In this episode, our guests discuss the realities of startup life. Ever found yourself pondering about the unwritten rules that shape a company's culture? If yes, then tune in for an enlightening episode with Daniel Renner, Chair of the IEEE Photonic Society Industry Engagement Committee, and Madison Woodson and Stephen Estrella, from Freedom Photonics.
Beyond the nuances of company culture, our guests also share the unique opportunities and benefits that one can only find in a startup environment. Hear firsthand about the broad spectrum of skills and expertise that you can explore and nurture while working at younger company or one founded to develop unique products and services. But it's not all sunshine and rainbows, our guests unravel the challenges and risks that come along with such ventures.
Host:
Daniel Renner
Principal
Atacama Optics & Electronics
Guest Speakers:
Madison Woodson
Photonic Device Engineer
Freedom Photonics, LLC
Stephen Estrella
Director of Business Development
Freedom Photonics, LLC
In this episode, our guests discuss the realities of startup life. Ever found yourself pondering about the unwritten rules that shape a company's culture? If yes, then tune in for an enlightening episode with Daniel Renner, Chair of the IEEE Photonic Society Industry Engagement Committee, and Madison Woodson and Stephen Estrella, from Freedom Photonics.
Beyond the nuances of company culture, our guests also share the unique opportunities and benefits that one can only find in a startup environment. Hear firsthand about the broad spectrum of skills and expertise that you can explore and nurture while working at younger company or one founded to develop unique products and services. But it's not all sunshine and rainbows, our guests unravel the challenges and risks that come along with such ventures.
Host:
Daniel Renner
Principal
Atacama Optics & Electronics
Guest Speakers:
Madison Woodson
Photonic Device Engineer
Freedom Photonics, LLC
Stephen Estrella
Director of Business Development
Freedom Photonics, LLC
Hi, my name is Daniel Renner and I'm the chair of the IEEE Photonic Society Industry Engagement Committee, and we're here today to talk about working in a startup company. How does it feel to work in a startup A unique environment and to do that, I have with me two young engineers that have been working for several years in a startup and we're looking at they, sharing their experience on what has it meant to them to working in this environment. We have worked the three of us actually together for many years, so we know each other fairly well, and we hope that the conversation will be of interest in the sense of providing tips, advice, to other young engineers that are considering working in a startup. The two other people that are going to participate in this conversation are Maddie Woodson and Stephen Estrella, so I'll let them introduce themselves. So, maddie, if you can start to introduce yourself, that'd be great.
Speaker 4:Thanks, daniel. Hi, my name is Maddie Woodson. I became interested in photonics sort of towards the end of my undergraduate studies and decided that I wanted to continue studying with a focus in photonics in graduate school. So I did that at the University of Virginia, where I focused on developing low noise avalanche photodiads, and as I was finishing up my degree I came out to Santa Barbara, california, to interview with Freedom and started just a couple months later. So I've now been here about six years and I am the technical lead for a small team of engineers developing various photodiad technologies and products here at Freedom.
Speaker 3:Great. Thank you, Maddie Stephen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks, daniel. My name is Stephen Estrella, a little bit of a different path from Maddie. I actually started at Freedom back in 2009. I was an intern engineer and got to grow with the company as I asked more and more questions I think I got more and more to do, which was great Got to learn a lot and then, as I went through my undergraduate degree, became fascinated with photonics and then, many years later, decided to go back to graduate school and finish that up, and now I work more on the business side. So I'm the director of business development and looking forward to growing the company and still am fascinated by photonics.
Speaker 3:Thank you, stephen, that's great. So where should we start? Obviously, talking about a startup company involves many different facets, and I think it would be interesting to start, perhaps, on company culture. This is something that is obviously very important for everyone involved in the company and, in many ways, culture can be quite different in a startup compared to larger companies or other organizations, such as universities and such. So maybe the best place would be to start by maybe each one of you trying to describe what do you think is company culture and how is it shaped within an organization? Madi.
Speaker 4:Sure, well, I think company culture is this unwritten, unspoken set of standards, I guess, for how the people within the company interact with one another and also externally, with customers as well. But I think that culture tends to be more of an insulator type thing Generally. I think that some of this comes from the top. Some of this is what the management dictates is how people will behave within the company and what are the priorities, things like that. But there's also some culture, I think, that's cultivated in more of a grassroots way, some the employees working at the company, just in the way that they interact with each other, and patterns that tend to arise tend to repeat themselves. And I think that there's also a degree of we're hiring people that we enjoy working with and so we're perpetuating the culture through things like that. What do you think, seaton?
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's great. When I look at a business, I think about what is a business, and I think it ultimately boils down to the people. You don't have just some autonomous thing kind of running not yet at least and so it really requires people to operate and to do what's needed to run a business. So when I look at culture, it's very much embedded with the people, and I think the culture, ultimately, is one of the foundations right upon which, hopefully, a successful business is built upon. And, depending on, obviously, what you're doing and what that model is, there's many ways that this can work, but I think successful businesses have a good culture.
