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- [00:01]
A
Mahmood sent me this now famous text at around 11:17pm not around, it was 11:17pm Right. Basically just saying, tim, you can rest now. It's working. And there's this video of single molecules on the instrument.
- [00:22]
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 learn from your peers, we have a library of more than 1200 interviews with Venture backed founders and marketers. Where they talk, all things go 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. Today we're speaking with Tim Cracks, CEO and founder of Exciting Instruments. Tim, welcome to the show.
- [01:01]
A
Great to be here. Thanks Brett.
- [01:03]
B
Exciting Instruments. I already love the name. Talk to us about what's so exciting.
- [01:07]
A
So it's actually a little bit of a pun which we lean into. Our instruments excite molecules with lasers. But they're particularly exciting because we can literally detect one molecule at a time, which is really the meaningful limit of detection. Right. So imagine that molecule is the first cancer biomarker and not the stage 3 tumor or, or the first aggregation events between two proteins and not the plaque on the brain.
- [01:33]
B
And how would you explain what you do to a fifth grader or to me?
- [01:39]
A
Well, what we do is we build a benchtop instrument that's now pretty much a black box. It's a bit like what taking the mainframe computer. Right. This is something it used to take up a whole room and needed its own operator for. We've done exactly that for our field, which is to take what was literally the size of a room, had to be under laser safe environment, you know, lock and key and in the dark. And we compacted it into a desktop, well, benchtop version that any scientist can use without being the expert. So that's the analogy. They've got mainframe to desktop. We've gone from massive laser room to every, every scientist benchtop.
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B
And talk to us about the history of the company. I understand it was a spin out from university.
- [02:30]
A
That's right. So the company was spun out from my research lab at the University of Sheffield. We spun out in September 2021, nearly five years ago. Now, my goodness, it flies by and we actually bootstrapped our way for the first three years or so of our existence, which is kind of unheard of for a company that actually makes a physical instrument. Right. But we did that with, you know, debt finance guaranteed against mine and my co founders houses, which was a little exciting as well. But really then by selling the instrument itself. Right. My co founder, Robert Bell was come from a bit more of a software background where this is a little more common that you kind of, you know, build and sell ahead of actually having the thing ready to go. But that really spurred us on and so we actually had our first two sales before we built the first instrument that worked. So we've always been pushing on the boundaries of the possible. And you know, I guess the key catchphrase for us at that point in time was as long as we're not breaking the laws of physics, we think we're okay.
- [03:35]
B
And why do you think those first two customers gave you a chance? Obviously you have a very strong academic background. I would imagine that helps. But like, why did they give you a chance? Why do they trust you?
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A
I did have a very strong, and still do, let's be clear, a strong reputation academically.
- [03:51]
B
It hasn't gone away.
- [03:52]
A
No, no, no, that's fine in the field, right? That's totally reasonable. So I still have a strong academic record in the field and an international reputation in this space that was clearly a part of it. But we'd also, we did have a prototype instrument which we operated again in a dark room on a massive optics table, all of that kind of stuff, which we were able to get sort of preliminary data to prove that our physics worked, even if we hadn't solved all of the engineering bits yet. So I think that was really the trick that we were able to convince people that we could get them usable and useful data, even if we hadn't yet quite got it in the compact form that it ended up being on their benchtop in.
- [04:34]
B
And what were the traits of those two first customers? Are they just early adopters of innovative technology? What did they have in common? Maybe is a better question.
- [04:42]
A
Great question. Actually they were slightly different individuals. So1 the UMass Chan, and I'm sure he won't mind me calling him out. Kuang Shen at UMass Chan was the very first customer. He was familiar with the methods, but using a slightly different way of doing it by tethering things on a surface. And for the experiment that he wanted to do, he knew he couldn't use that method. It just doesn't work. And so he had a very specific thing in mind that he knew he wanted to do. And then our instrument was the only instrument that could really do that, especially at that price point. And the ease of use, the, that that was the key thing for him. And then the other early adopter there, Edwin Anthony at St. Louis, now he is that more classic early adopter. He loves to have the next big thing doing cool science. And this was a part of a suite of instruments that he's been building up over time. And he's a really strong proponent for us, very vocal advocate for the method now. And you know, he's often talking at conferences and he's actually brought us three or four new customers as well through his own word of mouth. Right. And all our customers, really. It's been fabulous to see, you know, them all publishing papers and cracking on and doing great work and being vocal supporters of us. Right. That's critically important.
- [05:58]
B
You mentioned vocal supporters there. Are there any vocal people who just don't believe that what you're doing is possible? And I feel like we see that whenever there's technology that's very, very innovative, there's haters, there's doubters or critics maybe is a better way to frame it.
- [06:10]
A
I think it's hard to doubt the technology itself because what we've actually done is package up something that's existed for 30 years. It's the 30th anniversary of the first paper published by Tag Chiphar where they monitored single molecule threat. Right. Which is one of the things our instrument does. So sort of the tech is incontrovertible. What people don't believe is that you could actually start a company, build the sales pipeline and the products all in parallel in a year. But that's what we did. We literally spun out in 2021 and we landed the first instrument on Quang's bench 13 months later. And that's in a hard tech business. They call it hard tech for a reason, because it's hard.
