S9E13: Discovering a mission along the way in deep tech, with Scott White (CEO, PragmatIC)

Richard Medcalf
Hi Scott, Welcome to the show.

Scott White
Hi Richard, Very good to be here.

Richard Medcalf
So I'm interested in this. You are the CEO of PragmatIC, which is a really fascinating company working on deep tech, right? I mean, really breakthrough things. So before we jump into your sense of mission and purpose, and what makes you tick, and so forth, just tell me a little bit, what's the company all about?

Scott White
Sure. So PragmatIC, we make flexible semiconductor devices. So semiconductors is one of these interesting areas where, probably a few years ago, people are not in the tech area, we might never have heard of them but it's obviously been in the news quite a lot recently, because semiconductor devices are critical in just about every product we we own today that has any kind of functionality. So everything from your car to your dishwasher, to of course, your your laptop, and your mobile phone and electronic devices you carry. So these are primarily in the form of silicon chips are invented about 50 years ago and they basically form the brain of all electronic devices and that PragmatIC, what we developed is a flexible non silicone equivalent to that. So we make wavelengths of integrated circuits or chips, which look like this and as you can see, they're extremely thin and flexible that or waiver...

Richard Medcalf
Let me interrupt just anyone who does listening on the podcast, it looks like a piece of I don't know, cellophane, right? I mean, it's extremely this, it's absolutely.

Scott White
Exactly. So it's, it does essentially just look like a thin sheet of plastic and actually, most of what it is, is just the plastic substrate that holds it together. That sheet or wafer, as they call it in the industry is comprised of anywhere from several 100 to several 1000 individual chips, so they get chopped up into the individual chips, which then get applied into the product but the big difference with our technology is that that unique, extremely thin, flexible form factor compared to a rigid silicon chip and the fact that we can make them for an order of magnitude lower cost and what that means is we can put electronic intelligence into things that you wouldn't normally consider it being viable in. So this is not about replacing the silicon chip in your laptop and your mobile phone. It's more about how do you embed electronics into the things we interact with every day? So one of the...

Richard Medcalf
Kinds of things, what kind of things would that be?

Scott White
So one of the biggest examples is in packaging for fast moving consumer goods. So if you think about everything you buy in the supermarket, every day, it's in some sort of packaging, because that's needed to ship it around the world and to protect the contents. That packaging generally is fairly dumb, it doesn't do anything interesting and of course it it ends up being wasted at the end of the process. What companies are doing with our technology is embedding it in the packaging, to create a unique identifier that can be tracked automatically through the entire product lifecycle that has huge benefits in terms of being able to manage the inventory, as it goes through the distribution chain, reduce waste, improve efficiency, avoid anti counterfeits get proof of provenance, things like that and actually, most interestingly, the one we're seeing is that at the end of the life of that packaging, being able to ensure it gets recycled, or indeed to enable reusable packaging models that provide a better sustainability for for that kind of solution.

Richard Medcalf
Right. So yes, this is fascinating stuff. You are taking technology into new areas, because you can yeah, having a flexible approach, you know, a flexible product allows you to put it in places which traditionally Laylee droids couldn't reach. So yeah, fast. Fascinating. How did you get into I mean, you say this is like, I guess, I guess it must have started off in the research project in some way. I mean, early stage, I mean, there's it's not a massive existing market that you just walked into and said we'll do that to you created this. So how did you get into the game how to into this game? Take us back to...

Scott White
So probably best to just take it back to a bit personal history. So my I'm originally a mathematician and computer scientist but I've never actually worked as an as an engineer. I spent several years at McKinsey, management consulting eventually got bored with that because you never actually got to do anything you just got to advise but it was obviously a great business experience learning how to have to deal with and help improve the problems of some of the biggest companies in the world but you know, when I decided to leave there, what really excited me was how do you take interesting technologies and commercialize them. So very long journey there, but I I joined a telecoms Research Center where I started my first company and since then prior to I built and sold five previous technology businesses with PragmatIC the way I got involved in in this area was, I got, when I'd sold one of my previous businesses, I was recruited into a spin out from the University of Manchester that had some very interesting technology, as you said, to kind of come out of the research environment and it was a, a novel electronic device architecture that was particularly suited to being made in thin film materials. As it turns out, that particular technology didn't really have the right manufacturability and repeatability to scale but what it did prompt was a set of very interesting discussions with potential customers around what they were looking for and on the back of that, myself and Richard price CTO, formed PragmatIC, with a view to develop the right technology platform to address that application. So this was 12 years ago, started essentially with a concept and a little bit of sort of core IP that were acquired out of that Manchester spin out but 99% of what we do is, is technology that we've developed in house to address this specific objective of how you make thin, flexible and extremely low cost integrated circuits.