Speaker 1:And so what is a culture? I think it's as you describe. It's how people interact together and also with the business. I think if you have a good team and people who work really well together, chances are you'll be very successful. But I think the business itself also has to support the people around that and therefore has to have some type of guidance as to how we're going to work together, how we're going to accomplish great things right.
Speaker 1:And so, therefore, I think culture is how we treat each other, how we support each other, it's the leadership that's involved, it's the ability to grow. It's also ability to make mistakes right. We have to be able to have that and still have a supportive work environment and, of course, to be able to have fun right. I think good teams also know how to have a good time and support one another just as any other sports team. Let's say, you know you've got to celebrate your wins, you've got to come together and support each other on losses. So I think culture kind of encompasses all those pieces together and good culture is basically, I think, a result in very successful companies.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I couldn't agree more on that. I think that a business can only be successful in a traditional way, say by making a profit I mean, that's the most traditional way of defining a successful business but it can only be successful in that traditional way by perhaps a non-traditional or historically not necessarily so traditional approach of really fostering a culture that is supportive of the interests of everyone involved and certainly of everybody working in the company. And, as you mentioned, in order to do that, developing a social network internally by sort of promoting activities or making sure that the environment, the culture, is such that, as you have mentioned, grass root activities are possible and people feel like that is something that can be done, is very important. So I think it would be really interesting if I know that both of you have developed some very specific grass root activities that have shaped the culture within the company. So if you can talk specifically about that, because I think those are great ideas or examples on how a culture can be affected by individuals and can develop.
Speaker 1:All right, yeah, I'll take a swimming, I guess. So I think one activity that we've kind of implemented and I think Maddie and I both have kind of done this is in the form of sports teams. We have a lot of say young engineers and I think part of having a successful business and having a good psychological space is to be physically active. I think there's a lot of benefit and it's also a good way to bond even outside of work, and you end up talking about things during work too, and so it just brings people closer together. So I think one of the first kind of activities that we embarked on, I guess, was having a softball team. I think we actually still have that even today, but we've been doing this for a few years and the company has been gracious to help sponsor that, and I think that realizes some of the benefits.
Speaker 1:But it's great we get all the engineers together. We're at various levels of ability, but it's great to kind of come together and do something that's not exactly photonics related but builds a team right. So I think there's definitely some ancillary positive benefit there. So something as simple as that as coming together, forming a team and just having a good time together. This is something that we organically kind of decided that we wanted to do and we've gone off and done it and in some cases we've been successful and have won championships and things like that. Other seasons maybe not as successful, but still I think it's a way to bring us together and have an activity that's sort of outside of work and continues to foster that sort of sense of community and culture even within the office, right On and off the field. What do you think, maddie?
Speaker 4:Yeah, absolutely. We've had a softball team, we've had soccer teams, we have people who go on lunchtime runs together and yeah, like Steven said, sometimes we're successful and maybe what Daniel would call a traditional fun and we win a championship or some sort of you know blue ribbon for the season. But a lot of the times I think some of the success is just making people who are maybe new to the company feel welcome. I actually, the year that I started at Freedom, I joined the softball team that Steven was running. I'd never played softball before.
Speaker 4:I'm still pretty terrible at softball, but it provided you know a really nice way to get to know a lot of my coworkers and you know a low stress heading where people are really you know acting, you know like themselves. There's less of like a, I guess, like a barrier to talking to people when you're collaborating on something like a softball team and I think that translates over really well to collaborating with those same people on projects. It just kind of lowers the intimidation of being new at a company and not knowing how to really start a conversation with someone. You immediately have something in common with your colleagues that are on the same you know sports team or something like that. And you know we recognize we're engineers, we're not. You know we're not all athletes, but I think that you know being welcoming to everyone, regardless of what level they're at, that that's a really positive part of our culture here too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that you both have been great examples on how individuals in the organization can shape the culture through being sort of the leaders, of initiating this sort of maybe, in a way say we can call it extracurricular activities, but, on the other hand, they're not really extracurricular, they're necessary, and I think the impact has been felt very well. And, as you say, what you learned about working as a team in a soccer field, definitely their lessons learned there and how to operate as a team in a project as well, and so it's all part and parcel of the same thing. One important aspect of the culture, obviously, is how people relate to each other. So and here any comment that you might want to venture if you look at the relationships in your experience of what it was or what it is or what it should have been or what it should be, what are in connection to relationships 360 degrees around you, the people that report to you, your peers and the company leadership and you can tackle this in any way you want, either one of you.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I think you know, when we're talking and thinking about sort of the culture and sort of the activities that we do, I think that's really important right, and it's important to have those kind of interactions because I think it also builds a sense of trust right. Once you make a fool of yourself in front of you know, your fellow colleagues, by doing some extracurricular activity, it kind of lowers the barrier right, it makes it normalizes everybody, it makes you realize everyone's human, which is important, you know, because at the end of the day we all have to find a way to work together right. And I think that applies sort of up, down and all around, I guess, if you want to call it sort of the 360 view, so obviously working directly with your peers, sort of, let's say, laterally. I think that definitely helps.
