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- [00:01]
A
It's not just that the market demand is going to be smaller for the go to market. It's also that the speed at which these companies want to adopt a new technology is slowing down. So you kind of get this like, cascading effect.
- [00:16]
B
Welcome back to another episode of Builders. As always, this show is brought to you by Frontlines IO, Silicon Valley's leading B2B podcast production studio. If you're bringing technology to market and want to learn from your peers, we have a library of more than 1200 interviews with Venture backed founders and marketers where they talk all things to market. Of course, if you want to launch your own podcast, we offer podcasts as a service to more than 80 tech startups. The idea there is very simple. You show up and host and we do everything else. Now with all that said, let's jump into today's episode. Our guest today is Susan Stone, CEO of Blue Current. Susan, welcome to the show.
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A
Thanks. I'm excited to be here.
- [00:56]
B
Yeah, looking forward to our conversation. So I see that you took over as CEO in 2024. Company was founded in 2014, so just start at a high level. What excited you about the opportunity? Why'd you decide to join?
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A
Oh my gosh, I think our technology was too good to pass up. I mean, really, I used to be in solar, so by way of background I was an investment banker and then I was an investor and then I went in as an operator at one of my portfolio companies, which was a deep tech company in solar. And I liked making electrons. And I used to get asked a lot, what would you do if you weren't in solar? And my answer, like sincerely, was always energy storage because the two go together so well. But truly, I think energy storage just unlocks so much. So I already had this fondness for energy storage. And when I started talking to Blue Current first, I met our board and investors because that's who was leading the charge to, you know, bring in a CEO. But I quickly met our cto, Kevin, who is a co founder and he's really the inventor of our technology today. And what really resonated with me was that this company was not founded to follow a particular technology. This company was founded with the North Star of creating a safer battery, whatever that meant. And so originally they had a completely different technology they were working on. They made batteries, they sent em out to third party test and they had, you know, flames like they were not safe. So they went back to the drawing board and started working with silicon as an active material in the anode which is really unique at the time. It's still relatively unique. Silicon in a completely dry battery allows us to make a battery that really is safe but has no other compromises. So we can deliver energy density, which, if you're in like an EV mindset that that means range. So we can deliver energy density. Really durable batteries, like nice long cycle Life, think like 1500 cycles. They're safe, they operate at high temperature. They're just these really, really wonderful batteries that we're able to create because we're using silicon in a dry environment. So that's a very long answer to tell you that I was excited about the technology because I think it's transformational.
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B
And when you joined, what was the state of the efforts to commercialize this technology?
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A
Really fledgling, I think. And that was also something that was appealing to me. You know, not necessarily the commercialization efforts were fledgling, but really that the team and investor group had been both disciplined and patient in developing the chemistry for, you know, the company had been around 10 years, but they had been working on an alternate chemistry. So it's, you know, six, seven years by then to really get the chemistry to a point where it's just truly ready to go to market. So, you know, call that kind of September. I came in at the end of September 2024, you know, call it, you know, summer, fall 2024. We spent the next 12 months fundraising, so we can come back to that. But at the during, while, you know, I was out with a lot of the leadership team fundraising, our advanced manufacturing team was commissioning our pilot line to make pilot cells so that we can actually get them into customer hands and really kick off our commercialization journey and effort in earnest. So we were really at the beginning of commercialization, I would say, when I joined, like very, very start, we were sampling R and D cells and sharing data, but that was about it.
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B
When you joined, what were some of the big decisions that you had to make or maybe some of the hard decisions that you made? You know, fork in the road type decisions where if this works, it's going to be great. If it's not, then, yeah, obviously not good. What decisions come to mind like that?