Richard Medcalf
Got it. So this was a typical example of the journey not quite being what you expect, you start off with the technology that you think you can go with you realize in cut, that's not going to get you where you want to be but in the meantime, you've had conversations, you've seen the the need, you've seen, there is an opportunity, you can see there's value there that can be created and that actually prompted you to say, well, let's roll up our sleeves and, and build the right thing for that need.

Scott White
That's right and in one sense, it it kind of highlights the generic difference in approach that you tend to see between the UK and say the US. So in the UK, the most common thing is defined a technology that's been developed and spun out of academia, that then you try and commercialize and find application to drive into. In the US the model is much more around starting with the business problem and figuring out how to you invent the right technology solid, that it's obviously not completely black and white like that but there is there is a broad distinction there and my first my first tech business I founded in Australia, but then we got funding in Silicon Valley. So sort of my, my formative learning around how you grow technology business was all in in Silicon Valley and that really kind of led to a lot of the drivers first, how did we How did we develop this with PragmatIC is that Yeah, we had a technology, that was kind of interesting, it would have been nice if that had fit but actually the fact that the technology doesn't do what you need to isn't really a barrier to going and doing something interesting when you've identified a a unique market opportunity that no one else is really addressing.

Richard Medcalf
Well yeah, got it. So let's play with you a bit. We do this season is called mission driven. CEOs, I want to say right now is a very, it's the name of the company. It's very PragmatIC, right, you know, you, you spotted, you can come across technology, or you can make a quick buck on this one. didn't quite work out but you've done it. I'm joking a bit, but it was it obviously came through perhaps some random discussions, you know, you encountered this technology thought I could build a business on this and now here we are on the show talking about mission.

Scott White
Sure.

Richard Medcalf
So what's the journey from that kind of entrepreneurial start to Where are you now in terms of what your why you do this? Right, what gets you out of bed in the morning?