Speaker 1:But then when you're doing these activities, both maybe with you know, people who work above and below you, I think it builds those bonds, makes them stronger and again kind of reinforces sort of this level of trust, which I think is really important. So I think there's just a lot of benefits to just, you know, being able to have those kind of activities, those interactions, whether they're sort of in the office, outside of the office, because you need to be able to approach people and they need to be able to approach you too. Right, it's a two way street, for sure. So I think all of those things are really necessary and I'd still kind of put those on the umbrella, kind of like culture, right, it's still all sort of necessary, and I think that bi-directional trust is really quintessential for having again a successful business and having good culture.
Speaker 4:I would echo what Steven is saying and maybe just another element to add to that is that frequently when you are interacting with people on the sports teams or outside of work maybe at a company event or something like that as Steven said, you are interacting with people both who work above you and below you and as well as lateral to you.
Speaker 4:But you frequently interact with people who your day-to-day work doesn't necessarily push you to work with. If I am working on a SotoDiad team, I might not necessarily interact with someone on our laser team on a day-to-day basis, but in having this conversation at a company barbecue or something like that, it is really interesting to hear what people are working on and sometimes you will find that you are tackling very similar problems as people on another team, and having those sort of like low pressure interactions gives you an opportunity not only to get to know people who you are not necessarily going to interact with, like I said, on a day-to-day basis, but also to try to float solutions and ideas across people who have that different perspective from you and maybe a different background. That ends up being, I think, something that is technically really useful about just these social linkage friends.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely, and these sort of networking opportunities, if you want, to meeting people that are working in other areas, obviously help. Communication and trust that you mentioned too, are two key elements in the operation of any organization and certainly in a startup, without which, again, success is not possible. So let's change gears a little bit. It's still, in a way, part of culture, but you've mentioned about, sort of very top level, your professional development in the past few years within the company. Let's expand that a little bit more. If you can talk about your professional growth within a startup company, what have you experienced directly? What has been good, what maybe has not been so good? Stephen, do you want to start on that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure. So I think anytime you envision like a startup, right, you might think you know, okay, it's happening in someone's basement or garage, or you know who knows in some small little corner, and I think that's still pretty much true. You know, usually startups have kind of humble beginnings and I would think and say, you know, I think freedom is an example of that as well, and because you don't maybe don't start out with a whole lot in terms of infrastructure or resources, you have to be very creative. You know, necessity is the mother of invention, right? So you have very limited money, limited resources, limited time to try to do something amazing. And I think that's part of the allure of being with a startup is that you know you really get a chance to get involved with all kinds of different things.
Speaker 1:I think I had no idea what I was getting myself into in a positive way when I joined Freedom. I didn't expect that I would be exposed to so many various aspects of the company. You know, I think when you're an engineer, you think, okay, well, all I'm going to do is, you know, maybe some engineering, and I think maybe in some cases that's true, but again, because of the needs are great and the workers are few, it means that people are going to wear, by necessity, kind of various different hats and I think that's I consider that to be like a benefit of working with a startup. So, yes, like there's obviously your traditional engineering work that has to get done, you know, design something, fabricate something, test something. But there's also various aspects that are about a comprise of business as well. There's the financial aspects, there's the program management, there's the sales, there's the marketing, you know all these little things basically, and I think in my experience, if I kind of just look from a high level, I guess, kind of looking all the way back through my career, I think I had, you know, good fortune, good benefit of being interested in all these things and being given the opportunity to engage in those activities. You know, willingly I wanted to try those out and I got that kind of exposure.
Speaker 1:So, as I mentioned kind of in the beginning in the intro, like I started out as an intern, I was doing PCV layout. You know nothing photonic related, but you know turns out, pcv layout is not too dissimilar from photonic integrated circuit layout. So I saw what the founders were doing and I said you know, hey, what is that? Can I do that? Yeah, absolutely. So you design something. It gets fabricated. Okay, well, you know you designed it. Now you get to test it right, let's see how that turned out. So you know, you start getting into, you know, testing measurement. There's a lot of learning there. Okay, well, now we need to package this device and, okay, how do we do that? So there's learning, sort of on the packaging aspect, and then you know, after a few iterations of that, okay, now you know, think about how we would do this differently. Is there another application or project that we can kind of go after and apply this technology? And kind of? You know, it's a little bit of a snowball effect.
Speaker 1:Once you kind of gather these skills up, you're able to kind of do more and be given more responsibility, and I think that's kind of been the trajectory. I guess that I've kind of followed is, I've been with the company for a long time but I've done, I think, quite a bit. I've had the opportunity to do that and also exploring various aspects. You know I was doing a lot of engineering and now I'm more on the business side of things too, and so I think that's just evidence of being given that opportunity to try to explore things and obviously hopefully excel, of course.
