So we went to Capitol City Bank, which I know is one of your sponsors at Cade at the C ade Museum. And they took a chance on us and believed in our technology and believed in us as entrepreneurs and gave us a loan to purchase this facility. And it has been a real blessing.

Richard Miles: 9:47

So I’m guessing that’s gotta be one of the only manufacturing facilities in Keystone Heights.

Betsy Condon: 9:52

So actually, I believe that we are like the third. There’s a cabinet manufacturer and a manufacturing company that makes metal ramps.

Richard Miles: 10:01

So for those of our listeners that aren’t familiar with Keystone Heights and it’s probably quite a few, it’s a small town Northeast of Gainesville, would you say right? And I actually know where it is. Cause my sister-in-law and her family used to live there. And so we talked about this a little while ago, but it is a small town. You said, that’s your hometown. So you grew up in Keystone. Okay. But your husband’s not from Keystone. So you met in Gainesville, but you’re both still in the corporate world at that point.

Betsy Condon: 10:29

And Joe is an engineer by trade, but worked his whole career in manufacturing, operations, executive positions. My background is in environmental health science and I worked most of my career in the manufacturing environment as director of environmental health and safety, and actually won some awards with that was very proud of that work. Then I left corporate America became a full-time stay-at-home mom to raise our kids, but didn’t stay home very well. I actually got involved in the school system, volunteering and then advocating for kids and actually ran and was elected to my local school board and served a term there.

Richard Miles: 11:10

Volunteering schools is like the gateway drug to entrepreneurship practice. I think so unsolvable problems and, you know, lack of support and so on. Tell us a bit more about your decision and your husband’s decision to become entrepreneurs because that’s a risky move. You’re taking a significant risk, a financial risk. You’re doing something by definition that no one else is doing or very few people are doing, and there’s not necessarily an obvious path to success out of your garage to the, to the next level. Right. So was it sort of one moment th at, that you and your husband decided you want to do this? Or was it a process over several years or months where you just kind of toyed with the idea and then finally took the plunge?

Betsy Condon: 11:50

So I think that we really didn’t what we were getting into. Certainly we recognized the risk and its great personal financial risk. Basically you’re leveraging everything that you have to make this dream come true. I don’t think we really ever thought that, Hey, we’re going to be entrepreneurs. We knew we wanted to own our own business. We knew we wanted to be our own bosses and we knew we wanted to make a difference in our lives and our employee’s lives. Beyond that. I think we had both spent so much time in manufacturing and in the corporate setting, we knew things we would want to see done differently and things we would want to repeat. I think if we look back over the last four years that our company has been in existence, we have certainly ridin the roller coaster . It is not without stomach dropping moments, more of those than others where you’re wondering how you’re going to pay the next bill, how you’re going to make the next payroll run. I still don’t take a salary. Joe takes a very small salary from our business. We still do other things to help pay our bills. When I say do other things, we do other work to help pay the bills in our personal lives so that we can put as much money into making this dream come true as we can. But then there are also the great moments where you’re cheering. And when you see on the caller ID accompany calling, that is huge. That’s a normal household name that you think is going to make your company. And that happened to us about a year and a half into having this little company, we got a phone call from one of the largest athletic companies in the world and they wanted to create a development agreement with us. We were really excited about it. Our product was performing great for them and a year and a half later into that development agreement, they dropped us. And that was one of those h eart’s thinking moments. And we wondered how our little company was going to make it. We really thought that the next 30 days after that could either be bankruptcy or could be a turning point. And we were fortunately able to make it into a turning point for our company and found a different vertical to go into. So at that point, the U.S. Army called us and said, we have a concussion problem in soldiers and no one has been able to solve this problem. Would you be interested in a development contract to do some research work for us to see if you can find a better solution? So that filled that gap, but 30 days prior to that, we thought we were going out of business.

Richard Miles: 14:24

Well, interesting. Something you said earlier about one of the reasons you wanted to start your own business was to be your own boss. And when you first s tarted out, t hat’s thrilling, right? I mean, y ou’re, you get to make all the decisions and nobody h ave to check with committees and everything. But as most entrepreneurs l ook at the flip side of that, right, i s you can’t necessarily walk away when you’re dissatisfied. You can’t say, well, it’s somebody else’s problem. I’m just g oing t o go home and not worry about it being your own boss a nd particularly being the owner. You have to think about it because no one else will. And if you don’t think about it, then you’re looking at failure.