Scott White
Yes, it's a very interesting question and you mentioned also at the start, I think the word deep tech and I think that, to me is sort of one of the interesting differences that has led to us becoming more more mission driven. So my previous companies, I would classify as technology companies, but not deep tech companies and the way I distinguish the two is, with most technology companies, they are using technology to achieve a particular goal but they aren't actually inventing new technology. Apple is a classic example. Absolutely fantastic company but intentionally, they generally are not at the forefront of technology. They take existing technology, they package it into a product that is better thought out and has a better ecosystem around them than many others and that's why they're so successful. So there's nothing wrong with that but it's just a very different beast from a a deep tech business where your fundamental differentiation is you've, you've invented a new technology and so if I apply that to what we're doing at PragmatIC, we, as we just described, started with this business business problem that were identified that we had a number of customers were talking to her said, we need the equivalent of silicon chip that is thin, flexible and much lower cost. We set out to develop the technology to achieve that and having done that what we discovered was we had invented a fundamentally new approach to semiconductor manufacturing, and that had opportunities that were far broader than our original market objectives and so about five or six years ago, as a management team, we went through a process of thinking through that thinking through the range of different things we could do with the technology with the business, and relating that to what actually drove us individually, what was what was our biggest motivation for why we came to work every day and work the long hours trying to do this and, you know, it wasn't actually about making money, you know, yes, everybody wants to make money at the end of the day, but the thing that actually motivates you on a daily basis, often is something different and for us, it was the fact that we're starting to see really exciting opportunities for our technology in areas that we're not just marketing gimmicks, or, you know, a widget that somebody could use, but things that could fundamentally change the way the way we interact with things in the world and that could potentially address some of the biggest problems that as a society, and as a global community we face. I mentioned earlier, the opportunities for our technology in improving end of use Outcomes for for packaging, improving recycling reusable, so that was one of the things that, that we were starting to see that the way people were using our technology and consumer goods packaging, was moving from, you know, marketing driven interactivity with consumers, just to promote a brand towards something that was much more around, actually, how do we how do we achieve all these great, you know, circular economy ambitions that you know, brands have realized are essential in the longer term, you know, can can we leverage the technology to create the right solutions that actually make that viable? So you know, those those kinds of applications, healthcare was another big area, we'd seen opportunities for our technology and it wasn't necessarily the the early commercial drivers for us, because it tends to require some more complicated solutions. adoption cycle times are much longer in those kinds of industries than in something like, you know, consumer goods but you know, what we wanted to do was drive the company towards those kinds of applications where we're saying, actually, these are things that, you know, when we look back on this in 10 years time, not only do we want to build a profitable, multibillion dollar business, but we want to say actually, you know, we've, we've improved people's lives, by the way our technology is being used. So yeah, that that was kind of a transition. I guess, for us. I wouldn't, I don't think we would have described it at the time as becoming mission driven but, you know, if we think about sort of what people mean by that now, that was essentially a, you know, the process we went through was how do we change this from being a company that is purely driven around developing interesting technology to address a specific market opportunity to how do we take a much broader view on developing a technology platform in a way that has environmental and societal benefit.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, it's fascinating. I think it's always really fascinating when you start to ask people, what really excites me about this business, yeah, and there's, you know, you there's like, you said, there's obviously there's always, well, hey, there's a nice financial opportunity here, and you know, finances the fuel, you need money to do all these things but then when you get past that, yeah, you get into what really, yeah, what's what are we really gonna be proud to tell our grandchildren and all these kinds of things? And yeah, I can, I can imagine, you know, those things don't necessarily have the impact overnight, because you have that discussion, and you walk out the meeting, and things haven't yet changed but the way you think about things, that's to start to shift.

Scott White
It starts to shift and yeah, there's always a balancing act between, as you mentioned, that not just individually, the drive to make money, but also as a company, you have to you have to show a path to profitability, in order for everything else you might want to achieve with the business to be successful. It's interesting, I was reading over christmas, a book called Let my people go surfing, which is by issue and are the founder of Patagonia clothing brand and the Patagonia is very much a mission driven organization, very passionate about environmental and social issues and never actually, you know, when they started the business, it was never intended to make money it was just to basically pay their way so that they could go surfing when they want to do climbing and so it's sort of interesting, really how that's developed and he was drawing out this exact point we were talking about that the you know, the way you square the circle around having a profit oriented company that also is addressing, you know, strong environmental and social agenda is the profitability actually is the enabler to make that happen, you know, for the business to to be around and succeed and therefore, longer term develop the aspiration that has to make the world a better place. The starting point is has to be a sustainable profitable business in and of its own right, that works for the shareholders, it works for the employees and everybody that's got stock options in the business. So everybody can can financially make money out of that at the same time as driving towards this, this broader agenda and I think a lot of the venture investment community have actually also had that realization in the last decade, you know, there were a few ESG oriented funds that started up, you know, probably 1010 years or so ago but it's now become pretty much a mantra, you know, that everybody understands that actually, you can, you can actually tie these two things together, it's not that you have to be, you know, all pure and focused on social good, and not make any money but actually, if you have businesses that that are, you know, as a venture investor, you are, you are investing in that, actually, if they're driving towards a strong ESG agenda that can actually enhance the returns of the venture investment as well.

Richard Medcalf
So I guess the question I'd ask on that is, do you get finding yourself in situations of conflict on that? Right? So, because, yeah, definitely, it's best there is this self reinforcing Loop, right? Between the profit and the purpose. Although some, you know, when you get down to brass tacks, sometimes there are questions to be made about on this this particular moment, do we, you know, do we optimize for the profit? Or, you know, or do we take a slightly longer term view towards profit? In terms of the purpose? I'm just wondering, you know, what your what your thought on that is?