Speaker 1:But I think that's one of the benefits of the small company is that there is no shortage of work to be done in various areas and you can basically pursue those pieces and kind of go off and explore, and I think there's just a lot of benefit, even from just an engineering perspective. You know, engineering encompasses so many different things and I think the more exposure you get to that gives you a really good holistic perspective to then really focus on what you want to do. But if you have an understanding of why it needs to be done in a particular way from a business perspective or from a financial perspective or from a marketing perspective, I think that's really beneficial in the long run. So those, all those experiences and things, I think add up pretty well. But what do you think, natty?
Speaker 4:Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the things that really drew me to freedom was, I mean, I remember sitting in my interview and our CEO telling me well, you're going to wear a lot of hats if you work here. That's a phrase that we throw around a lot here. I mean, I would say that if you have a Sierra's boredom, you should join a start test. I also felt like I was given a lot of opportunities to really explore what it was that I was interested in. I would voice some interest in program management and within a month or two that sort of opportunity was given to me as something I could try out. I had an interest in business development. I was able to try a little bit of that out too.
Speaker 4:Something that's been really cool at Freedom is, I think we have a lot of mentors in a lot of different areas where we have people with strong technical backgrounds, strong business backgrounds, strong program management backgrounds. That helps shape this culture of really passionate, curious people who are really eager to help. This is sort of like this thickly process of someone eager to help and they're given something that they're able to help out on. The management really facilitates that by supporting the curiosity of the individuals who are working here. Something that I think is kind of neat about startup is you have this web of skills that's shared across the company. There's one person who does this one thing at the company. No, there's three or four people who all have some experience with that. I think that you have to be careful not to spread yourself too thin. You don't want that web of skills to become a tangle of unclear who's responsible for what. I think it makes for a really strong company, both in terms of culture and in expertise.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely Steven. You have a very unique professional growth path in the sense that you did your PhD studies while you were working. I must say you were working 150% as well as doing a PhD 150%. I think this is something that might be interesting to share your experience of overcoming all of those hurdles and succeeding and doing a PhD while working.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was quite an interesting journey and I'm glad I went through that. I will say up front. That said, yeah, it definitely was a lot of work. I guess I'll kind of go all the way back to the beginning and kind of quickly come up to where we are. But when I was interviewing with the company they asked me what do you want to do long term? I said I want to do what you do. I think one day I'd like to have maybe a company or get my PhD and do what you guys do, which is kind of go after these really cool projects and do all these kind of wonderful things.
Speaker 1:I saw them kind of look at each other and like, okay, yeah, lo and behold I think that was maybe 10 years later or something like that I did go off and kind of get that PhD. I would say it felt kind of natural in a sense. We're working with a lot of smart people and you're just kind of immersed sort of in this environment and it just kind of reinforced my desire to do that of like, okay, I am doing the work, I am operating at that level, so I should be able to do this Right. So that opportunity kind of came up. As I mentioned, I graduated from UCSB I think it was in 2010, and then I continued working for about six years before going back to graduate school in 2016. So my comment there is if you're interested in going to graduate school, fantastic, but probably don't wait that long.
Speaker 1:I think it was really challenging to be in industry kind of. So long you get comfortable, you know you have your way of life, and then to kind of be thrown back into that setting was challenging. I think my first year I definitely struggled, just trying to get back into that sort of academic mindset, trying to balance life, trying to balance work. And, you know, eventually I did go off and talk to a counselor or advisor at school and they're like so what's going on in your life? And I said, well, I'm going to school, I'm working full time, I'm doing all these things. And they said, wow, yeah, I think we need to. Sounds like you're doing a lot.
Speaker 1:We should try to figure out how to kind of divide and conquer, and I think that was really good advice. So having kind of those boundaries of you know, when I'm at school I'm focused at school, when I'm at work I'm focused at work, and to try as best as I can to kind of keep those separate, just so that I can kind of focus. And then I'm happy to say, in the second year and the years after, I did amazingly well after that trying to implement sort of that approach. The other aspect I think that kind of made this possible is, you know, the work I was doing. My thesis work was of interest both to the university and to the company. So you know, I was working on Silicon Photonics for harsh environments and so that project basically was kind of one in the same.
Speaker 1:What I was doing for my research at UCSB was the same as my my quote, unquote day job at Freedom, and so I, you know, I kind of like to point to this sort of overlap, integral. You know that it needs to be very close to one or 100%. You know, if they can be as similar as possible, I think the chances of success, you know, become that much more, you know, tangible, because I think if you're pulled in kind of two different directions, I don't know, I'm not that person, I don't think I could have done that, but maybe someone else can. But at least for me, you know, being able to focus kind of on one thing and do it well was kind of the key to success. So I'd say, if you do, you know, try to go off to work simultaneously and to go to graduate school.
Speaker 1:Really try to find something that you know you can kind of use for both purposes, dual purpose, as it were, because it's challenging enough just pursuing a PhD and it's challenging enough to be successful in a job. So my recommendation would be to try to try to make those as similar as possible. So yeah, it was, it was I learned a lot about myself going through that and and hopefully I mean I made my scientific contributions there as well. But I think in the end it was really a fantastic experience and I think it was pretty, pretty unique in that sense, and so if someone has the opportunity to do it, I definitely recommend go for it, but just keep in mind the journey ahead and kind of what it takes to do that and to try to find a balance between work life, school.
