エピソード

  • Steven King, Founder of Blue Sky Robotics: How a Metaverse Project Pivoted to Hospital Robotics
    2026/09/03

    Steven King, CEO and co-founder of Blue Sky Robotics, joins me to talk about building a computer vision company that has pivoted twice in three years, from metaverse avatars to warehouse robotics to hospital automation. Steven, a longtime UNC professor, explains how a side project meant to capture realistic 3D avatars for the metaverse turned into a vision system for robotic arms, and how a client's ambitious accuracy target forced his engineering team to rebuild the company's core technology from scratch. That rebuild became the foundation for Blue Sky's current focus: helping hospitals like UNC Health and Mayo Clinic catch operational errors, from mislabeled dining trays to missing surgical instruments, before they become patient safety issues.

    Along the way, we cover why the company built its early customer base on paying clients instead of venture capital, how real-world data has become Blue Sky's biggest competitive advantage over synthetic simulation, and why the team turned down deals that wouldn't scale even when it hurt short-term revenue. Steven also shares candid lessons on choosing a co-founder and staying flexible enough to let a company's direction change completely without losing its footing.

    It's a grounded, detail-rich conversation about building a hard-tech company in North Carolina, with real numbers on accuracy, team growth, and what's coming next.

    Timestamps
    00:02 Cold open and sponsor thanks
    01:34 Scot's preview: meet Steven King and Blue Sky Robotics
    03:34 Welcome Steven King to the show
    04:29 Life before Blue Sky Robotics
    05:41 15 years at UNC: from photojournalism to computer vision
    06:34 The Washington Post years and the trip to Liverpool
    08:15 The spark: from innovation lab to startup
    08:48 First idea: volumetric capture for the metaverse
    09:45 The pivot: turning the camera outward for robots
    10:25 Founding day and the first client
    12:04 Bootstrapping with paying clients instead of VC
    12:42 The 99.5% accuracy bet on fishing tackle
    16:01 Edge inference with NVIDIA Jetson
    18:18 Why fishing tackle data transfers to surgical tools
    21:03 Saying no to deals that won't scale
    23:07 Inside the use case: dining trays and dietary errors
    24:45 Solving the 20% of surgeries that start unprepared
    26:08 Building the "IoT toaster" for hospitals
    27:00 UNC Health and Mayo Clinic partnerships
    32:39 A 16-person team built on Triangle universities
    34:00 What's next: raising capital and scaling to more hospitals
    34:52 Founder lessons: pivots, pride, and picking a co-founder
    35:40 Credits and sign-off

    -----


    Where to Find Steven King:
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-king-b93885b/
    Blue Sky Robotics: https://www.blueskyrobotics.ai/

    Where to Find Scot Wingo:
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/
    Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/
    X: https://x.com/scotwingo

    ---

    This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West.

    We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors:

    Platinum:
    NC IDEA: https://ncidea.org

    Gold Sponsors:
    - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs
    - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com
    - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com

    Silver Sponsors:
    - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co
    - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html


    ------
    Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:

    • Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/
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    36 分
  • Ben Scruggs, CEO of Altis Biosystems: Building the Gut Model That Predicts Which Drugs Actually Work
    2026/08/27

    Ben Scruggs, CEO of Altis Biosystems, joins me to talk about building human gut models that help pharma, biotech, and nutrition companies predict how a drug or ingredient will actually behave in the body before it ever reaches a patient. The conversation covers what an epithelial barrier is and why the gut is such an overlooked bottleneck in drug development, how Altis's technology is being used for absorption studies, inflammation research, and toxicity screening, and why GLP-1 drugs make such a compelling test case for the company's platform.

    Just as much of the episode is about Ben's own path: trained as a cell biologist, he spent close to a decade as a venture investor at Hatteras Venture Partners before stepping into the CEO role at Altis, a UNC spinout, about three years ago. He talks candidly about what surprised him most moving from advising founders to running a company himself, including the realization that most of the job is selling, not science.