Scott White
Yeah, so I wouldn't, I wouldn't say there's conflict, but there is always a balancing act and in my experience, most things in business are balancing different priorities. It doesn't mean that one excludes the other, but there's always prioritization and, and how you how you trade off different decisions at various times. So, you know, we have to, you know, because of where we are, as a business, we're still in scale up mode, we're not yet profitable. That means, you know, the default situation is, yes, you have to do the things that are going to drive the business towards being a profitable, sustainable business in order to do everything else but the broader, longer term aspirations help focus, you know, which areas which areas we look at, and also, which we explicitly don't look at and that's particularly relevant for a business like ours work, because we have a very unique technology that has so many applications, we have, we have way too many things that we could do with the technology than we could ever possibly manage in terms of the bandwidth of the business. So, you know, when we look at where do we focus our efforts, there is a threshold that they have to be opportunities that are going to be substantial scale opportunities that will generate significant revenue and be profitable for the business but actually, that still leaves a huge scope of things playing and so within that broader range, we can focus the business around the ones where we think it is it's driving towards the things that excite us personally and again, I sort of come back to one of the interesting things I found is that when we'd first started this transition, I might have anticipated that the conflict that could arise there is a difference between our objectives as the management of the business versus our non management shareholders who are just in it fight for financial return and actually, what we've seen is actually there's a very strong alignment there, because there is this recognition that actually, if you're driving the business towards things that aren't just aren't just gimmicks and kind of ways of making money, but actually have a a fundamental purpose and are creating fundamental good, then everybody sort of recognizing now that that that generates better long term returns. So our investors are equally excited by the same things we are and so that doesn't actually create a conflict.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. So purpose is that is that filter for? For narrowing down the opportunity to really Yes, today is great, because then once you've done that, you're almost locked in but you know, like you've chosen the areas where you can make money and make an impact and then that's great. So I know some things just you said, you're still at an early stage in the business, you're still scaling up. If we were to go forward five to 10 years, what would you love to see, you know, what's your kind of vision for the impact that the business creates or what are you trying to build long term?