- [04:29]
A
Yeah, gosh, there are a lot. I mean, there are a ton. I think we make decisions all day, every day, and some that feel inconsequential turn out to be really consequential and vice versa. You know, one of the things that I think has been really special for us since I've been at Blue Current is we've developed a relationship with Amazon that culminated in them anchoring our latest capital raise and being very, very involved with us. And one of the things that they think about very clear when they make decisions is are you going through a one way door or a two way door? So that's a framework that we use pretty frequently at Blue Current also, you know, to really measure the consequence, particularly the risk of a particular decision. So, you know, we try to create two way door decisions wherever we can, things that we can't come back from. But we do go through some one way doors too. I think. You know, one that was very consequential for us is that when I joined we had a partner who is an automotive company that was developing cells with us. We had research agreement that we were working collaboratively with them to create what would have really been a joint battery using a lot of our ip, but you know, using some of theirs too. And it was a very collaborative effort. As their strategy changed, the long term benefits of that relationship started to look less and less attractive to us and the resource allocation started to look bigger and bigger and that was one day one way door. Maybe we could go back to that relationship at some point in time, way out into the future. But exiting that relationship was a pretty consequential decision and it was the right thing for us to do. I think it was the right thing for them to do as well. But it was scary in the moment.
- [06:07]
B
Sure. This show is brought to you by Frontlines Media, a podcast production studio that helps B2B founders launch, manage and grow their own podcast. Now, if you're a founder, you may be thinking, I don't have time to host a podcast. I've got a company to build. Well, that's exactly what we built our service to do. You show up and host and we handle literally everything else. To set up a call to discuss launching your own podcast, visit Frontlines I.O. podcast. Now back to today's episode. What about on the go to market side? What did that early GTM look like? And then maybe just talk us through any of the major evolutions over the last two years.
- [06:39]
A
Yeah, I mean that's changed a ton. And I think being a human on this planet, you could probably imagine what I'm about to say. You know, when I joined, EVs were just still hot. And if you were making batteries, you were making batteries for EVs. I mean, that was the name of the game. And so our original go to market plan was very EV and mobility centric. Even our R and D efforts were really focused on Making a battery that would work really well for the EV market, which, you know, in some ways is a little bit. Well, the battery is very high performance. So that it's not easy, but it's kind of knowable. That really changed, I think about six months in for us. And you know, some of it was, you could read the headlines like I think we were all seeing the EV market start to cool off. But what that means for companies like Blue Current is it's not just that the market demand is going to be smaller for the go to market. It's also that the speed at which these companies want to adopt new technology is slowing down. So you kind of get this like cascading effect. Luckily, at the same time, you know, stationary storage, because of AI data centers and because of just this need to support our grid has just exploded. And so our go to market strategy really shifted from hey, let's go out and talk to every auto OEM and get them excited about our battery, which felt pretty straightforward, to okay, back to first principles. What can our battery do? What are the performance metrics that each of these applications should care about and can we deliver? Where should we focus? So, you know, we went through a pretty big exercise to figure out if we thought we had a product for stationary storage storage. The good news is we do. And so that's kind of our anchor go to market application right now. And then we're also pretty focused on what I think of as, you know, kind of mobility kind of broadly defined. So for us, that's robotics, micro mobility. You know, some of these applications that need a high performance battery, but that maybe don't have the extended timelines that conventional automotive do.
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B
You mentioned you went through an exercise there and I'm sure there was very detailed process to identify that market. Can you take us behind the scenes into that process for, sorry, stationary batteries?
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A
Is that I frame it, yeah, for stationary storage. Okay, so it sounds like I should back up for a second and tell you what I mean. So I know it sounds obvious, right? Stationary storage, it's batteries that don't move. So we're really talking about our batteries to one firm renewables. So think like solar plus batteries. Right? The sun only shines during certain hours. How can you deliver energy? 24, seven batteries. So firming renewables, providing power sources at data centers. And then there are a lot of applications for using batteries to buffer electricity, whether that's utility scale in a home residential format. So you know, kind of that's the big stationary storage market. And for us it was really about understanding what matters in that market, because it's not the same as what matters to an EV application. So understanding what matters there. And so the competition to new batteries is LFP batteries. A lot of them are made in China, but they're very knowable. And the things that they do really well are they last a really long time and they're relatively safe. They're not inherently safe the way that that current battery is, but they provide some safety benefits. So, you know, first it was really evaluating what's on the market today and what are the benefits, and then stacking our cells and ultimately evaluating what would our cells look like packaged into a system so that we can evaluate the system level head to head relative to what's already on the market today. And we really needed to be convinced that we had a compelling product, not just a good enough product, that we have a compelling product stacked up against the competition.
