00:06:15 · Hugo da Silva
[00:06:15] S1: To be honest, right, I would see in the market everybody is telling us this is huge right, so I would not put numbers into that at this moment, it's too early to tell. But while we do the tricks we do basically on waveguides which is you know we are getting lights from a projector and, you know, mix this light and creating a virtual image or a holographic image with extremely high precision that a human eye can see basically display out of it. So we see that on data center is a similar necessity where they need to translate what's coming out of the chips into a coming from let's say electrical or signals into light to transport the light between one place to the other through fiber optics and there is a connection or interconnection or translation from that physical to light and that's where we can play a role which is basically carrying light in a very precise manner creating like multiple channels one on top of the other and very precise small channels that will carry light through. That's precisely what we do in waveguide. So in a way the technology is very similar. You create a so called micro lenses array that will translate and then you know shoot light from one distance to the other and basically to fiber optics as a final goal. So we are in a way, we are new to that, to be honest, we are investigating, but a lot of our customers actually are already sampling customers into this new market and we decided to also put a little bit of effort on that as well.
00:07:46 · Sebastian Johnson
[00:07:46] S0: And you joined as CEO two years ago. In the last two years, the world has changed so much and the explosion of AI and there's a lot of more deep tech in Europe. How has the business changed to react to the changing world?
00:08:03 · Hugo da Silva
[00:08:03] S1: Well first when I joined right, I think one of the biggest challenge was to structure the company in a different way. At that time we were doing ten-fifteen different applications, There was a lot of balls in the air. I think first step, okay, let's laser focus on one and two applications where our product and our technology really brings the value and makes ourselves unique. That was the first step and basically then create a whole commercial team around. While we are creating commercial team just to let you know, right? So we started, okay, well maybe we should have a team in US and then we realized, you know what, we also need a team in China and now with the way the geopolitical dynamics work is that we know what? We also need a team in Taiwan. And now we realize maybe we even need a team in Korea. So I think every, you know, every month there's... I just came back out of China CIOE and it's unbelievable how things are moving fast in this photonics industry. Right? So, you know, a lot of brands are launching their AI smart glasses. There's all kinds of flavors, all kinds of models, all kinds of technologies. And then with that, like you said, this whole market on CPO it's also moving but you see and there's a lot of dynamics in the market, the geopolitics playing a role. So we are trying to capture all that and make sure we have a team. But more important what I believe is that having local people can really help us move fast. Doing everything from Europe is becoming extremely difficult. So we are setting up a team in different regions so we can really you know learn fast the dynamics of the market.
00:09:36 · Sebastian Johnson, Hugo da Silva
[00:09:36] S0: Why is it becoming difficult in Europe? [00:09:40] S1: It's not if I'm saying Europe because we are based out of Europe and a lot of things are happening outside Europe, right? If I only have my team sitting in Europe and the whole supply chain for certain market happens in Korea or in Taiwan, then being here is not really helpful, right? So obviously we do have a lot of partners in Europe, lot of ecosystem partners, but the market that we are in a global market, a global setting, right? So that's why we need to have eyes on the market and it doesn't work if you are just traveling back and forward all the time. If you are like two months away from a region, lots of things are happening and we are not capturing that dynamic. [00:10:18] S0: And you're working with companies from you know The US, Europe, China, are you noticing a difference in the regional attitudes to this technology? Are you seeing some regions move a lot faster?
00:10:30 · Hugo da Silva
[00:10:30] S1: I think in general, so I think the dynamics of our industry is very similar to any other industry in high-tech. There is you know major brands out of US or big companies out of Europe and a lot of the manufacturing happens in Asia somewhere it could be China, Taiwan or somewhere else in Asia and I think obviously there is the speed of the Asias that moves extremely fast towards finding a solution right, trying to use our technologies or whatever technology can suit because they are in a way committed to deliver a product on the market as quick as possible right and that's I think something we can really learn from it and we are trying to learn by also have people from their teams also here then a good enough is a good enough. Sometimes a perfect solution is never going to be achievable but a good enough solution can be achieved much faster and that's how we can learn especially we are in a startup. I'm not a huge company like have you know I can try things out and that's I think the nature of being in different locations so we can capture the learnings in each one of those rather than just be too much engineer minded where I would say it takes ten years to make something perfect but maybe takes a year to make something good enough and you go ahead and learn from the market, from the customers and then improve and do it again. A fantastic example, I always use those examples in the iPhone, right? The first iPhone was not really a great phone, but while we are now in the 17 I guess or 18 even, you know there's 18 generations of products, you are learning by using it. And that's I think the beauty, I think you can apply that obviously in a deep tech is slightly different, but you can apply the same concept if you will.
00:12:21 · Sebastian Johnson, Hugo da Silva
[00:12:21] S0: And you you just closed this to the ground. What gave the investors conviction? Was it the market opportunities or some of this new stuff that you're working on? Was it the AI glasses work that's going well? What was it that gave the investors the conviction to come on board? [00:12:35] S1: I think it's at the end of the day is a combination of our technology being mature and validated by customer, but the best validation you can have is by having commercial traction. And the last, especially the last twelve months we did quite a lot of commercial traction with sales, with filling the pipeline and honestly speaking now we don't need any new customer. Actually we cannot afford any new customer, we just need to convert what we have in the pipeline. That's our goal here is to convert the pipeline not really going after new customers. [00:13:05] S0: That's an amazing position to be in.