    Altis Biosystems has scaled from testing a few dozen compounds at a time to routinely screening thousands, using automation and robotics to keep pace with customer demand, and Ben shares where he sees the technology heading next, well beyond the gut.

    Timestamps
    00:00 Cold open & sponsor thank-yous
    01:40 Scot's pre-show intro: today's guest, Ben Scruggs of Altis Biosystems
    03:33 Episode starts
    03:49 How Scot and Ben know each other
    04:25 Ben's background: PhD in cell biology, postdoc in genomics
    05:28 The pivot into venture investing at Hatteras Venture Partners
    06:43 How UNC connections led Ben to Altis Biosystems
    09:24 Inside Hatteras Venture Partners: 25 years, 100+ investments
    13:06 Making the leap from investor to CEO
    15:15 What Altis Biosystems actually does
    16:34 What is an epithelial barrier, and why it matters
    17:32 The three markets: absorption, inflammation, and toxicity
    19:58 Why GLP-1 drugs are the ultimate bioavailability test
    20:25 Altis's dual business model: full-service CRO vs. self-serve kits
    23:29 Defining bioavailability
    24:18 Beyond pharma: nutrition and CPG customers
    28:37 The UNC tech-transfer story behind Altis
    30:00 Advice for investors considering the jump to operator
    31:42 The most underrated founder skill: selling
    33:01 What's next: expanding beyond the gut
    37:30 Scaling from dozens to thousands of compounds
    41:39 Where to learn more about Altis Biosystems
    42:10 Thanks and credits


    Where to Find Ben Scruggs:
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminscruggs/
    Altis Biosystems: https://www.altisbiosystems.com/

    Where to Find Scot Wingo:
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/
    Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/
    X: https://x.com/scotwingo

    ---

    This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West.

    We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors:

    Platinum:
    NC IDEA: https://ncidea.org

    Gold Sponsors:
    - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs
    - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com
    - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com

    Silver Sponsors:
    - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co
    - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html


    ------
    Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:

    • Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/
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    43 分
  • [REDACTED] Episode 9: He Gave His AI Assistant 64 Tools and Zero Permission to Delete Anything
    2026/08/26

    Josh Guter, founder of Elephants, joins us for a live product teardown of the AI operations assistant he built for small teams. The conversation covers the architecture behind the assistant: roughly 64 purpose-built tools, an approval-gated write system that never lets the AI act without human sign-off, and the logging system Josh built to audit a codebase that, by his own admission, has become a black box even to him.

    Josh walks us through his full build process, from sketching UI mockups in Adobe Illustrator to having Claude draft implementation plans and Codex tear them apart before anything ships, plus how he red-teams his own assistant before any change touches its tools or system prompt. He also shares how Elephants evolved from a low-code personal relationship manager built on Glide Apps and Make.com into a full-stack platform now running the daily operations of NC State's Entrepreneurship Clinic.

    It's a candid look at what it actually takes to ship an AI feature people trust with real operational data, including the parts that still keep a solo founder up at night.

    Timestamps
    00:00 Cold open: "The devil's in the details"
    00:45 Welcome back to Redacted
    01:20 Introducing guest Josh Guter
    02:33 Josh joins and how he and David met
    02:56 What Elephants is: ops software for small teams
    07:03 The real product: the AI assistant
    08:04 The big question: model, cost, context, trust
    14:04 Behind the scenes: Anthropic's API and the Make.com origin story
    15:12 64 tools and counting
    16:01 Managing the internal prompt library
    18:07 Rebuilding full-stack with Opus 4.8 and Codex
    20:38 Auditing a black box: breadcrumb logging
    21:57 Claude Code as the new Make.com
    25:10 The build process, start to finish
    26:23 Illustrator mockups and the Claude/Codex review loop
    29:05 QA without a QA team: red-teaming the assistant
    31:51 Taylor's tangent: rebuilding an interview ingestion pipeline
    34:09 The founders who never read their own PRs
    35:02 Why nothing ships without user approval
    36:57 It's a PWA, not an app
    39:00 The "AI psychosis" moment
    39:37 Josh's product vision: enterprise-knowledge AI
    41:48 Where to find Josh and Elephants
    42:08 Sign-off