- [10:29]
B
I may get some of these details wrong, but I had another energy storage company on, and I believe what he was explaining to me is like the cost of the testing of the batteries was just absurd. And to do the safety test, they had to basically destroy the batteries. And he ended up spending, I think it was millions and millions of dollars just to get through the testing phase. Does that sound right?
- [10:48]
A
It may be. I mean, to me that sounds perhaps like someone who was making batteries for automotive. And I just say that because there's like a really rigid stage gate process to get into for good reasons. Right. I mean, we're driving these batteries around on the road, so I get why we have these processes. I mean, look, safety testing is a pretty well known exercise. And he's absolutely right. You need to destroy batteries. One of the tests is a nail penetration test where it's exactly what it sounds like. You literally put a nail through the battery, battery is destroyed. So, you know, I think there can be long testing cycles. We do need to destroy product in order to, you know, validate safety testing. So no disagreement. And it sounds like he was in a pretty long testing cycle.
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B
What is that testing cycle for you? Like, how long does that take?
- [11:32]
A
Well, I think, you know, the safety testing is relatively quick for us. And because safety testing is typically about destroying the battery in some way, either doing that nail penetration test or getting it as hot as you possibly can to figure out at what temperature eventually something breaks. Hopefully it doesn't, you know, go up in flames, but what temperature something breaks. What takes more time for us, and I think, you know, just for batteries in general, is performance Testing and in particular cycle life. That is such an important part of a battery's, you know, economics and financial case. Right. Like how long will the battery last? So calendar life, just like how long over time will it last? And then how many times can I cycle it? Because that tells you the economics of that system. And for better or worse, it takes time to cycle batteries. And so you can have, we have simulation models, we can extrapolate data, but there's just absolutely no substitute for cycling batteries in real time. And that time has to elapse. So that's what takes off, that's what takes a while.
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B
Is there a third party that does all of that testing, like Nielsen for like TVs? Like, is there someone that's a trusted third party that handles all of that testing?
- [12:43]
A
There's not one monolithic testing organization. Well, I'll back up. And you know, to certify batteries for sale, you know, you go through UL certification. That's a pretty classic organization that, you know, most folks know for, you know, pre certification testing. There are third party test houses. There are many of them. You know, we have folks that we use in the Bay Area. You can also do third party testing at some of the national labs. We have some really well funded battery research organizations that the DOE has funded. All of that said, we do most of our testing in house because that increases our cycle time to be able to test in house. So I would say one of the most precious functions at Blue Current are battery channels. So, you know, we have to choose wisely what we're testing for and what our testing protocol is, because we eventually will run out of channels. This show is brought to you by the Global Talent company, a marketing leader's best friend. In these times of budget cuts and efficient growth, we help marketing leaders find, hire, vet and manage amazing marketing talent for 50 to 70% less than their US and European counterparts. To book a free consultation, visit GlobalTalent
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B
co. And when it came to that, you know, the pivot of saying that automotive is not gonna be the market, how did you think about that ideal customer? How did you think about defining that ideal customer?
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A
So, you know, for us it was a kind of a two part journey, I would say, you know. Right. And this was just, some of it was just luck, you know, Right at the time that we saw the EV market cooling off and slowing down, we were at that time accelerating our conversations with Amazon. So they had not invested yet. But part of their process is to do an incredible amount of due diligence on the technology and company, but also on the humans. So we had developed a lot of relationships within that organization. So, you know, part one of that answer is we've spent a lot of time with individuals at Amazon who are responsible for different applications that are great fits for the blue current batteries. So that's a little bit of a shortcut is, you know, we're able to look into that organization and they've been just incredibly generous with us with their time and helping us understand how we can fit into their ecosystem. So the really easy answer is, well, the ideal customer in this case happens to be Amazon for a lot of these and we have access to them. So very, very lucky in that case. You know, at the same time, obviously we did not know that they were going to invest, we hoped, because we didn't know at that time. And so we started to think about what was important to us, like who would actually value our battery and be able to help us to get it to market quickly. Because I think, you know, people say time is the enemy of all deals. They think time is also the enemy of startups. You know, you can just time cost while your pre revenue time is very, very expensive. So we were looking for customers that had a need for batteries would value safety. And you know, we have a hypothesis that customers won't really pay for safety on its own, but the benefits that come with safety accrue to the customer and so on the margin that gives us a competitive advantage. So you know, folks who have a need for batteries, have a need for safe batteries and then have quick development cycles was our other requirement. So as we've already talked about that, you know, that kind of pushes automotive to the side a little bit. Which to be clear, we're not anti automotive. It's just a slower burn for us because they take time. And we started looking at, you know, who really needs safe batteries. Robotics. They need safe batteries. They have very quick development cycles. They tend to be creative and engineering focused. So that's a category that we started getting excited about. Drones are another one that kind of fit into that profile. And so you can start to, you know, you can start to imagine when you have those requirements, certain categories bubble to the top. And so robotics, drones, stationary storage really bubbled to the top for us because that's where a lot of creativity is happening.
