OLEKSII ILCHENKO EPIC CEO INTERVIEW
How do you see the future?
to get advice from people who have experience in high-tech startups so you can avoid mistakes and grow your company in a sustainable way.
from Europe and the Danish government, they are only for research and additional funding has always been required for actually running the company – recruiting and paying salaries, inventory, and purchasing equipment for manufacturing.
AC
Regarding our business strategy, we have focussed on short-term profitability rather than long term
OI
projects, which, by definition, have a very delayed profitability. The reasons for this are twofold. Firstly, as investors want short term profitability, it’s hard to get private funding for projects that don’t show a return for five-ten years. Secondly, to generate revenue, we decided to create products that we could sell immediately. This means that each application we sell is different. For example, methanol detection through a Whiskey bottle, detection of gas forms in high pressure solar cells, and in Vivo skin measurements. The advantage of this approach is that for each device we sell, we get customer feedback on user friendliness and performance which enables us to improve our technology based on customer feedback rather than relying on expectations of how end users will react to performance. Right now, we produce one or two systems per week, and I don’t see it makes a lot of sense to create larger manufacturing facilities without getting the orders. We have several customers who plan to order in bulk and when this becomes a reality, then of course, we will need to expand. While our products have some unique benefits, one of our objectives is to make our devices more robust and able to operate in harsh environments. Until now, our devices have been designed to operate in lab environments with controlled temperature and humidity. Accordingly, they have been designed to operate at temperatures between 15 -25 °C and are relatively fragile. For miliary and industrial use, we will need to redesign the optomechanics to make the devices more robust so they can survive a dop of one metre onto concrete, and are able to function in adverse weather conditions in a temperature range of -20 to +45 °C. Additionally, we will need to improve the software to make our products more user friendly and better able to accommodate customer requirements. For example, by creating a spectral library when using Raman spectroscopy for identification of materials.
What’s your advice for the next generation of entrepreneurs?
AC
It very much depends on the country you are based in. Ideally, it’s best to look for local funding
OI
inside a university or at a country level so you can boost your early-stage ideas into a higher technology readiness level. In Denmark we have proof-of-concept grants that are available for PhD or postdoc students irrespective of their track record and number of high-impact publications. What they care about is the idea and your motivation to commercialise it. Secondly, it’s important
Oleksii Ilchenko, CEO and Founder, Lightnovo.
If you started again, what would you do differently?
AC
I’d start looking for investment earlier so I could hire enough people to do the technical work.
OI
When I started, I was too involved with technology problems doing alignment and optical designs day and night, which created some delays and frustration because we didn’t have enough people to fulfil the orders that we were receiving. While we currently have four active grants
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ISSUE 34 | Q3 2023
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