    Show notes from the episode: https://github.com/instanttaylor/redacted-podcast

    Where to Find David:
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidshaner/

    Where to Find Taylor:
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylorcotner/

    More about Offline: https://www.linkedin.com/company/offline-media-inc-/

    ---

    This episode of Redacted is hosted by David Shaner and Taylor Cotner, and presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund.

    We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors:

    Platinum:
    NC IDEA: https://ncidea.org

    Gold Sponsors:
    - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs
    - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com
    - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com

    Silver Sponsors:
    - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co
    - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html


    ------
    Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:

    • Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/
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    43 分
  • Adam Steege, Founder & CEO of Trio Labs: The Startup Failure That Became a Med-Tech Manufacturer
    2026/08/20

    Adam Steege, founder and CEO of Trio Labs, joins me to talk about building a company that 3D prints tiny, complex metal parts for medical devices out of Morrisville, North Carolina. The conversation covers Adam's path from a failed first startup in laparoscopic surgical devices to founding Trio Labs in 2015, the five years it took to reach bench-scale proof of concept, and the road from Series A funding in 2021 to commercial launch in 2023. Adam explains why his first company stalled, the manufacturing gap between traditional machining and semiconductor-style nanofabrication that Trio Labs fills, and why the company chose to sell finished parts rather than printing equipment. What makes this episode distinctive is how directly Adam connects his first company's failure to the thesis behind his second, along with a clear, first-principles explanation of why metal 3D printing at this precision is so difficult that Trio Labs describes itself as half ASML, half TSMC. It's a grounded look at what it actually takes to build a hardware company over more than a decade.

    Timestamps
    00:00 Cold open & sponsor thanks
    01:15 Welcome to NC Tweener Talks
    01:35 Scot's intro: Adam Steege & Trio Labs
    02:25 Interview begins
    02:50 Guest welcome
    02:55 NC Tweener Fund's investment history with Trio Labs
    03:30 Adam's origin story begins
    04:00 Growing up in NC, Carleton & Columbia
    04:55 Why med tech pulled him in
    05:40 The genesis of the Trio Labs idea
    06:10 Technical founder staying on as CEO
    08:10 What happened to the first company
    09:05 The "stakeholder visibility mismatch"
    11:20 From the first company's ashes to Trio Labs
    13:15 Trio Labs' basic pitch
    13:50 Why minimally invasive devices keep getting smaller
    16:10 The manufacturing gap Trio Labs fills
    18:05 Founding timeline: 2015 to Series A to commercial launch
    20:00 Gen 1 to gen 3: iterating the printer
    22:05 The "third dimension is nonlinear" analogy
    24:00 "Half ASML, half TSMC"
    25:05 Why metal instead of plastic
    28:50 Facility tour: the machines, wafer fab in a box
    30:05 The parts Trio Labs makes: robotics & endovascular
    31:40 Where Trio Labs is in its scaling journey
    34:50 Staying focused on med tech
    37:35 Why they don't sell machines
    40:05 Where to find Trio Labs
    40:35 Wrap and credits


    -----


    Where to Find Adam Steege:
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-t-c-steege-814b6821/
    Trio Labs: https://triolabs.com

    Where to Find Scot Wingo:
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/
    Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/
    X: https://x.com/scotwingo

    ---

    This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West.