Speaker 1:You know all those are really important, you know. And definitely to have fun too. Right, you got to find ways to enjoy. You know what you're doing because life is short. So I think being able to celebrate some of those wins, being able to, you know, celebrate with your friends, your family, your loved ones, I think that's all important. They're all part of that journey too.
Speaker 1:Your colleagues too, your coworkers I think I had a lot of support from them too. So all those pieces kind of have to come together or should, to kind of make that journey possible. So I'm grateful that I've done that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was quite extraordinary to follow what you were doing at that time and you did really extraordinarily well. I told you this in the past, but congratulations again. It's been. It was quite a challenge, Mati. You followed perhaps what is the most conventional, more conventional path of doing a PhD before going to work sort of sequential role and in parallel, Can you comment on the transition from doing a PhD to coming into freedom, photonics, going to a startup? What comes to your mind? Do you feel that your PhD prepared you for the work ahead? Is there anything that could have been done different or not? And so what do you remember about the transition from one to the other?
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's a great question, Daniel. I, as you know, I think most people know it's difficult really to do any photonic research and or even really take a class on photonics and most undergraduate programs. So I saw, you know, photonics is something I was interested in and that sort of necessitated going to graduate school. And, you know, at the time it actually lined up quite well for me, because this was sort of around the time of the recession and it was difficult to sign jobs. I thought, well, I'll just, I'll I enjoy learning, I'll continue to go to school.
Speaker 4:But, you know, something that I really admire about Steven's path is that, steven, you really came in with, like, not only this hands-on experience of like you've done some layout, you've seen some devices, but you also came in with, like this really great sense of context and I think that's something that I see as like a very like a difference in our, you know, graduate schooling. I think, you know, like many PhD students, I was, you know, really hyper focused on the technology that I was working on. You know, when you're in graduate school, I think it's easy to fall into this state of you know, you're really trying to push the boundaries of the state of the art, but you're not tasked with making any money off of it. So you're not necessarily, you know, understanding the market. We're trying to make a manufacturable product. You know you're really trying to get like one hero device. But, you know, with the right phase of the moon you can measure the right, you know parameters and get sort of excellent performance.
Speaker 4:And that was a. You know, a major change in coming to freedom was oh well, I mean, a lot of our work that we do and have done here at Freedom has been very researchy, you know, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to continue to work on, you know, research and development, which I think is quite fun, but at the same time meaning to do these things keeping in mind, well, you know, maybe this chip needs to go into a package one day. How are we going to handle that? That was something.
Speaker 4:You know that in graduate school I was much more focused on, you know, the, the epitaxial stack and the fabrication of a device. But working at Freedom really kind of expanded, you know, the, the context for which I'm thinking about these devices. Now I'm thinking, okay, well, what's this going to look like If it needs to go into a package, or what sort of system is this going to go into? What sort of markets does this address? And all of that kind of gives you, you know, some extra tools as a as an engineer, to think about when you're, when you're designing a product.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly Like every engineer finishing his or her studies, broadly speaking, you had a choice of going to a small company, a startup, or going to a large company, or continuing at the university and follow the academic path. Obviously you chose going to a startup. So we're all biased, I guess, in our opinions, but how do you see sort of life at a startup compared to life at a larger company or in a university? And again, I warned the listener that we're all biased here, but in an as unbiased way as you can.
Speaker 4:Yeah, like I said earlier, I think that really liked. That promise that I would get to do a wide variety of things was really a major draw for me to join a small company. You know I was nervous about getting siloed into doing just one sort of thing and I think I had that sort of trepidation about going to a larger company. You know I didn't want to be necessarily someone who just does one tap day in and day out, but I think I like the idea of joining a company rather than staying at a university and being a part of actually making something that people would get to use one day.
Speaker 4:I mean, this is not to cast any shade on universities. We develop incredible technologies that are often, you know, scooped up by a small business or a large business and products are made from those technologies. But I guess I wanted to be part of that process. I wanted to see you know how a technology goes from an idea or a paper to something that a customer can buy off the shelf. That was really the pull for me to join a small business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree with what Maddie said and I think for me, when I look at what you can do, or at least the promise of what you can do at a startup versus a larger company, I think there's, you know, potentially more there. Right, you get a chance to tackle a wide variety of things. I think the other I'll take a different sort of vector as well you know there's also the financial part of it too. Right, it's an investment. So the hope is, you know, if you join a startup, hopefully the startup blossoms into you know, the next unicorn, or whatever the terminology is now today, of being a very, very successful business. And when you are a part of that, the hope is obviously you get to go along for that ride as well. But, as I have kind of mentioned, usually when a young startup is kind of getting going, there's just not there's not a lot of money, obviously to kind of pay you.