Scott White
So within the next five years, or perhaps even if we more broadly extend that we have, we have a 10 year vision and that's probably the best scope within which to put it so within the next 10 years. We are intending to roll out at least 100 fabrication lines for our technology globally, producing at least a trillion circuits that enable everyday items to become smart and interact with people and with their environment. So that is sort of the, if you like the kind of technical intangible aspect of our vision. So how that then relates to purpose is, well, what are those smart items actually do and so, within that, what we have is a few core themes, where we're focusing on the things that, you know, the real enablers of, of what are driving our business from a from a financial and profit perspective, but also from a purpose and ESG perspective and I've kind of alluded to these before, but we have three specific kind of themes. We've had two and we sort of recently added added one more. So one is circular economy and sustainability and this is partially this was started by looking at the UN sustainability objectives and say, well, you know, which of these do we actually have real leverage to be onto impact and so, you know, circular economy and sustainability, we have a very strong plan, both from a, an end user application perspective, as I described before, how do you ensure traceability of items throughout their entire lifecycle, and particularly as they go towards end of life, and use that embedded technology intelligence to be able to reduce waste and improve circularity within the economy. What we've also interested in your skeleton is all of the decisions we've made from a technical perspective to move to these thin flexible materials and allow a low cost process also translate into having a manufacturing process that is dramatically lower environmental footprint than conventional silicon chip manufacturing, about 1000 times lower carbon footprint and so what we have is this, this really nice combination, that not only the end applications, enabling a more sustainable world, but actually the way we're manufacturing the product, also drives very clearly towards that sort of net zero and better environmental agenda. So that's one key thing. The second key theme is around health care, and the way we frame that is around ubiquitous access to health care. So we obviously have huge amounts of technology focused on how do we improve health care for people, but a lot of that ends up being very expensive and so you know, then immediately leads to challenges around well, how do you fund that? How do you make sure you have fair, fair access to it? You know, how do you make sure organizations like the NHS that are already stretched, you know, doesn't just add more cost into their budget things and so again, because of the inherent uniqueness of our technology, and it's, you know, blue cost effective, you know, that has really interesting applications in, in how we apply it into medical environments to get traceability of consumable items within that and reducing waste and improving efficiency plays in but also specific product opportunities, like wearable, smart patches, that could detect atrial fibrillation, or could monitor wound healing, automatically to avoid sepsis and things like that. So there's, there's a lot of conditions that our technology can be used, because it can enable this thin, flexible, wearable form factor and do that at a cost point that is, you know, dramatically lower. So you know, this is this is moving towards things that you could go buy from your local chemist for $1, rather than have to go to your GP and have $1,000, you know, medication prescribed or have to go into a hospital and have, you know, huge amounts of expensive equipment to be able to do the same kind of diagnosis. So being able to push that and make it fair being making it accessible to developing economies around the world, and not just to the well developed. Economies. That's that's sort of the second piece of it. The third interesting piece that's been added in the last year or two is around. Security in its sort of broader sense. So you know, we've always known there are some applications for our technology in security, such as, you know, brand authentication and anti counterfeit, but you can extend that also international security, think about some of the headlines, people will have seen in the last few years around semiconductors and silicon chips being critical supply chain issues for making everything from cars to you know, pretty much everything you know, we kind of want to go and buy that isn't just a consumable item. Any industrial product includes silicon chips today and what's become apparent is that there's huge issues with the geopolitics behind that and the concentration of supply and the ability to manage supply and demand imbalance over time and our technology has some some really interesting characteristics because the cost of a fabrication plant fab, as they called in our technology is about 100 times lower than a silicon fab, its physical footprint is over 100 times smaller. This means you can put these, wherever you need them to be very much localized that manufacturing to allow to allow the technology to be indirectly integrated into supply chains and that has huge implications for for national security, for example. So those three themes are sort of, you know, the the core themes that we're focusing on that sort of cut across the technology development and the specific commercial opportunities and so, if we're coming back to that 10 year vision of rolling out these 100, fabs, you know, it's not just 100 Random firms producing a trillion items for for gimmicks, this is about, you know, we want those to be distributed around the world pushing the manufacturing as close to our customers or to the key national security objectives as, as we can, and, and addressing applications that are around improving security in its broader sense, improving circular circularity in the economy, and improving health care for, you know, the billions of people around the world. So that's that's kind of, you know, what I would ideally like to be able to look back in 10 years time and say, yes, we've got these multibillion dollar profitable businesses doing this making everybody lots of money, but actually, the way it's impacting people's lives is is actually the thing that is really transformational.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, Scott, that's fantastic and I say, I love the clarity with which you found these. I mean, the themes, they all make sense, you know, you've explained it very articulately and I think it's, it's interesting, but often, there's many technology companies who yeah, it can be sport for riches, we have this platform, it can be used for everybody, you know, and yet actually getting that focus on those key themes.

Scott White
And this has been a, this has been a very much a journey for us. So I think as we've, as we've developed the technology and the business over the last 12 years, not only has a lot of that been focused on the technology development, and the you know, the inventions and the translation into engineering and industrialization, but there's been a sort of parallel journey around understanding the scope of the the use cases for the technology, how that can translate into, into what we're doing, and getting this clarity. So we definitely did not have that, you know, 12 years ago, when we started the business and actually, even three or four years ago, we had it as a, as a sort of a concept of, oh, we think we can do something that's really good with this, not just make money out of it and it's only as we've, you know, matured the business and got it into proper manufacturing, and scaled up the team that we've then sort of, in a sense, had the bandwidth to be able to sort of really properly crystallize this properly focused resource around but so one of the fairly transformational things I think we did a couple of years ago was we hired a market development manager for circular economy. He said, Okay, if this is an important theme, this isn't just about having, you know, a sales team that are going and selling applications in that area and developing, you know, interesting technology demonstrators that show how can be used, but actually, we need somebody whose entire role in the company is understanding this entire ecosystem and how we play into it in the various different ways.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, I think I think you'll you'll put around clarity is is really important here often people want you know, they search for I want clarity, and confidence to proceed, but actually the in the rearview mirror, normally, you're progressing, you need commitment and courage to get going. That's more the point.