- [06:51]
B
And what do you attribute to that? Velocity? Because that's just, it's insane. That's impressive.
- [06:57]
A
I mean, I want to say kind of sheer bloody mindedness. I mean we just, you know how this works. You can't take no for an answer. You've just got to crack on. We have a very can do attitude and one that's very good at problem solving. Generally within the company we've also got brilliant people. Ultimately, you can't do this without brilliant people. And the two key people in that process, other than Rob at the beginning, were my two postdocs at the time, Mahmoud Abdulamed and Elliot Steele, and between them and me and Rob, really, we kind of just dragged this thing kicking and screaming over the line because we had to. But it was just in time delivery we got. I'm sure Quang won't mind us saying, but we got his instrument working hours before it had to be in the crate to be shipped to him for, you know, for the deadline of the purchase order that he'd put in. So, you know, it really was just in time delivery from an engineering perspective.
- [07:57]
B
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. I hope you're wearing like a whoop or an aura ring or something just to track your heart rate during that intense period.
- [08:27]
A
There was a magic moment, if I'm honest, Brett, in June, July 2022, where we really were right up against it and hadn't quite got it exactly working off the benchtop. And Mahmood sent me this now famous text at around 11:17pm not around, it was 11:17pm Right. Basically just saying, tim, you can rest now, it's working. And there was this video of single molecules on the instrument. And that was great because that was also actually it tied in with my faith and Catholicism. The very reading we had in mass that same evening was, come to me, all who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. And I was like, that's good, we're done.
- [09:15]
B
I mean, I'm sure it also had to help you with the pace you're able to move and the velocity. Given that your house was on the line, it sounds like, or literally you and your co founders houses were on the line. That was very much sounds like a burn the ships moment. There was no plan B that could fail, really.
- [09:29]
A
It certainly sharpens the mind. Right. And that's why people do that. Right. But look, I don't think we were never in doubt that this was doable and possible. That's where we come back to that. You know, are we breaking the laws of physics? No, you know, I mean, we later added, are we breaking the laws of England? To which of course the answer is no, but I know which of the two are more immutable.
- [09:56]
B
How have you approached it from a marketing perspective? So let's maybe jump ahead. You know, after you started to acquire more and more customers, how have you approached just marketing this technology and marketing your innovation?
- [10:06]
A
So what's really critical and the driving force behind why we're even doing this is democratizing the method. What we mean by that is really making it accessible, both from a ease of use perspective in every aspect, you know, to make it as usable by the widest possible set of users as possible. Lots of possibles there. There you go. Tough. What that means really for us is breaking into new sectors of the market. We've started off in academia because that's something that I know myself very well and where we've then talked to different ideal customer profiles, people obviously who are single molecule people and people who know this method, they will buy this because now they don't have to build it themselves. Right, that's great. But other people will buy it because they had to collaborate with those people before. Now they can literally have it on their own benchtop. So they do. And then other people buy it because they didn't realize they could do these types of experiments and they actually add significant value to their data that allows them to ask questions in a different way. So we do tailor our marketing to our audience. As you'd exactly expect, we're now undergoing a major shift to really sell this into biotech and pharma companies. There it's a different process because they need an end to end solution, not a research tool. And so there, what we've done is we're starting to develop specific assays for specific use cases. Some of those are in drug discovery in terms of, you know, specific ternary complex, they sort of protac and things like that and others are in antibody aggregation and those areas and others are in membrane protein space, which is super hard to do by other means. So we have very targeted campaigns in each of those different areas for our biopharma customers as well.
- [11:58]
B
I had a founder on the other day and I was asking him, you know, who are your buyers? Who are you selling to? And he's like, Brett, today everyone's just selling to the cfo. That's what matters. There needs to be an ROI story there for you. Is that not the case? Like does there need to be an ROI element or is this more about research and innovation and what's possible?
- [12:14]
A
I think it's different for different customers. For us, I think that the from Our academic clients, then yes, there is just a. This is very cool. It makes possible something that wasn't possible before. And I can literally see the shape of all of my molecules one molecule at a time. This is mind blowing, right? For an academic, very powerful for pharma clients. They need to show an roi. They're going to be spending a chunk of money that's their own company money rather than a grant from the government. And so they need to show why this is going to be a valuable addition to the suite of biophysical methods that they've got. And that's the conversations that we're having with a range of tier one drug firms, most of which we have NDAs with, which means we can't say any of their excellent names, which is really annoying. But yeah,
- [13:06]
B
what do you see move the needle in terms of evangelism? It sounds like you're in the dream position there where you have your own customers being the evangelist, which I'm sure any founder listening and has to be jealous about that because that's like the ultimate form of evangelism, but for your own self and how you're approaching it. What do you do to evangelize this technology? What's working and maybe what's not? Like what have you decided it's not worth the time giving you a limited time in the day?