    We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors:

    Platinum:
    NC IDEA: https://ncidea.org

    Gold Sponsors:
    - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs
    - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com
    - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com

    Silver Sponsors:
    - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co
    - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html


    ------
    Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:

    • Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/
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    41 分
  • Nick Genty, Co-Founder & CEO of AgEye: From a Storefront Full of Robots to a Deal in Qatar
    2026/08/13

    Nick Genty, co-founder and CEO of AgEye Technologies, joins me to talk about building robotics and AI software for indoor farms right here in North Carolina. The conversation traces Nick's path from state government IT work to an early Triangle startup acquired by SAS, into a mobile development agency serving national retailers, and eventually to a regulated medical device project that revealed the science behind AgEye: using environmental variables like light to influence plant biology.

    They cover how AgEye found its first customers in a channel with almost no LinkedIn presence, why the company nearly built its business around cannabis before a licensing crash forced a pivot to leafy greens and produce, and how a deliberately low-tech approach to robotics helped growers hit a realistic return on investment. Nick also walks through AgEye's data and hardware moat, the shift toward agentic AI models, and the corporate venture investors, including a Dutch agricultural giant and a German filtration company, who backed the company when traditional RTP investors weren't ready for a physical-world business.

    Nick is a natural storyteller with a knack for turning technical detail into something anyone can follow, and this episode is packed with concrete numbers on funding, robotics costs, and go-to-market strategy for anyone building at the intersection of hardware and software.

    Timestamps
    00:00 Cold open & welcome
    00:24 Sponsor thank-yous
    03:15 Scot's intro & series preview
    03:27 Guest introduction: Nick Genty, AgEye
    04:06 Nick's background: Raleigh, ECU
    04:59 Meeting his co-founder at the NC court system
    06:27 Joining rPath & the Triangle's founder "mafias"
    08:10 Founding Iconic Solutions
    11:36 The hardware-software link & the genesis of AgEye
    13:37 Edge AI arrives: NVIDIA Jetson & the Inception program
    16:03 How Scot discovered AgEye (the lunch story)
    20:02 Finding first customers on Reddit
    20:41 The cannabis pivot to leafy greens
    23:56 Why indoor farms exist even where crops "should" grow
    27:56 Competitive moats: hardware + proprietary data
    31:53 The "leaf model" & licensing the AI
    34:34 How the robotic grow towers work
    38:03 ARIS: the imaging robot & 3D plant modeling
    42:15 The fundraising grind: $5M raised & corporate VCs
    45:51 Company update: distributors & the Middle East push
    48:09 Where to find AgEye & closing

    Where to Find Nick Genty:
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholasgenty/
    AgEye: https://ageyetech.com/

    Where to Find Scot Wingo:
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/
    Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/
    X: https://x.com/scotwingo

    ---

    This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West.

    We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors:

    Platinum:
    NC IDEA: https://ncidea.org

    Gold Sponsors:
    - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs
    - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com
    - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com

    Silver Sponsors:
    - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co
    - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html


    ------
    Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:

    • Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/
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    49 分
  • [REDACTED] Episode 8: We Hired an AI Sales Rep and Became Its Manager
    2026/08/12

    Today, on Episode 8 of Redacted, we use this episode to show exactly what running a company with AI looks like day-to-day. Taylor walks through the agent system now handling Offline's lead generation and CRM cleanup, including a daily process that scans market signals, reconciles HubSpot data, and writes sales outreach briefs automatically. David then demos a redesigned mobile app and email system, and shares a candid breakdown of how many hours a recent landing page redesign actually took with AI assistance compared to how long the same project would have taken the old way.

    What sets this episode apart is the honesty about the mechanics: a story about an AI-generated email that silently failed for 10,000 recipients, a framework for treating AI agents like new hires who need onboarding and supervision rather than a one-time prompt, and real numbers on where the time actually goes when AI is doing the heavy lifting. It's a useful listen for anyone trying to figure out whether AI is actually saving them time or just moving the work around.