Betsy Condon: 14:57

Absolutely. And you can’t say it’s Saturday, I’d really like to go walk around the Spring Arts Festival. You have to say, it’s Saturday, we’re behind on our orders and trying to get this little thing off the ground or this new product designed for this company that may be , they will love these prototypes and order more. And so those kinds of things keep you up at night.

Richard Miles: 15:19

And then once you start hiring employees, you feel like a sense of responsibility because there’s employees have put their faith in you and that you’re going to be providing a paycheck for them and their families. And so you have that extra layer of worry. Now it’s not just about the company, it’s about the people that work.

Betsy Condon: 15:36

And I think that is probably true for all entrepreneurs. You have to look for that sustainability so that when you pull that trigger to hire extra help, more employees, you want to make sure the work’s going to be there so that you can keep that employee and keep them gainfully employed, which I think that other companies just kind of don’t think through certainly in a small company, a small startup company, there are no benefits to offer. You can’t necessarily pay extremely high wages, right? So you’re looking for other people who have kind of the spirit of let’s take a chance.

Richard Miles: 16:09

So Betsy, we always ask people on the show sort of to dispense the wisdom that they have collected in , in their journey as an inventor or entrepreneur. So if you and Joe were to see a similar couple or somebody in a similar circumstance, maybe yourselves 10, 15 years ago, and they said, Hey, we’ve got this great idea. We’re going to leave our jobs and we’re going to start a business. And what nuggets of wisdom would you give them ? What advice would you say? Well, here are the things you need to think about. And here are things you definitely should do and hear things you should definitely not do. Do you have a list like that? And running lists like that in your head, or? Tell us.

Betsy Condon: 16:42

I do. I would say don’t leave that job. Start your business. Before you give up that income. I would also say, learn to say no. One of the things that we saw is when we did our initial investment, our initial convertible note raise of funding for our company. We had so many people coming out of the woodwork and everyone wants to sell you something o r sell you their services for a fee or for a percentage of your equity in your company.

Richard Miles: 17:09

And these are services targeted at young businesses, right?

Betsy Condon: 17:12

Yes.

Richard Miles: 17:12

It’s startups, right?

Betsy Condon: 17:13

Yes. People who say, I have contacts that can get you, these customers, I can help you design your company. I’ve done this before. I’ve done this four times before and I have experienced that. You need, the problem is that initial seed funding that you get from wherever it is dries up very quickly. And if you haven’t said yes to yourself and know to a lot of those other things, I don’t think you’ll be successful. I’m not sure that I can say this on your show. But Dave Ramsey , Entree Leadership Book has been very helpful for us for young entrepreneurs who are to start a business. And he, one of the things he talks about is pay yourself first and don’t go into a lot of debt to get started in your own business. So I think that I could recommend that book as a piece of literature. I think also believing in yourself and taking that chance apply for every grant you can. We applied for a grant with the NFL recently, and we were awarded that grant to do research on better protection for football players. That one grant that we’d got from the NFL has had our phone ringing off the hook. I really think if we could look at a turning point, that’s probably the biggest turning point in our company, f our years i n. And it was a relatively small grant we applied for in the scheme of things. So I think apply for anything. You can, any funding, any competitions, but then be choosy also. Some of these pitch competitions that w ill tell you, we can get you this kind of funding, make sure there’s a prize involved. Make sure that it’s something you won’t owe them back. But believe in yourself, if anyone is at the point of wanting to be an entrepreneur, they already have that spirit of success. They already know that they can see the finish line. They can take the idea, t he research, the technology, and know what it can be in the marketplace. But I wouldn’t pick a technology that you can’t see a market for. And you don’t know who your customers would be ultimately.

Richard Miles: 19:16

So I , I guess I should have told you about that thousand dollar Radio Cade registration fee, right? You can pay on your way out. That’s all great advice. It sounds like you and Joe have already packed in 20 years worth of wisdom and probably about how long you’ve been in business for?

Betsy Condon: 19:30

Four years.

Richard Miles: 19:31

Yeah. You’ve been quite a number of milestones and highs and lows, to be honest in that four years.

Betsy Condon: 19:35

Well, but in the entrepreneurial world four years is a decade.

Richard Miles: 19:40

Exactly. Betsy , thanks very much for coming on the show. I wish you the best of luck as you develop your company, you and Joe, and looking forward to having you in the Cade Museum to sort of educate the general public about not only your technology, but the life of an entrepreneur and what that means.