Scott White
I think that's right. It's, you know, I mean, there has been a rise of what I guess more now conventionally called mission driven organization, where from the start, there is a very, very clear mission but I still think that's the, that's the exception rather than the rule and most mostly, the mission sort of comes after the fact when you say you discover what can be done with it and, and it's then having the the ability to recognize that and to transform the organization is something that is focusing clearly on that rather than it just being a, you know, can't just be a sort of green greenwashing add on that, oh, you know, ESG is important to people. So we've got to, we've got to find a flag, we can wave it, it's got to be driven by something internal of actually, this is what we want to do as an organization.

Richard Medcalf
So let's shift gears a bit with a couple of quickfire questions. What's the favorite quote that you live by or you boy your team with?

Scott White
I don't know. They don't have a single favorite quote, I think we have. Again, one thing I've never really done in previous companies is we've actually got a set of corporate values and so we actually explicitly refer back to them. Pragmatism is one of them, not surprisingly, given the name, but it's us YaSM, aspiration, things like that. We have them on posters. So I've got one here on my desk and actually, what I found interesting is it's surprisingly frequently how we actually can use that as a means of helping us make decisions in the right way. So we say, well, this, is this, is this the PragmatIC decision we can make here? Or are we showing enough aspiration in what we're doing here? So I'd say that's probably more than specific quotes. If I was to pick one quote, just because it's top of mind that it's been important, some of recent discussions and my CFO kind of mentioned to the other, the other day is perfect is the enemy of good and that I think, kind of reflects the pragmatism bit, you know, this is this is not about, you know, trying to do the best thing for the sake of a purity of doing the, you know, the best possible thing, it's about, how do you do something that is fit for purpose for a given application and is good enough to do that? It doesn't have to be perfect, and it has to deliver the right functionality for what people want to do with?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, absolutely. What about a book? Do you have a favorite book that influenced you or be important to you in your entrepreneurial journey?

Scott White
Again, I don't think there's one that I'd say has been, you know, kind of across everything. It changes as, as the focus of business changes. So right now, what I mentioned most recently, you know, Let my people go surfing, you know, that is really relevant for some of the thinking we're doing at the moment of, you know, as we, as we mature as a business, you know, how do we think even more about, you know, the sort of environmental and social agenda of what we're trying to do? Probably earlier? Yeah, it would have been the classic crossing the chasm and things like that, you know, the sort of fundamentals, you know, it hasn't gone out of date in terms of, you know, the importance of some of the concepts in there and, you know, and I, the way my brain works, it, it's not good at remembering detail, but it's very good at synthesizing concepts. So often books I've read, I wouldn't be able to, quote specific bits, I wouldn't be able to remember the, the detailed methodologies that Geoffrey Moore came up with, but still, there's that sort of fundamental understanding of actually, just because you've got some first customers doesn't mean you're in the mainstream. You know, these are I think, important things for for any entrepreneur don't understand.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, I'm with you on that. Yeah, my mind is like that, as well. My son is an expert at all the remembering details, that is not my strength and many of our best guests on the show, including yourself, come from referrals and so I'm always curious, you know, who somebody who inspires you, you know, who's an impactful CEO, who you've come across, that you might recommend, as a great guest for future episode one, what do you admire about them?

Scott White
That's an interesting question, I'll probably have to get back to you as some suggestions, I don't tend to, for the one to better wander a better term go into, you know, kind of hero worship or idealization, you know, kind of everybody's got pros and cons. So I kind of very much like to look at, you know, across across the schema, and actually, that, you know, the people that I really kind of, always interested in understanding is, you know, is, you know, people like Steve Jobs, for example, you know, these these people that have been transformational in, in a business and a sector, and you know, how, how do they actually do that? It's very hard to pin down specific business decisions or things like that. So, to me, it's about the sort of understanding of how those people think about the world, so forth that I'm kind of interested in. So sorry, that's a that's a vague answer to your question as specific as it could be, but that's fine.

Richard Medcalf
So Scott, we've talked quite a bit already about where you want to take the business. So our re asked that question, but I will ask, as the business shifts and grows, what's going to be the stretch for you, right? So how do you what are you going to need to do differently, reinvent yourself and your success formula in some way to be the leader that this business will lead as it as it scales and multiplies over the next few years?