Speaker 1:So, yes, you get to do a lot, but maybe compensation might not be as high. And I think larger companies, by definition, tend to have more revenue people. They can have people be a little bit more focused in what they do and potentially they also get compensated a little bit more. So there's this kind of I don't know, at least for me, when I was kind of looking at it. It's like, well, what matters to me, to me most, right, and I think everyone is there are different stages in their lives and what matters more to them.
Speaker 1:But for me, I think I chose to go with the startup because I saw it as an investment, not only sort of in professional development, but hopefully financial as well, right, and we did eventually become acquired by Lumenard Technologies, so that there is success in that. But that's not always the case for every startup, right. Not every startup succeeds. So it's a risk, it's a risk reward, I think, kind of balance. And for those, I think, who are more risk tolerant, yeah, I think a startup kind of makes sense and for those who are not so tolerant, they may choose to go with a larger company.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, there is some risk. I mean the numbers, common knowledge numbers are one in ten startups succeed, and I don't know if that's exactly right. Certainly the odds are against you. But something that I've found out is that in larger companies, odds relating to the group where you are at are not necessarily much different. You're always part of a smaller group within a large company. So the risk is there, and it's not so much of a risk in the sense that even though some companies might go under, the industry like in this case the photonics industry flourishes, grows, has grown exponentially, and so, even though maybe some companies have not succeeded, the industry world does, and with that everybody involved. So there's always another opportunity.
Speaker 3:One important aspect in sort of engineering life is engineers love to tell the world about what they're doing and what they've accomplished. It's human nature, not only engineers as part of being part of humanity. Now this is an aspect where universities and industry differ quite a bit, in the sense that it is the purpose and the task of universities obviously to increase human knowledge and thus sort of spreading this over everywhere. The new knowledge is an important part of the function of university. In industry, Spreading knowledge is important too, but in somewhat of a more restricted sense. Obviously, there are some aspects of what industries do that cannot be discussed outside of the company. It would be interesting if you could mention what your experience has been in the sense of publishing as part of industry, as part of a small company. What's been your experience there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, they are different environments and therefore different motivations. I think from an academic perspective, you publish results out there also with the intent of having it be able to be verified, replicated. It's in your interest to explain how everything is done because hopefully someone else has the ability to replicate that experiment or that result, which means intimate knowledge is needed of everything that went in there. It's also a way, obviously to contribute overall to the scientific body of knowledge. I think when you look at from an industrial perspective why one would publish, the motivation is a little bit different. It's to make people aware of what the company has done or the person involved in that. Companies have an incentive to not release all the details of what was done. There there's potentially intellectual property and trade secrets that may have gone into that result. If that were just freely dispersed, well, then it means someone else could replicate what you did. Then that means that you've lost your competitive advantage. That potentially could have a negative impact on the business.
Speaker 1:I think the reason why an industrial entity I decide to publish is really more from the marketing perspective of saying, hey, we've done this great thing, we can do it again for you. We're making this great new product. It has these amazing new performance. We can do that for you. Hopefully that draws more customers and therefore more revenue to the company, Because there is really I wouldn't say a financial incentive for an academic institution to do that. It's really to contribute knowledge to the body of science as a part. What do you think, Maddie?
Speaker 4:Yeah, absolutely. Maybe there's an argument to be made that there is perhaps this financial motivation even for a university. They're looking to prove that they've got the know-how and that they can deliver on a contract or a grant that they're offered. But it is quite different. Something that I sort of use as a metaphor is that we have our secret sauce recipe that could be at the textile structure, that could be from fabrication techniques that we have here. While I think in some other industries you might protect that with something like a patent, that's not necessarily the best protection.
Speaker 4:In the world of semiconductors it's quite hard to prove that your competitor is using the same at the taxiel stack as you or that they're using a particular fabrication technique that you've patented. The onus of proving that is really challenging. When you're talking about these devices that are really precisely manufactured in a clean room, for which it's not necessarily easy to, I guess, analyze what a chip might be composed of or things like that, it becomes a much more complicated problem than it might be in, say, another industry. What I've learned over the years is that, rather than filing a patent on something, people will just generally keep trade secrets within the company and they don't release that information outside of the company. Let's see, I just noticed that we lost our network connection. I don't know if you can still hear me through my phone.
Speaker 3:Okay, I can hear you, no problem.
Speaker 4:All right, well, yeah, I think that's sort of the end of what I was going to say there.
Speaker 3:Anyway, yeah, thank you. Certainly there are differences there, but still it is possible to publish an industry with a slightly different tone, as it were. And, as you highlighted, the objectives are different in industry as industry publishers, compared to university In direction, a little bit in the conversation over the past few years, people have worked remotely significantly, and whether full-time, remotely or part-time, I mean it's a hybrid some time remote, some time on site. What's been your experience and what do you think? What's the sort of right balance between working remotely and working on site?