Betsy Condon: 19:57

Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity.

Richard Miles: 20:00

I’m Richard Miles

Outro: 20:03

Radio Cade would like to thank the following people for their help and support Liz Gist of the Cade Museum for coordinating and vendor interviews. Bob McPeak of Heartwood Soundstage in downtown Gainesville, Florida for recording, editing and production of the podcast and music theme, Tracy Collins for the composition and performance of the Radio Cade theme song, featuring violinist, Jacob Lawson and special thanks to the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention located in Gainesville, Florida.

Dr. Paul Sanberg, a Vice President at the University of South Florida, holds 157 patents and has published 650 scholarly articles on neurology. One of his biggest contributions, however, is founding the National Academy of Inventors and the Florida Inventors’ Hall of Fame in Tampa. A native of Hialeah, Florida, Dr. Sanberg later moved to California and then studied music in Canada, where he “just wanted to sing rock and roll songs.” But an “amazing professor” led him to neuroscience.  

Dr. Paul Sanberg, a Vice President at the University of South Florida, holds 157 patents and has published 650 scholarly articles on neurology. One of his biggest contributions, however, is founding the National Academy of Inventors and the Florida Inventors’ Hall of Fame in Tampa. A native of Hialeah, Florida, Dr. Sanberg later moved to California and then studied music in Canada, where he “just wanted to sing rock and roll songs.” But an “amazing professor” led him to neuroscience.  

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01

Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade a podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida. The museum is named after James Robert Cade , who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We’ll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them, we’ll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work, and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Richard Miles: 0:31

Author, inventor, scientist to founder and pilot. Is there anything Paul Sanberg hasn’t done? I’m your host Richard Miles. And with me this morning is Dr. Paul Sanberg, founder of the National Academy of Inventors and the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame and Senior Vice President for research at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Welcome to Radio Cade , Paul.

Dr. Paul Sanberg: 0:57

Thank you, Richard. Happy to be here.

Richard Miles: 0:59

So Paul reading your resume makes me want to take a nap. I mean, you’ve published 650 articles, 14 books. You hold 157 U.S. and foreign patents. Do you have a stunt-double, some guy that sleeps on a park bench outside the patent office? I mean, how do you find time to do all this?

Dr. Paul Sanberg: 1:15

I don’t know, but it’d be nice to have artificial intelligence that’s for sure.

Richard Miles: 1:20

So let’s talk about you yourself or a scientist and an inventor, and much of your career was spent in the area of brain research and specifically how to repair the brain. So tell us a little bit about that, but make it simple for people like me that barely passed high school biology.

Dr. Paul Sanberg: 1:35

Well, sure. I think it was probably really important when I was training in college that I took this course. It wasn’t called brain and behavior. In those days, it was called physiological psychology, kind of what’s the physiology of behavior. And so I ended up wanting to study the brain after taking that. It was just like a light to shine. And then working with various people, it was like, how do we create diseases model , actually an animals so that we can test various things and look at how cells die in the brain, how drugs interact in the brain. And then from there, it was the natural step to say, well, how do we repair the brain? If we’ve created this problem? And all these people have brain diseases and neurology, as you may know, is one of those specialties that you don’t have a lot of treatments for, with people that might have strokes or Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s Huntington’s disease, ALS you name it all devastating diseases. And so having that plus having family, having gone through a number of these diseases really encouraged me to look for ways to repair the brain. And that’s when we started to look at all different approaches and putting cells in the brain was an important one.

Richard Miles: 2:39

Let’s go a little bit deeper into that. And you said put cells in the brain. These are not just any cells, right? I mean, these are STEM cells. How does that work?

Dr. Paul Sanberg: 2:46

Interesting question. So we actually looked at many different approaches. We looked at putting animal cells and human brains. Believe it or not, where we could actually combine engineering with it, to polymer encapsulate these cells, to protect them, the immune system, hoping that they may work. We looked at cells from different organs. For example, we know that for example, the adrenal gland gives off some dopamine, believe it or not. So we tried those cells in the brain for Parkinson’s. We tried cells in the eye that actually have dopamine. We tried all sorts of things and it really wasn’t until we got to the approach of looking at STEM, like cells, cells, that we now call STEM cells that really are unique, that they can become any tissue. We all have them, we’re born with them and we still have them in our body, even as we grow old. And these are kind of repairative cells. And so being in Florida at the time, we really couldn’t work on embryonic STEM cells. So we were the first to actually look at other sources of STEM cells from bone marrow, which is where a lot of our STEM cells are located. And from umbilical cord blood, the blood that you throw away after a baby’s born has a lot of STEM cells. So these were approaches that we took, at a necessity.

