Jared O'Leary, Ph.D., is the co-founder and CEO of SirenOpt, and Ali Mesbah, Ph.D. is his cofounder and also his former PhD advisor. Ali is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at UC Berkeley.

SirenOpt is a Berkeley spin-out that is solving one of manufacturing's biggest blind spots.

Their PlasmaSens platform uses cold atmospheric plasma and AI to non-destructively inspect thin films and nanomaterials in real-time—catching defects and inconsistencies that traditional methods miss entirely. They're helping manufacturers of batteries, semiconductors, and aerospace components accelerate R&D, optimize production, and dramatically improve quality control.

In this episode of Lab to startup, we talk about how the industry currently solves the problems, and how SirenOpt is improving them; Then we deep dive into their technology; the origins of the startup from research at UC Berkeley; customer discovery, especially importance of relationship building and how it is different from just interviewing potential customers; lessons from working with industry; their fundraising journey and many other topics including Jared's experience working at Theranos.

Shownotes:

https://www.sirenopt.com/
Advance coatings, thin films and micro/nano scale materials are critical in several industries. But manufacturing these components are inherently probabilistic
SirenOpt providing hardware and software solutions for real time tracking
Overview of current solutions
SirenOpt technology overview
Initial medical applications
Challenges with cold atmospheric pressure plasma
Transition from an academic project to startup journey
Feedback from industry
Lessons from Jared working at Theranos
Importance of transparency and building trust while working with customers
Importance of academic thinking while building deeptech startups
Market exploration: Foray into battery industry
Customer discovery vs relationship building
Support from Ali: from an academia-industry relationship point of view
Venture scalability: Demonstrating the size of the market
Working with semiconductor industry
Lessons from working with academic PI as your cofounder
Fundraising journey
Role played by accelerators and incubators: Berkeley Skydeck & Activate
Lessons from hiring
Long term vision & lessons transitioning from academic scientist to a startup CEO

Cold Plasma Meets Machine Learning: The SirenOpt Story of Solving Manufacturing's Nanoscale Blind Spot