Hunter McDaniel, the Scientist, turned CEO of UbiQD, a leading nanomaterials company in the clean-tech production of Quantum dots, sheds light on the ins and outs of managing a fast-growing company. He chats about the struggles of securing initial funding for his startup, to successfully reaching a big milestone by receiving a Phase II grant from the National Science Foundation. Finally, Hunter lets us in on his thoughts on leadership, teamwork, and happiness, read on……
RC: Congratulations on getting National Science Foundation Awards? Tell me a bit more about this Phase II funding and success of Phase I SBIR grant from 2016.
In March, we announced an SBIR Phase II grant from NSF of $750,000 in funding over two years, for UbiQD’s continued research and development of QD-tinted glass luminescent solar concentrator technology for electricity-generating windows.
Getting to phase II was a huge milestone for us. Previously we were awarded a $225,000 Phase I SBIR grant in 2016, and we published the results in ACS Energy Letters in January. With NSF’s support, we demonstrated a novel, high-performance sunlight-harvesting window concept in Phase I.
Now with continued funding in Phase II, we plan to optimize for a higher performance-to-cost ratio, scale-up product prototypes, and deploy our windows in pilot installations.
RC: Have you considering any partnership?
We have several long-term industrial partnerships and expect more shortly. We have publicly announced exclusive licensing agreements to technology developed at M.I.T., Los Alamos National Laboratory, University of Washington, and Western Washington University. Additionally, through the Department of Energy, we have a corporate research and development agreement with The National Renewable Energy Laboratory. I would also consider the National Science Foundation, Breakout Labs, the New Mexico Consortium, and Los Alamos County among our long-term partners.
RC: Setbacks are indispensable for a startup. What was your biggest setback so far? What have you learned from them and any word of caution to navigate through them?
The biggest setback has probably been just how incredibly difficult it has been to secure funding.
From the outside, everything always looks great: we got the big grant, new investors, etc! But what you don’t see is the other 20+ grant applications that got rejected or the 100’s of investors who said no. I thought that with our incredible technology, team, and story we would have raised a lot more money by now.
I hoped we’d have twice as many employees at this point and be closer to a product with all of that funding. Part of the answer is that you have to fail to learn how to succeed. Do you want an investor? Be prepared to get turned down many times and use the feedback to improve your pitch. Do you want a grant? Be prepared to spend 1000’s of hours trying before you get the first one. The proposal reviews are pure gold, but you only get them if you are rejected. It’s not so much of a setback, as much as just a harsh reality that financing a deep-tech hardware or materials company is almost impossible.
You have to prove it over and over, and the bar will just keep getting higher. I tried to raise our Series A in 2016 with very sobering results. We did all of the things the VC’s said they wanted, but I don’t see it getting any easier to raise money. We raised about $2M mostly from angel investors, but I had to get on a plane and go outside the state to make much progress. I have been on the road raising money for years to get to that sum.
I would suggest other entrepreneurs focus on partnerships and early customers. Grants can help, but the odds of getting them is so painfully low. The odds of finding good investors is even lower.
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The biggest setback has probably been just how incredibly difficult it has been to secure funding
RC: How important is it to identify your niche of people? Any advice?
This is really important for us because we don’t necessarily have domain expertise in all of the potential markets yet, for example in agriculture or windows. So we have hired people with that particular domain expertise and industry network to help us climb learning curves faster.
For example, to further accelerate glazing (glass-based/window products) market exploration, we recently hired Jeff Granato as an Advisory Board Member. Jeff worked for DuPont for more than three decades, with proven experience in developing new and growing markets, and has deep knowledge of the window industry.
We met Jeff through a contact that I met at a trade show, and so my advice is to network, network, network. You may not see immediately see results of networking, but there are long-term dividends.
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I would suggest other entrepreneurs focus on partnerships and early customers. Grants can help, but the odds of getting them is so painfully low. The odds of finding good investors is even lower
RC: Why do you think your team is best placed to deliver your business forecasts?