Richard Miles: 3:55

So did that lead to your first patent?

Dr. Paul Sanberg: 3:57

Uh , actually the first ones were looking at those other types of cells, capsulated and stuff, but it really led to the first patent in Florida, actually at USF, the first patent on using bone marrow cells to create brain cells. And we also got it for cord blood cells for brain cells. So we were early in that technology and that’s been really nice

Richard Miles: 4:17

For most people. This would be a full-time job doing some brain research, fixing a few brains. If I were, you I’d take the rest of the day off, go to the beach, but you decided to found not just one but two institutions that are dedicated to celebrating, encouraging, and connecting invendors. So let’s start with the Fo rd I nventors Hall of Fame, which was established in 2014, correct?

Dr. Paul Sanberg: 4:37

Yeah, I think around then.

Richard Miles: 4:38

How’d you get the idea to do that and how did you set it up?

Dr. Paul Sanberg: 4:41

You know, I’m a Floridian, born in Florida, traveled all over and came back and I love connecting people. I love honoring people. I love, I don’t like feeling too competitive with people. I like to get good ideas from others. So I was actually in Washington, believe it or not. And I was at the National Inventors Hall of Fame gala, where they gave out the metals to the national inventors at the United States patent trademark office. And so they have this big fat book because over the years they have all the inductees and this they’re hall of Famers. And so I’m sitting at the table and I’m going through the book and I’m going, where’s all the Florida inventors , you know, there’s vendors from New Jersey and New York and all the top East and the California’s and all these places. And there wasn’t any real Florida inventors. So I thought, okay, well I knew Thomas Edison and I knew Henry Ford were Florida and vendors as well as New Jersey and Detroit because they have their homes in Fort Myers and I’ve been to the museum and it’s an incredible museum. Edison almost at half his patents while in Florida, Florida. So we started to think about it. And I talked to the United States patent trademark office and I said, well, what do you think about a state hall of fame? And apparently there were six others, New Jersey being the biggest, which was started by Edison. Actually, the others are small. So then I went to a Senator, Brandis and the Florida legislature and we talked and he was all about it. And so he up putting resolution in and we’ve handled the Florida and hall of fame to show people that there are great inventors in Florida that have been in Florida. And so that’s how it started. And it’s been amazing. It’s just been a lot of fun to do.

Richard Miles: 6:09

So you have nominating committees, right? Or you have nominators that say, hey, this person, not all of them were still living, right? Some are?

Dr. Paul Sanberg: 6:17

The Florida Inventors Hall of Fame follows the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Similarly that they can be posthumous or they can be living. The difference is the National Inventors Hall of Fame, gears to one single patent. Y ou k now, that it had an impact. Ours is the total impact of that person. C ause it may not just be one patent, but it might be a whole ecosystem of patents that they did. I mean, think about Edison, can you really get th e o ne patent? Yo u g e t a thousand. So that’s the basic difference. But when there have been people that have been po sthumous, th ey’ve b een lot of fun to watch too, be cause f amilies have come like your family. Right, right. With Dr. Cade getting in and it’s been a lot of fun as well. So I think honoring everybody wh o’s b een in Florida, it’s invented some cool stuff is really, really nice.

Richard Miles: 6:57

So after that, or was it after that you established the National Academy of Inventors?

Dr. Paul Sanberg: 7:02

No that was before that was before.

Richard Miles: 7:03

Oh, okay. I didn’t know that. So that’s something slightly different, right? Explain how an AI works. Who are members? What does it do?