Speaker 1:Okay, so you know we're remote, right, we're doing this although, you know, for the listeners, maddie and I are actually sitting across from each other. But you know, I think what we found from this unfortunate event is, you know, again, necessity is kind of the mother of invention. Here we found ways to still kind of be productive and so I think, hopefully, that there is an agreement that working sort of remote is definitely possible and doable. Now, is that right for every particular you know job? Probably not. I think there are instances where you know people kind of need to be where the work is at and because you know they're more hands-on or they need to interact with people a little bit more intimately. But I think, if we look at it from an experiment, let's say a social experiment, I think the evidence is there that we can still be productive.
Speaker 1:Now, that said, I think you know we're all social animals and I think there is that element of and desire maybe for most people to want to be kind of together right, to kind of be in the same room. Let's say, matt, you brought up, you know, the example of being at a barbecue and talking to people and it's like, well, that happened because we're all brought together right. And so I think if you're entirely remote it's not impossible. But I think it's a little more challenging right to kind of have those happenstance experiences, or just you walk by somebody and something happens and, who knows, you know, maybe you have another great idea. But that may not have been possible if you weren't really sort of in the same building or, you know, very close by.
Speaker 1:So I think there are times when you know we're doing particular work where it's like, well, you know I can be off wherever I need to do that and I don't necessarily need to, you know, be on site or have physical sort of proximity. But then there I think there are times where it does make sense and there may be that need. So I think the hybrid model, hopefully, is kind of here to stay. I think that very much is possible. Now, where is that right balance? I don't know. I think we're still all kind of figuring that out. But at least from a kind of humanistic perspective, I think there is still a lot of good benefit for people to actually be closer together. I think that tends to help things.
Speaker 4:Yeah, absolutely. I think that you know, one of the positive parts of, as you said, a really terrible event was that I would say that remote work kind of pushed conferencing technology. It pushed our ability to work online, but it is really hard to synthesize that like water cooler talk that you're talking about.
Speaker 4:See, then it's like that sort of like random happenstance, like doesn't really really come to pass on like a meeting, and further I think that you know when you, when you try to force something like that, it doesn't feel organic to have, you know, a group of 50 people on a Zoom call trying to make it feel like a normal conversation. It's simply not the way I think that humans interact. And yeah, absolutely I'd say that I'm also sort of a social creature. I'd prefer to be in the office and I'd prefer to be working with the other people directly. But of course, I think, like many other employees I mean I appreciate the flexibility of a hybrid model. It's nice to you know if I have something that I need to do in the middle of the day and I feel like I can get something done later on.
Speaker 4:It's that sort of flexibility I think has been a positive change generally. But yeah, I'm figuring out where the where the fulcrum is. I guess to balance how much time you should spend remote versus working in person, it's a tough question to answer and I think it's further complicated by the fact that there are parts of our job that can't necessarily be done remotely. I mean, there are technicians and engineers here at Freedom for whom very little, if any, of their job can be done remotely because they need to be in the lab and they need to be doing things that are hands on, and I think that there's a degree to a solidarity of trying, even if you can do a task remotely, to being around and available for people who might need your help hands on in the lab or need some input from you.
Speaker 3:Great, Thank you. Changing topics again, the three of us were attracted by photonics, photonics technology, photonics industry right at the beginning of our careers for some magical reasons. I personally don't always understand why it happened, but it did happen and it happened very strongly. Basically, it's kept me in this for the whole of my career and it's been wonderful. But if now we address people that are where we were then thinking of what area should they choose for their career? What can you tell them about photonics today? How does it look going forward? What can they expect in their career for somebody that is looking at starting right now?
Speaker 1:So I don't remember the exact moment that I knew that I was going to do photonics for practically the rest of my life. But I remember sort of what happened. I was actually working for a robotics company before coming to Freedom and during my undergraduate studies I took a class on fiber optic communication system. It was the only class right at the undergraduate level I could take, and I don't know what it was, professor, the material, but I just during that class I just knew this is what I'm going to do. I couldn't explain it and I knew that I had to find a way to kind of become a part of this kind of emerging field. That's kind of how I came to Freedom. But kind of looking forward, I guess what's interesting is to kind of see how much photonics is actually permeating other disciplines, and those lines are kind of becoming a little bit more blurred, which is great. I think it's fantastic because that means that doing things with light is finding so many applications and other areas. I mean for medicine, for health, for, obviously, communications, yes, but for sensing, for astronomy, for I mean just like, wherever you look, I mean people are actively trying to see how light can be applied to kind of further advance that particular domain. So I guess if you're intrigued by light, if you look at a rainbow and think like how does that work? Or you look at through a pool and like OK, well, why is that object over there? These are kind of the things that we kind of notice as a child and you have that kind of child like wonder, and I think it still applies today. I think we know why obviously that happens.
Speaker 1:But if you find yourself kind of looking at those kinds of problems and kind of asking yourself why, then maybe Photonics is kind of right for you and I guess, not to be worried to think that maybe, well, if I go into Photonics, all I'm going to do is work on fiber optic communication systems Not that that's a bad thing, but I think Photonics is kind of really finding many, many more areas of applicability and I think that's really exciting.