    Timestamps:
    00:00 Cold open

    00:22 Welcome to Redacted, episode 8

    01:30 What Taylor's been building

    03:39 Two things to show: internal ops + a product feature

    03:51 What an "outreach brief" is

    06:20 The automated dashboard demo

    06:58 The daily sweep ritual

    08:32 Catching drift between the backend and HubSpot

    12:33 Closing the loop with Steve's feedback

    16:14 The jungle-and-bulldozer metaphor

    19:18 Structured data over meetings

    20:14 Demo: a real outreach brief (Max Speed Shop)

    22:23 "Iterative loop" and moving into the manager seat

    23:02 Segment two: the Offline mobile app

    26:00 Turning the design system into a reusable skill

    31:03 HubSpot pain vs. mobile app gratification

    32:01 The B2B landing page blog post

    33:03 Breaking down 64.39 hours

    36:11 Old world vs. new world time cost

    37:37 Compounding as the X factor

    37:44 The offline accountability / biz dev chart

    39:32 This morning's market signals

    42:00 The "hiring" framing, wrap-up

    42:07 Upcoming guests: Josh and Parker

    42:29 Where to find Offline and the hosts

    Show notes from the episode: https://github.com/instanttaylor/redacted-podcast

    Where to Find David:
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidshaner/

    Where to Find Taylor:
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylorcotner/

    More about Offline: https://www.linkedin.com/company/offline-media-inc-/

    ---

    This episode of Redacted is hosted by David Shaner and Taylor Cotner, and presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund.

    We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors:

    Platinum:
    NC IDEA: https://ncidea.org

    Gold Sponsors:
    - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs
    - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com
    - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com

    Silver Sponsors:
    - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co
    - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html


    ------
    Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:

    • Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/
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    43 分
  • Andrew Ashur, Co-Founder & CEO of Lucid Bots: "Hardware Done Right Is Where the Moat Still Exists"
    2026/08/06

    Andrew Ashur, co-founder and CEO of Lucid Bots, joins Scot Wingo for the third episode in our series on North Carolina startups solving hard physical-world problems. Lucid Bots builds drones and robots that clean, paint, and coat buildings, and Andrew walks through how the company got here, starting from a duct-taped DJI drone he built as a Davidson College student after watching window washers struggle against high winds.

    The conversation covers the mechanical and business realities of building hardware: the physics of flying a drone tethered to a hundred feet of hose, the economics of a robots-as-a-service subscription model, and why hardware companies are finding it easier to raise venture capital today than they did a decade ago. Along the way, Andrew shares lessons on hiring people who thrive on uncertainty, developing the storytelling skills that founders need to raise money and win customers, and what he learned from roughly a thousand fundraising pitches on the way to a Series B round.

    Andrew is a first-time founder who graduated from Davidson a year early to run Lucid Bots full time, and the company has since raised more than $30 million, deployed over 600 units across 44 states and five countries, and grown to a team of 75. He shares where he sees the business heading over the next five years, and the much bigger bet he's making beyond that.

    Timestamps:
    00:00 Welcome & sponsor thank-yous

    01:31 Scot's intro: NC's physical-world startup series

    02:06 Meet Andrew Ashur & Lucid Bots

    04:38 How Andrew and Scot know each other

    04:59 Origin story: the window washer moment

    06:03 Why building maintenance is a massive market

    06:42 The duct-taped DJI prototype

    07:14 Winning $25K and graduating early

    07:56 A broken drone, Christmas, and a book on Arduino

    10:05 Why hardware iteration builds a moat

    11:44 Inside the Sherpa drone

    13:05 The physics of a 100-foot hose

    17:05 Building an in-house power tether

    18:24 Scale check: 600 units, 75 people, 44 states

    19:00 The ROI: 2x to 8x faster than a boom lift

    20:03 Pricing: buy it or subscribe to Lucid Refresh

    23:01 Pausing the ground robot, adding paint & coatings

    25:39 Scaling facilities from 23K to 45K square feet

    32:43 Fundraising for a hardware company vs. software

    36:39 Hiring for agency over intelligence

    40:47 1,000 pitches and the road to Series B

    45:03 The next 5 years: giving AI a physical body

    -----


    Where to Find Andrew Ashur:
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewashur/
    Lucid Bots: https://www.lucidbots.com/

    Where to Find Scot Wingo:
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/
    Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/
    X: https://x.com/scotwingo

    ---

    This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West.