Dr. Paul Sanberg: 7:11

It is different. That’s how I was able to get to that National Inventors Hall of Fame thing because I was the President of the National Academy of Inventors. So the National Academy of Veterans is a little different. So just like the other one, w e’re trying to say, look, there’s really cool inventions out of Florida. And now we’re the third, most populous state. We have had some impact in the National Academy i n v endors. It was a similar story, but i t w as slightly different. And that is that around the time of the great recession 10 years ago, the United States patent trademark office, trying to figure out, they were told by the government at that time that all the agencies should reach out. How can they help the economy? And the universities w ere also asked actually 250 research universities were asked by their presidents to sign a letter saying that they would make economic development. One of the legs of a stool of American research universities, which is very important. So I was an administrator at the time at USF and thinking of ways to do both things. And I was an inventor at the time, but I was a closet inventor. And when you’re an academic and you’re a professor, it’s all about federal grants, about publisher p erish and all my invention stuff was kind of on t he side, kept it behind closed doors as much as possible because it wasn’t something you did in academics, unless you’re maybe at Stanford or MIT or P urdue or someplace. So we thought, well, you know what, let’s see who the inventors are. C ause we didn’t have a real idea of who the academic inventors were. The United States patent trademark office knew exactly who the garage inventors were, who the independent inventors were, who the corporate i nventors were. They didn’t know anything much about the academic and there’s a lot of universities and a lot of money goes into university research. So to make a long story short it USF. I said, Hey, if you have a us patent come and have lunch with me. And I thought maybe there’d a dozen people c ause I hadn’t come out of the closet yet. And so then there was a hundred people showed up. A hundred faculty at USF. And so imagine how many there are around the country a nd the world that did that. So then the under secretary of commerce head of the patent office, David Kappos came down to USF to the embassy suites on campus. We had our first meeting and he inaugurated the national Academy of inventors to really get a feel and a cohort of boosting academic invention. And one of the first things we did was to try to change the culture of American universities so that it wasn’t just publish or perish. But if you did patents licensing, commercialization, startups, wo rk w ith industry, et cetera, and you’re doing that, then you should get credit for it, bu t i t ‘s p romotion and tenure, whether it’s whatever.

Richard Miles: 9:46

I heard you talk about this before. In fact, just a few months ago in Mexico city, you know, very eloquent about the whole process of commercialization of public research, which is a mouthful. But let’s talk about how important that has been for the state of Florida itself. Cause you know the story, well, I know it fairly well, but essentially Florida in the last 40, 50 years has trend formed itself from a state is primarily agricultural heavily based on tourism to a real research powerhouse. Particularly if you look at the top three leading universities, a University of South Florida, University of Florida, University of Central Florida in terms of research, how does that feed into both the local economies and the state economies in terms of what’s the actual return on investment from these universities are those national dollars. How do those translate into jobs and follow on technologies?

Dr. Paul Sanberg: 10:34

I mean, that’s what people need to realize is that when we bring dollars for research into Florida universities, and there’s really five, what we call our one research, one universities in Florida, I would add to the list o f Florida State, of course, and Florida International University. And then of course, privately o f University of Miami, right? A s a private university, when all this dollars comes in, there’s two advantages. One is they’re not recycled Florida dollars. They’re coming in from the feds, right? Most of it an d th ey’re coming in from outside or they’re coming in from industry. And so this is new dollars to the state and it’s a couple billion dollars we’re talking here. And then if you go to the U.S. Department of Commerce, when you look at economic impact of dollars that come in, they say, multiply it ti mes 2.2 So you’re looking at $4 or $5 billion of impact economic impact in the state of Florida, just from the research dollars. Now think about it. W hat about the translation of those research dollars? The new findings, the new startup companies. If you look at the three universities, you just mentioned, which we call the hig h-tech qu arter universities, you know, UF, UCF and USF along interstate four and th e hi g h te c h qu a rter in the last five years, I would say those three universities have had more U.S. patents tha n th e research triangle park in North Carolina and the university of Texas system and, and the whole system. And that’s significant because eventually those will spawn out new companies, new licenses, new technologies, even if the patent hadn’t been licensed or whatever, that patent that we’ve done creates a bar that the next patent, whoever does it has to go to. So we’ve influenced the discovery of new technologies just by having a single patent because it’s gotta be novel, right? So the next person that’s in the same field has to do something a little different. That may be the one it’s marketed. It may be ours.

Richard Miles: 12:22

And this is where our worlds intersect here because you know, the Cade Museum, we’re trying to do something similar, but sort of at the opposite end of the pipeline. Whereas you’re mostly recognizing lifetime achievement and inventiveness and research. We’re sort of working with hopefully future generations of inventors and researchers and so on. And one reason we’re so happy today, in fact, to unveil something sponsored by the University of South Florida and Florida Inventors, Hall of Fame, telling exactly that story of, o f F lorida’s contribution. U m, Paul, every guest I have on the show, I g ot t o ask, what were you like as a kid? What were some of your early influences? D id, did your parents say don’t come home until you’ve accomplished at least eight things, it got sort of s tared, i t seems how it turns out or, or did you have an incredible teacher or what?

