Yousof Naderi, professor at Northeastern University, is co-founder of DeepCharge, which is commercializing a new technology for charging batteries without cables. Intriguing look at how our lives could change as our devices are untethered.
Highlights:
Sal Daher Introduces Yousof Naderi
What DeepCharge is Solving
"... In a case of the wireless charging, DeepCharge has selected and carefully from the beginning are working in a non-radiative technology, which means it's just coil by coil..."
How DeepCharge Came About
"... Also, there is this piece of sustainability that we can't go through all that, but we think that working with enterprise is really going to help us in our mission, also, to build a wire-free sustainable future..."
"... Now, to go to the next level, we feel that this is a right timing to look at the strategic investor and partner that can stay, share our vision, and be able to provide resources and help to make this success for everybody..."
The Future of DeepCharge
Yousof's Immigrant Story
Why Yousof Started DeepCharge
Advice to the Audience
"... I think one of the biggest pivots was just that type of technology that they use..."
ANGEL INVEST BOSTON IS SPONSORED BY:
Transcript of, “DeepCharge”
Guest: Yousof Naderi
Sal Daher: I'm really proud to say that the Angel Invest Boston Podcast is sponsored by Purdue University entrepreneurship and Peter Fasse, Patent Attorney at Fish & Richardson. Purdue is exceptional in its support of its faculty, faculty of its top five engineering schools in helping them get their technology from the lab out to the market, out to industry, out to the clinic. Peter Fasse is also a great support to entrepreneurs.
He is a patent attorney specializing in microfluidics and has been tremendously helpful to some of the startups, which I'm involved, including a startup, came out of Purdue, Savran Technologies. I'm proud to have these two sponsors for my podcast.
Sal Daher Introduces Yousof Naderi
Welcome to Angel Invest Boston conversations with Boston's most interesting founders and angels. I am Sal Daher, an angel investor here in Boston who is very curious about how to build technology companies really well. Today, I'm delighted to be welcoming our guest, Yousof Naderi. Say hi, Yousof.
Yousof Naderi: Hi Sal, how are you? Hi to your audience. Glad to be here and talk about DeepCharge.
Sal Daher: Awesome. Yousof is a professor at Northeastern University and he has found a company called DeepCharge, which is doing something really cool, making it possible for you to charge your devices without all those wires in a way that is really unusual and remarkable. I should put in a word to listener Lon Isaacson who's an angel investor in the area who put me in touch with Yousof. Anyway, Yousof, tell us what problem DeepCharge is solving.
What DeepCharge is Solving
Yousof Naderi: Yes. All of us resonate with frustration of charging devices. We went two times to Mars but still, we have this problem with the wire and code and charging in errors. That's what we're hearing from the people. Just the current solution, it looks like it's ineffective and really not the performance and user experience that the people want. You go in every conference room the people are fighting for wires and finding the cord.
You go to public places, that's the same. Really, from the time that we wake up to go to bed, we are getting frustration, emotional annoyance of trying to charge our devices. The wire and cord are big part of that. When we look at existing wireless charging solutions, they are, I said ineffective. You need to have a perfect alignment between transmitter and receiver. You need to still connect your devices to the wireless charger to a cord. Still, you are tethered. This brings all the limitations in terms of time, in terms of location, in terms of freedom, in terms of quality of the work. That's a big problem. Everybody resonated with this. In DeepCharge, we are aim and a mission to solve this problem.
Sal Daher: You're on a mission to solve the problem of wires. It's funny, you're perhaps too young for this, but in the 1970s or '80, there was a cartoon in the New Yorker magazine. They have great cartoons, and it was this person who has opened the door to her house and she's looking at this robot and the robot says to her, "Hi, I'm from MIT, I need to be plugged in for the night."
[Laughter]
There was a fort taste of what would come in the future. We all need to be plugged in all the time. Not just this creature, this thing from MIT that needed to be plugged in for the night. It is a nightmare. Whenever you hear about electric magnetic fields, people get very worried. There's studies going on right now. There's no definitive data yet, but people worry about electric magnetic fields disturbing fast-growing tissues in the human body and so forth. How can you set people at ease that this device to your invention is not going to be curating problems?
"... In a case of the wireless charging, DeepCharge has selected and carefully from the beginning are working in a non-radiative technology, which means it's just coil by coil..."