    We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors:

    Platinum:
    NC IDEA: https://ncidea.org

    Gold Sponsors:
    - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs
    - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com
    - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com

    Silver Sponsors:
    - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co
    - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html


    ------
    Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:

    • Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/
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    48 分
  • Plantd Co-founder, Huade Tan: Innovating Carbon Capture With Building Materials
    2026/07/30

    Huade Tan, co-founder and CTO of Plantd, joins me to explain how two former SpaceX engineers ended up building carbon-capturing structural panels out of a North Carolina tobacco field. The conversation covers how Plantd chose its plant feedstock, why the team deliberately passed on the carbon-credit market in favor of a real product business, and what five years of hardware iteration looks like when you're building an industrial press that hasn't been attempted by a US company since the 1960s or '70s. Huade walks through the full process, from cloning a sterile perennial grass to harvesting it with a modified tobacco harvester to pressing it into finished building panels, and shares the numbers behind the business: $40 to $45 million raised from seed through Series B, and a 2024 deal with national homebuilder D.R. Horton to supply 10 million panels for roughly 90,000 homes. What sets this episode apart is how directly Huade connects his engineering background at SpaceX to the problems he's solving now, including a five-step framework for building hardware that the team is still applying today. It's a grounded, technical look at what it takes to build a genuine hardware moat in an industry that hasn't seen real innovation in decades

    Timestamps:
    00:00 Cold open

    00:23 Thank you to our sponsors: NC Idea, Ballentine, Bank of America

    01:31 Welcome to the episode: introducing Huade Tan and Plantd

    01:57 The pitch: two SpaceX engineers, carbon capture, and plywood-like panels

    03:34 Huade joins the show

    04:01 Huade's background: building life support systems for Crew Dragon at SpaceX

    05:27 Education path and Nathan's aerospace background

    06:39 Why North Carolina: population growth trends since 2018

    07:34 From Crew Dragon's "bubble" to the idea for Plantd

    10:14 The founding question: what do you build from captured carbon?

    12:23 Why Plantd passed on the carbon credit market

    14:14 What didn't work early on

    16:03 The market gap: moisture damage in existing building materials

    17:15 Simplifying it: how a plant becomes a structural panel

    19:00 Finding the right fiber: hemp, wheat straw, bagasse, and more

    21:15 The perennial grass: sterile, cloned, and drought-resistant

    24:01 400–500 acres established in North Carolina tobacco fields

    27:22 Harvesting and the strander: turning stalks into fiber

    29:48 Inside the press: resin, heat, and pressure

    30:37 Press specs: 15 feet wide, 70 feet long, a quarter-million panels a year

    37:09 The 5-step SpaceX engineering framework

    39:43 Funding: $40–45 million raised, seed through Series B

    41:21 The D.R. Horton partnership and what it taught them

    45:04 The 2024 deal: 10 million panels, 90,000 homes, 165,000 tons of CO2

    46:04 From hand-made coffee coasters to a real house in Durham

    51:36 Why North Carolina: cost, talent, and agricultural infrastructure

    53:36 What's next: furniture, biochar, and other verticals

    55:00 Where to find Plantd

    55:20 Closing and credits

    -----


    Where to Find Huade Tan:
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/huadetan/
    Plantd: https://plantdmaterials.com

    Where to Find Scot Wingo:
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/
    Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/
    X: https://x.com/scotwingo

    ---

    This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West.

    We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors:

    Platinum:
    NC IDEA: https://ncidea.org

    Gold Sponsors:
    - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs
    - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com
    - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com

    Silver Sponsors:
    - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co
    - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html


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    Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:

    • Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/
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