Scott White
Yes. We've actually been putting quite a lot of thought into that internally, and not just around me, but around the the company and the management team, sort of how does that evolve and we have, in the last 15 months or so doubled the size of the business from 100 people to over 200 people, that trajectory is going to continue. So the way the way I've been thinking about this is a lot of what we need to do is transitioning from an organization where pretty much everybody knows everybody else, you know, you can rely quite a lot on informal communication in terms of All things worknd you also have lots of people wearing multiple hats, you know. So, as CEO, you know, historically, I've been as involved in the technical day to day operation of the business and some of our technology development plans, as I am in, you know, going out and securing funding and developing strategy for how we take the business forward. And so I think as we evolve, you know, what, what we need is, you know, just from a fundamental perspective, we need better processes and procedures in place. So we need to bring in people into the company who understand how to do that effectively, it's not necessarily something that that is kind of in our DNA or inexperience. So most recently, I mentioned I CFO earlier. So we, we brought in a new group CFO, renewing, who came from McLaren Automotive, and has been in the automotive industry for a couple of decades, I think. So, you know, he's got a really good understanding of, you know, to build a large scale, multi billion revenue manufacturing business, what are the kinds of things we need in place in person and system? So there's, there's an evolution of the the overall team and the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle and expertise, we need to make that work. In terms of how that impacts my own role. It's very much around how do I, how do I make sure the management team has evolved, so that I'm not critical path in anything to do with the day to day operations of the business and I can therefore actually spend my time on the things where I can create the most value they can do. And that's typically around things that are more strategic and long term in nature, they may not have an immediate payback in the next six months, they're not actually about delivering to our first customers that they're about. How do we achieve that that vision I laid out earlier? You know, what are the what are the things we need to do to make this business viable to deploy hundreds of fabs globally? How do we work with governments around the world that are really interested in these topics at the moment? How do we work with our biggest customers to make sure that the way they adopt our technology is getting full leverage of it? And you know, a lot of the topics we discussed before? How do we make sure that as we do that, we are increasingly developing our focus around the themes that we really want to drive the business around, not just the, you know, the details of the technology and specific products?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, I think that's makes a lot of sense. You've got the business, there's business infrastructure itself, and be a bit more disciplined into that probably right as the best male and then yeah, for yourself, it's very easy for you all the time, right? Leaders find themselves doing things which are okay, they can do them but it's not necessarily their genius zone where they can really outsized, outsized gains, right?

Scott White
I think I'd even put it more strongly than that, that not only is it so I'd say, you know, a year ago, there was stuff that I was doing operationally, that probably was not the best use of my time, but we didn't have enough bandwidth in the team for me not to be doing that. I think if I look forward to where we're going, you know, to me successes, always taking things beyond your incompetence level. So we are growing the business past where I have experienced in what I've done with previous companies, if we're going to make this in the next few years, a multi billion revenue, profitable business listed on a stock exchange at some point in the relatively near future, none of those things that I've done. So you know, we need we need people who have experienced in that otherwise, we're always going to be figuring that out as we go along and you know, the business is too important to take that risk. So it's not just that I should be using my time elsewhere but actually, we need to bring in people who are going to be better at that job than I could ever possibly be. Yeah. I need to focus on the things where I can I can really create the most value.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, great distinction mascot. This has been a great conversation of, you know, I've enjoyed really getting into the depths of deep tech, and but they're looking at what it what it creates and what it makes possible and what the impact is, obviously, there's financial impact and then there's this sense of how you want to change the world and I love kind of hearing that with such clarity. So thank you for sharing that with us. If people want to get in touch or find out more about PragmatIC where do they do that?

Scott White
So, you know, starting points would be our website is pragmaticsemi.com. LinkedIn, we're increasingly becoming active on you know, I'm not so active just from a time perspective, but I'm trying to be more so. So those are probably the two best best starting points.

Richard Medcalf
Perfect. Well, thanks for that. I'll put those into the show notes and Scott, look forward to following me on this journey. It sounds like it's going to be an exciting one.

Scott White
Thank you very much. Enjoyed the conversation.

Richard Medcalf
Take care.