Yousof Naderi: That's a beautiful question. I would look at it as two important ways here for people to understand. Number one is we have signals and energy field that are radiative. Those are usually high-frequency signals we see in a Wi-Fi, we see in a Bluetooth, and also the other frequency. We have field and signals that are actually non-radiating. There is no electrical field there.
In a case of the wireless charging, DeepCharge has selected and carefully from the beginning are working in a non-radiative technology, which means it's just coil by coil. You have a receiver coil, you have a transmitter coil. Now, to enable this coil to go to the level of the user experience with it quite interesting innovation to get happen. We can go through that. Really, once we solve those challenges, the technical challenges, we believe this is the sweetest spot.
The best technology to make it a non-radiating wireless charging and safe efficient. Number two, the second perspective, it's about intelligence. Having a software play a big role, having intelligent sensing and intelligent energy delivery play a big role is what we need.
Sal Daher: When you say intelligent delivery, you are using software to optimize where the energy is being dispensed. It's not just being wasted everywhere, it's being put exactly where the device is when the device needs it.
Yousof Naderi: Absolutely. There is a piece of AI-enabled sensing. You need to have a eye to localize track, be able to find these devices. That's the first piece. Once we localize it with high accuracy, the second piece is delivered to the location with efficiency and safety. That's the second part. That's where the software comes, that's the intelligence comes and that's--
Also, we see the right solution to the problem of providing the much more exponential, better user experience. People shouldn't be worried about where they want to put their devices. That's the software needs to happen. So far what we have seen in other really part of industry is that people are trying to improve the performance and the charging rate and the power, but really, there is not that much software and intelligence into this system. That's what DeepCharge is bringing. It's a, I think, high level of sensing charging, energy shaping and really making it go from location-based charging to infrastructure-based charging.
Sal Daher: Let's unpack that. Location-based charging, meaning you got to go in and plug it into a certain point and charge your device there. Infrastructure means that you're just going about your work and the charging is available to you, where your work on your workspace. That's basically what you mean by that. For people who are not specialists, it's important to be as concrete as possible.
These abstractions are very important for us to think in terms of making business decisions and so forth. We want to explain to people in real terms what it means. It means you're not queuing up for the plug, [laughs] the charging plug, or hunting for a plugging charge. You effortlessly sit at a desk and the user experience is one where the desk surface is charging your device. The charging becomes-- You're not thinking about charging all the time, your brain is unloaded. You can think about more important things in the world than just charge your light.
[laughter]
Yousof Naderi: That's great. One thing to distinguish here, I want to say that, it's about surfaces. It's about infrastructure that's charging. If you walk just in a walkway or a hallway. You are not getting that power? We want to be very careful in terms of the safety that we talk. Basically, when you put your devices, we see that is a sweetest spot and it can provide the freedom, it provide the user experience that people are looking at.
We don't think that to charge a laptop or higher power devices, you need to walk away and then you get that signal. That's not safe. That's not a way to go. Why not use infrastructure? We are using infrastructure surfaces every day, just the number of the hours we are sitting and putting our stuff. I think that's the sweetest part here.
Sal Daher: Right. We can refer to the Stone Age inductive charging devices that if we have at Starbucks, where you put your phone on there and it charges your phone in this little circle. Problem with that is that most of those don't work because the phone has to be placed exactly in the right spot. It's a very primitive technology and you have the device installed in various places. You have prototypes that are working right now, the user just puts it on the base, that's on the surface.
The reason you have the base is that the devices present don't have the induction charging capability. In fact, you can put that base, anywhere on a table and then the system senses where it needs power, and it sends the power there, and therefore it's charging the device. It's not something where you're sitting in a room and this thing is radiating energy to you from the wall or something like that. It's localized to where the device needs power. Can you just walk us through the process of how DeepCharge came about?
How DeepCharge Came About
Yousof Naderi: Yes. DeepCharge's story is about research and development that has happened in Northeastern University in Boston.
Sal Daher: For those who don't know, Boston has seven world-class universities, research universities. Northeastern is one of those. It's very engineering-oriented, very entrepreneurship oriented. My dad did his PhD in mathematics at Northeastern. I have a very fond spot in my heart for Northeastern. I spent a very nice summer there and it was important in my life. Northeastern is one of these towering institutions here in Boston. Please continue, Yousof.