We have compiled a rock-star founding team with all of the critical elements in my view. We have hardcore R&D capabilities, and our rapid product development progress provides the supporting evidence. Our business acumen is also impressive, $450M+ in exits on the board of directors and Advisory Board, and our numerous partnerships.
Although it hasn’t been a walk in the park, we have grown steadily, more than doubling revenues and employees every year since the founding. The biggest pushback I get on the team is simply on me, as a first time CEO with a technical background. We may or may not need to hire a more experienced CEO in the future, and I’m open to it, but for now, I’m the best we got!
We are young, hungry, and highly purpose driven at UbiQD, and I am 100% confident my team can overcome any hurdle.
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We are young, hungry, and highly purpose driven at UbiQD, and I am 100% confident my team can overcome any hurdle.
RC: How is your relationship with your team? How do you identify as a leader?
That’s probably a better question for my team, but I think we all have great collaborative relationships with one another. We are ‘in the trenches’ together while we work on solving BIG problems, so it’s hard to not have a sense of comradery. We could probably do a whole separate interview on leadership, as its something that I highly prioritize at UbiQD.
My goal is to have a team of leaders, in which we all inspire each other to work hard and deliver. Remember, a leader and a manager are two very different things.
You manage projects, schedules, budgets, etc., but you lead team members. Leadership goes both upwards and downwards in the organizational chart. So when we hire we highly prioritize leadership potential, even for an entry-level position.
For my own skills, I point to my highly effective mentors over the years, especially my Ph.D. advisor Moonsub Shim, my postdoc advisors Victor Klimov and Jeff Pietryga, and my dad. Growing up I was taught a lot of leadership values in boy scouts and earned an Eagle Scout, which must have helped.
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while we work on solving BIG problems, so it’s hard to not have a sense of comradery
RC: What do you like the most and least about working in this industry?
The answer depends on what box we are being put in; is it the QDs industry, agriculture industry, materials, chemicals, etc.?
For argument’s sake, let’s say we are being put in the QD industry box, and there I love how different we are than the other companies. Most QD companies like Nanosys, Nanoco, or QDVision (now Samsung) are focused on display applications with the same usual QD materials and target properties.
Then here we are coming in a little late into the game but with totally different materials and applications. It’s almost as if we have seen the future, and we are going there, to where the QD buck is going to be.
Competition destroys value, and we don’t have many direct competitors right now, which is another reason to like being different. In some sense, we are the black swan of the QD industry.
RC: Excluding yours, what company or business do you admire the most?
Two hardware technology companies come to mind: SpaceX and First Solar. What Elon Musk has been able to accomplish with SpaceX, becoming the leader in the emerging space industry in a relatively short time period, is incredible.
It’s a private company, so we don’t know anything about revenues, profits, and valuation, but what I do know is that they proved rockets can be reusable, enabling disruptive cost savings to get to orbit. To prove it they launched a Tesla Roadster into orbit around the sun, and it will be passing Mars soon.
That feat is inspiring a whole new generation of scientists to work on space problems. The other is the publicly-traded US-based First Solar company, of which I am a long-term investor. I am amazed at their ability to stay profitable, when falling solar cell prices, mostly due to competition from China, has been crushing the rest of the solar industry. As far as I know, they remain the largest solar cell manufacturing company in the world by market cap, and from my view, it’s being driven mostly by materials innovation. First Solar has more than 17 GW of installed PV worldwide today, which is roughly equivalent to 3M gallons of gasoline per day of production.
First Solar’s impact and profitability to me are inspiring, especially considering all of the naysayers over the years who said their solar cells were less efficient, and based on super rare tellurium and toxic cadmium. In some sense, SpaceX and First Solar are the black swans of space and solar industries, respectively.
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we are the black swan of the QD industry
RC: Do you consider yourself lucky and why?