Dr. Paul Sanberg: 13:02

Well, I grew up in Hialeah for the first through. You really are a Florida guy. I am, I was born at Coral Gables at doctors hospital and lived in those little cracker house in Hialeah my parents didn’t have much money. And I just remember an event that happened that I was asked to go onto a local TV show and talk about math.

Richard Miles: 13:22

How old were you Paul?

Dr. Paul Sanberg: 13:23

I was probably six or seven or something. I can still see it in my mind. I was on a show and you’re three or four kids. And then we were asked math questions. And that was kind of cool. I thought, well maybe, maybe I know something. Maybe I can count my dad’s money or something. So then we moved to California and I was a typical California person. It was rock and roll. It was cars, but I always liked academics. I liked biology. And then college, my parents again got financially a little bit in problems. And so my mother’s family was from Toronto. And so we moved to Canada and I went to college and there and thought, maybe I’d be a music major actually. And you know, you’re in Canada and music majors got to learn every instrument and do all the composition and all this. I just , I just wanted to sing rock n’ roll songs you know.

Richard Miles: 14:08

You just want it to be the next McJagger . Right ?

Dr. Paul Sanberg: 14:10

Exactly. You know, or Tom petty, Tom Petty is Florida. It was the, it was Tom petty, The Eagles , all that stuff. So instead I took liberal science. So I took liberal science. And then it was this course I told you about where I all of a sudden started studying the brain and worked with a professor that was just amazing. And it’s amazing when you have a mentor and a professor. And then that summer, he asked me to be his research assistant.

Richard Miles: 14:35

And this is still as an undergraduate?

Dr. Paul Sanberg: 14:37

Undergrad yeah as an undergrad. And it was just so much fun. And I worked with a graduate student and I ended up publishing number of papers as an undergrad with them. In fact, I just went back, got, they gave me some alumni award in Toronto at the university hadn’t been back in years. And it was a lot of fun. It made me remember a lot of things, but I paid my way through college, had to climb telephone poles to change out transformer oil and stuff in the middle of winter and things like this. It was not fun.

Richard Miles: 15:04

That’s a great story. I feel bad that I didn’t pull up that YouTube video that I’m sure exists of young Paul Sanberg on that mass show back in.

Dr. Paul Sanberg: 15:12

No, it was interesting time and out of the five kids, I’m the only one that got a bachelor’s degree. Only one that really went to college, got a bachelor’s degree, which is what USF has a lot of. Ri ght. Which I really like USF because of that, because we have that first college student and you can make a real impression on them. It’s not like they’re growing up and thinking, you know what? My dad went to FSU, so I’m going to go to FSU. It’s a, what am I going to do? An d t hat first to college feeling.

Richard Miles: 15:37

Paul, it’s been great having you on the show. Very impressive life story, impressive accomplishments, really glad that we have formed a partnership in which both institutions are promoting inventors. And um , that whole story and look forward to having you back on show at some point.

Dr. Paul Sanberg: 15:51

Oh, happy to be here. I’m really glad what you do. And just ask me anytime.

Richard Miles: 15:55

Thanks. I’m Richard Miles.

Outro: 15:59

Radio Cade would like to thank the following people for their help and support Liz Gist of the Cade Museum for coordinating and vendor interviews. Bob McPeak of Heartwood Soundstage in downtown Gainesville, Florida for recording, editing and production of the podcasts and music theme. Tracy Collins for the composition and performance of the Radio Cade theme song featuring violinist, Jacob Lawson and special thanks to the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention located in Gainesville, Florida.

Our 2019 Cade Prize winners, Greg Hudalla and Ben Keselowsky, have invented a new way to control inflammatory diseases such as arthritis. The method uses natural enzymes to suppress inflammation at the source, without the harmful side effects of medications.   Ben, a native of Tampa and a graduate of the University of South Florida, always enjoyed science and math and was inspired by his high school physics teacher. Greg, originally from Chicago, became interested in medicine after a serious knee accident at 18 ended his collegiate athletic career.   

As a kid and a young man Michael Seres, the founder and CEO of 11 Health, was plagued by Chrons disease and intestinal problems. Eventually, this required him to have an intestinal transplant, just the 11th ever performed in the UK. The surgery left him with a permanent companion, an ostomy bag. Tapping on business skills he developed creating product merchandising for TV shows like The Apprentice and Who Wants to Be A Millionaire, he created a better ostomy bag and launched 11 Health.