- [13:28]
A
Yeah, that's good questions. You know, Twitter used to be wonderful, didn't it? And then Elon broke it, which is just such a shame because I'm pretty sure that the St. Louis instrument, Edwin Anthony Sailor came from my tweet introducing the instrument. Right. So that used to work brilliantly. I had the right three and a half thousand followers on Twitter right now. Actually, what's interesting that has migrated largely, funnily enough to LinkedIn is now where a lot of people messed around with bluesky. They tried to find a replacement for Sai Twitter and there isn't one. But actually it feels a little bit like LinkedIn is where that's ended up. And so now LinkedIn is great. I follow a lot of really great entrepreneurs and science life science tools people there. Philip Bask from Nana Tempa. Other people like this are great in this space. That thought leadership, that personal evangelization is really important, that personal credibility, my own personal brand is critical. But ultimately now the company is a thing in and of itself as well. The name recognition is great. Right? Exciting instruments. You said it right at the get go. It sticks with you, right? It's, it's a great name. We love it. So that, that helps, you know, cold email, not so much. Right. You know, there are bits that we do in of course, in terms of trying to make really targeted email campaigns, but ultimately we're trying to solve people's problems. And that's the thing, all of sales is problem solving ultimately. Right. Because if you're not solving someone's problem, they're not going to part with their hard earned cash. They're not, you know, for whatever it is you're offering. And so it's how we feel. We've got to articulate that their problems and how we solve them best and that's how we win.
- [15:12]
B
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 co. How have you approached building out the go to market team? What does the go to market team look like today?
- [15:37]
A
Yeah, so we're still very early on in our commercial footprint. So we've got now sort of demand generation manager, we've got a scientific writer who's helping to translate all of our kind of what was previously, you know, really expert science, but into language that all of biologists and everyone across the world can understand and connect with. So that's really important. And then we've got a team of business development managers across Europe, east coast and west coast US and some field application specialist scientists as well that enable our customers and future customers, you know, interested parties to really engage with the technology. So we're still in the infancy of that, but we are building that engine now and it's really starting to purr actually, which is great.
- [16:29]
B
I know you said it's early. Are there any big lessons that you've learned, any painful lessons, any missteps that ended up costing you some time? Or is it too early to have made mistakes yet?
- [16:38]
A
I mean if you're not the speed that we have to go, we are making mistakes. Right. And I think if we weren't making mistakes that would be a sign we're not going fast enough actually. It's not like break things. That's not that quote. That's not what I'm saying at all. But it is that you can, if you're being too careful, you are going too slowly. So they've definitely been missteps along the way. There are definitely times when we've engaged with, you know, on projects where we know that in six months we'll have the perfect solution, but we don't quite yet have it. And maybe then you lose that customer because you're just not quite ready. But you've got to take those because you've got to get ready. Right? So I think there is that. There's always those things where if you had a team of a hundred behind you, obviously you'd be able to bang a lot of this out a lot quicker. But actually being lean and focused is part of the fun of the startup land. Right. So, you know, yes, we've. There've been times when, you know, maybe we've bitten off more than we can chew. I think there have been times where we've been spread a little too thin because we want to go at too many things at once and we really need to focus. And I take that, as my co founder Rob says, I think, you know, and as others have said, you know, the thing that can kill you is just too many ideas. Right? You know, more too many ideas. There's enough ideas to kill a company here. Well, let's make sure that doesn't happen. We're now very focused, very clear on our priorities and our milestones and so are now the team around us as well. And I think that's actually what's really important is keep that focus, really find the things that are going to be the, what are the key inflection points that you need to hit and drive at those with everything you've got.
- [18:19]
B
And final question for you, let's zoom out three years into the future. What's the big picture vision here?
- [18:24]
A
So three years from now we'll have many instruments across biotech and pharma, really enabling next generation drug discovery and new modalities. Biologics, RIP tax, all sorts of fun and games, right? But actually we'll also have begun the process of our diagnostic arm as well, which will be the sort of the third tranche, if you like, of key IP and development within the company. I think there is a world in which we have the power within our company to actually eradicate symptomatic dementia from the planet. We probably should do that.
- [19:01]
B
Sounds like a good idea to me.
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A
So let's see.
- [19:06]
B
Amazing. I love it. Tim, this has been super fun, it's been super exciting. Where should we send people they want to follow along with you?
- [19:11]
A
LinkedIn and our website, just excitinginstruments.com they'll find a wealth of information on the method, on the team, on the ethos. And listen, we're always looking for great people to join us, whether that's as people here on site in the uk, in Sheffield, at our hq in the us, in Europe, soon to be across Asia, and also as investors and partners, you know, really open to very collaborative approach that we take. Come join the exciting family.
- [19:40]
B
Love it. Tim, thanks so much. It's been a lot of fun.
- [19:42]
A
Thanks, Brett. Cheers.
- [19:47]
B
Well, that's all for today's episode of Builders, 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.