- [16:38]
B
How do you think about narrowing that down to say, okay, this is where we're going to really focus? It sounds like you're in the position that a lot of technology companies are where there's a lot of different markets to go after. There's a lot of different directions. Like, how do you make those decisions? Because I feel like those are always the painful and at least for me, very scary decisions. When you say yes to this market, no to this market, or even not for now for this market.
- [16:59]
A
Yeah. Oh, exactly. You know, I think what we're really trying to do is thread the needle a little bit here. And by that I mean we are going to market with a single battery chemistry. That is the chemistry that we originally developed for the EV market. The hard thing and the nice thing about EV battery batteries is they have to be able to do everything and they have to be able to deliver at a relatively low cost. So if you can nail a battery that's going to fit into the EV market, it's probably good for lots of other applications. So that was a great foundation. And then we started to think through form factor and can we develop a single form factor that will serve multiple markets at the cell level? Because remember, we make battery cells and then they ultimately get packaged into a module and a system. So our vision is to have the same battery chemistry. We're going to the market with the same battery chemistry and a very limited number of form factors that we can make on our pilot line we can eventually make in scale manufacturing and that will go into multiple applications. And as an example, I think Tesla's a great example there because they were the original guys that we saw take automotive EV batteries and put them into a stationary storage system. And it works beautifully. So we've been inspired by folks like Tesla.
- [18:18]
B
Good company to be inspired by.
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A
Yeah, exactly. I can't complain.
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B
Now, final question for you. We only have two minutes left, so let's talk about the big picture vision here. So I'm sure there's a vision inside your head. I'm sure it's printed out in the company for that to all become true. You know, what does this world look like in five years or 10 years?
- [18:35]
A
We are in scaled production. I mean that if we could be in scaled production and you know, for us that's a gigawatt hour or larger factory truly on the market in scaled production in five years, that would be like lightning speed. It's a stretch goal, but we're going for it. So that is our roadmap. Get these battery equities made, get them out into the market. So in five to 10 years we will be in scaled production. I hope it's closer to 5 than 10.
- [19:02]
B
Amazing. I love it. Well, it's been a really fun conversation. We'll have to bring you back on. I don't want to wait five years. Maybe we're going to do it in Truckee, but this has been awesome. Thanks so much for taking the time before we wrap. For those who are listening and that want to follow along with you, where should we send them? Where should they go?
- [19:14]
A
Ooh, come see us@bluecurrent.com, come check us out on our website. Hit the forms there and we will get back to you. We would love to hear from you. And like everybody else, I'm on LinkedIn. So come find me on LinkedIn and stay in touch.
- [19:26]
B
Amazing. Thanks again for taking the time.
- [19:28]
A
Thanks, Brad.
- [19:31]
B
Well, that's all for today's episode of Builder, brought to you by the Frontlines. If you want more amazing content like this, visit Frontlines IO where you'll find the library of more than 1500 interviews with founders, marketers and other GTM leaders, where we unpack the tactical lessons from their journey. And of course, as always, if you do want to launch your own podcast, we'd love to have a conversation with you. Visit Frontlines IO podcasts as a service. Mention that you listen, mention you love the show and we'll give you a 10% discount. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you on the next episode.