Absolutely, I am super lucky.
Anyone who says their success is purely due to hard work and skill, is full of it.
First, you have to work hard to have opportunities to use your brain and get lucky. There is no substitute for hard work and no shortcuts. After that luck and brains can substitute for each other. Smart people will increase their odds by making good choices. Lucky people will be at the right time and place to get the deal.
I think there is a lot of random chance involved, more than most people accept. Ideally, you work hard and ultimately it pays off because you are both lucky and smart enough. I am lucky to have my family, health, team, and be on this amazing adventure called UbiQD, the evidence speaks for itself.
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Anyone who says their success is purely due to hard work and skill, is full of it
RC: What makes you happy?
I’m a pretty happy go lucky kind of guy, lots of things make me happy. I enjoy skiing, tropical diving, mountain hiking, stocks, seafood, family, friends, dog Luna, director-led films, sci-fi books, beaches, my Golf R, and hanging at home in Los Alamos.
If you ask me what makes me most happy, the answer is pretty easy and it’s my son Duncan, who is almost a year now. Duncan is basically another startup for my wife and I, but I wouldn’t trade a moment with him for anything. He inspires me to be a better person and work hard, but he also reminds me to enjoy the simple things in life and smile. I love him and my wife Lauren more than anything.
If I have a down moment, and that happens a lot on the startup rollercoaster, a moment with Duncan or even a glance at his picture brings me back up.
RC: Okay this one is wacky; If there were a movie produced about your life, who would play you and why?
Haha, well I fancy myself as the legal version of Walter White on Breaking Bad by creating a highly profitable chemical manufacturing business in New Mexico (but completely legal!). So maybe Bryan Cranston could play me, whom I think is one of the best actors of our time. That said, several people have said I look like Seth McFarlane, so maybe he would be a better fit, or Leonardo DiCaprio, whatever the director wants! Its probably not a movie I would watch, so likely a moot point.
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The ClubSciWri Team
Author
Rituparna Chakrabarti is the Editor-in-Chief at CSW. She pursued her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Georg-August University (Göttingen, Germany) and is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Biostructural Imaging of Neurodegeneration (BIN), Göttingen. For her, the interface of Science and art is THE PLACE to be! To unwind herself she plays mandolin and eagerly looks for a corner at a coffee house to slide herself in with a good read or company. Follow her on Twitter.
Editor
Roopsha Sengupta did her Ph.D. in the Institute of Molecular Pathology, Vienna and postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge UK, specializing in the field of Epigenetics. Besides science and words, she enjoys spending time with children and painting.
Illustrators
Disha Chauhan did her Ph.D. in IRBLLEIDA, University of Lleida, Spain in Molecular and Developmental Neurobiology. She has post-doctoral experience in Cell Biology of Neurodegenerative diseases and is actively seeking a challenging research position in academia/industry. Apart from Developmental Neurobiology, she is also interested in Oncology. She is passionate about visual art (Illustration, painting, and photography) and storytelling through it. She enjoys reading, traveling, hiking and is also dedicated to raising scientific awareness about Cancer. Follow her on Instagram.
Saurabh Gayali recently completed his Ph.D. in Plant Molecular Biology from National Institute of Plant Genome Research (JNU), New Delhi. Currently he is DBT RA at IGIB (New Delhi) and his research focuses on finding binding associations of Indian plant metabolites with human pathogen proteins, creating a platform for future plant extract based drug discovery. He has keen interest in data analysis, visualization and database management. He is a skilled 2D/3D designer with a specific interest in scientific illustration. In leisure, Saurabh plays guitar and composes music, does photography or practices programming. Follow him on Instagram.
Blog design and interview: Rituparna Chakrabarti
Inset photograph provided by Hunter McDaniel
Acknowledgment: Renee Shenton from Breakout Labs, and Ananda Ghosh from Club SciWri. We are thankful toHunter McDaniel, for taking out time to do this interview with us
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