Speaker 1:I think it's really exciting to be a part of that and to see that we might be surrounded by Photonics more than we might think currently. Right now, maybe it'll be in our hands. I guess it really is right. We if you think of your iPhone, if you have an iPhone, there's sensors that are already in there that make use of these principles, and so, whether you see it or not, I guess we are surrounded by things that are driven by light and, and I think, the future, if I can make a joke, you know it's pretty bright for, for, for Photonics, and so, for people who are interested, I definitely go for it. I think there's no shortage of problems to be solved, and I think you'd be pretty pleased where it can be applied and how much benefit there is for society.
Speaker 4:Yes, yes, Steven, I think you touched on some good applications, but you know, they're even like buzzier applications. You're right, Like you're well aware of the quantum computing and communications efforts that are going on. And then, of course, you know we work for an automotive LiDAR company. Those are, I would say, like you know, they're kind of like applications that are that are in the news a lot right now. I guess another comment that I have on you know what sort of the, the beauty or the joy, if you want, of Photonics is. I think, pretty clearly, there's a lot of physics involved, but it's not just physics, you know. There's optics, there's mechanical engineering, there's systems engineering. There's really a pretty broad variety of topics that you'll be involved in if you, you know, join the Photonics community and you know, as, like I said before, if you're a curious person, if you're afraid of boredoms, this is, this is a pretty nice field to be in. There's a lot going on and, yeah, I'd echo the future is bright for sure.
Speaker 3:Is there anything else that we haven't said that you would like to say?
Speaker 1:Well, I just want to say I think this is great. I think being able to talk about our experiences and tap into people's brains to understand what's it like being in photonics, I think that's a really neat opportunity. So I encourage this kind of dialogue going forward. So I think, for me, I'm grateful to have this opportunity and to share it with you, daniel Maddie, and, as you mentioned, we all work together, so it's just a great way to talk about our common experience, and I think it's also been neat to see where we differ and where we have commonalities. So, again, evidence of just being together and being able to discuss and communicate. So, yeah, thanks for the opportunity.
Speaker 2:That was amazing yeah thank you very much. Sorry, no like honestly like you guys just gave me, so I want to like work twice as hard today now.
Speaker 3:That was amazing, well actually Steven said something, I think you have another two minutes. Maddie could say something, and then we'll wrap it up. Yeah, no problem. I mean we're about one or two minutes away from the channel.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no problem, as long as I'm open so as long as you guys want to continue on.
Speaker 4:I'm going to go back on mute Just two minutes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm going to go back on mute, maddie, anything else?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I would echo what Steven said. Thank you very much for the opportunity. Thank you, daniel, for leading the discussion, and I spent a lot of fun. I learned some things about Steven that I never knew. I worked with him for six years, so this is a lot of fun and I appreciate the opportunity.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, thank you, maddie and Steven, and thank you to the IEEE Photonic Society. I would like to continue talking for a long time and a lot more to talk about, but I think we should let the listeners continue what they were doing before. I hope whoever has listened to this has learned something that is useful in the sense of what working in a Photonic Startup is about, and thank you very much for listening to us.
Speaker 4:There we're done.
Speaker 3:Thank you, therese so much.
Speaker 2:Like I said, I just think it's super inspiring. You guys are really inspiring and motivating. I'm like can I go into Photonics now?
Speaker 4:But there was a couple of moments that really stood out to me from a marketing perspective.
Speaker 2:This is our fourth episode of recording and I really haven't felt like I mean they were very technical. So I'm not technical, but there is a couple of moments that I can see us using for a lot of our promotions for the podcast. So, I'm so excited to see what the editor does with it, and I did want to invite both of you to come back. So if either Maddie or Steven, if you have a certain interest in Photonics or in Photonics and applications, or even soft skills.
Speaker 2:feel free to send them to me and then, when we're planning our expert speakers, we might invite you back as a moderator or as a host on future episodes and just as far as next steps, what will happen now is I will send this to our editor, and they usually turn it around in a couple of days, so I'm looking at getting the episode to you three to review by early next week.
Speaker 4:And then it will be put on Spotify.
Speaker 2:And we also are assorted. We've been planning like this huge marketing campaign to officially launch our podcast. We are on Spotify but we're not promoting it yet and we already had like a bunch of downloads over 100 downloads.
Speaker 4:So it's really going to get high visibility once we officially launch.
Speaker 2:So very excited to have you three as an episode. It was really really, really insightful and interesting and I really appreciate the time you all took. We're listening to the 911 conference.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, thank you, Kristen. Really enjoyed it and happy to come back, so I appreciate the invitation.
Speaker 4:This is a home from Terrace.
Speaker 2:Do you three have any questions for me or Matt? No?
Speaker 3:Out of my car. All right, awesome.
Speaker 4:So I'll be in touch next week and just thank you again and have a great weekend.
Speaker 3:All right, thank you everyone Awesome, thank you so much Kristen Take care.
Speaker 1:Bye-bye, have a great weekend.
Speaker 4:Bye Thank you Bye.