Yousof Naderi: Yes. We had initially the frustration of solving an important problem. For us, that was just the charging is not efficient and effective. That started as a R&D and with support of the National Science Foundation and other agencies, and my co-founder, Kaushik Chowdhury, professor at Northeastern University. We are part of the Wireless Institute of Internet of the Things. There is an ecosystem here really that help us. We have started to build the prototype and the technology behind this.
It took us a while really to get the different pieces of the puzzle together, to say, "Okay, this is what the right architecture and approach to solve a right problem." Because many people are solving it, but in our view, they are not solving the right problem. It took us a time, and then after the confidence that, okay, we are seeing it, this is a real really solution to this problem, we have started to go and find the right market and those things. Really, the story came from a lab, the next generation Wireless and System Networks lab from Northeastern University. It has been a group work of PhD, other resources that help us as in an ecosystem of university.
Sal Daher: Very good. What were some of the key challenges that you faced developing DeepCharge?
Yousof Naderi: When I look at back, I see technical challenges was first part of the journey. We didn't have idea about solving some of this problem. Really, through curiosity, through exploring in a really open-minded and creative ways this problem within our group, we came up to answer to this solution. What actually help us was our unique background in building the best state-of-the-art wireless networks. You might say, "Okay, wireless networks, how is wireless charging?" There are many similarities that we basically bring from that industry and that area.
Solving those technical challenges was the first and then really the second piece was finding what is the niche market. The opportunity are a lot. You can see basically I say usually every surface is an opportunity for DeepCharge, but understanding--
Sal Daher: It's very ambitious.
Yousof Naderi: Right? Where do we start? What is that niche that we can start the seed, putting this and then go forward? It was an easy answer for us also coming from academia. We learn, also gain a lot of experience over the years and working with the smart people around us in the business side. That was the second and then the third piece is always finding the resources, finding the right partners, and a strategic partnership. That's the way I like to see and summarize really the important category of the challenges we have.
Sal Daher: Awesome. Well, how do you envisage these types of devices going to market?
"... Also, there is this piece of sustainability that we can't go through all that, but we think that working with enterprise is really going to help us in our mission, also, to build a wire-free sustainable future..."
Yousof Naderi: The DeepCharge approach is currently focused in enterprise businesses. We believe the enterprise worker space is a right niche market for us to go and eventually, it goes to residential and public places. Enterprise business basically our focus here to improve productivity, to help them to have a better and convenient work experience. I think these are very important for future of the world. Also, there is this piece of sustainability that we can't go through all that, but we think that working with enterprise is really going to help us in our mission, also, to build a wire-free sustainable future.
Sal Daher: When you say enterprise, what is it that you're providing the enterprises? Are you providing them with desks that charge your devices or are you providing them with modules that can be installed in desks, and where is the production of the modules? Are you producing the modules? Are you licensing them out?
Yousof Naderi: Great question. It's about modularity. Yes, absolutely. We are working with the furniture companies for the integration before the market, but really, the main focus today is after the market installation into the existing devices and existing furniture and workspaces are there in terms of the modules. We have established a strategic partnership with managed service providers and other channels that enable us to reach the white audience.
What is basically happen, how does the system work is that there are these modules that you install into the existing furniture and then the DeepCharge accessory that we provide and they just plug and play. You install in a few minutes and they work. You can transfer existing workspace in a few hours to totally fully wireless workspace and you don't need to invest in any significant upgrade of infrastructure because of this. It becomes a harmonic integrated part of that. I think that's the beauty and that's where we see a lot of excitement come from the enterprise.
Sal Daher: You argue low barrier to adoption, to retrofit existing furniture with the modules.
Yousof Naderi: Absolutely.
Sal Daher: Very good. I understand you have some exciting partnerships. Do you want to brag about those partnerships?
Yousof Naderi: Sure. I think we see the business success comes from partnerships. That's in the channel. That's key for us. Innovation and technology has been yes, for sure one part, but the really the next big stage that we are excited is business partnership, and that comes to our program that we recently launched called Early Access Program for very few selected channel partners that we think would be strategically aligned with our long-term goal to help us.
Here we have a local university as a really higher education example client that has been from the beginning, very interested like Northeastern and we deployed in the multiple campuses that, but also we are working with a managed service provider and technology infrastructure integrator here in Massachusetts, but also nationwide to integrate these to their existing enterprise customer. I don't want to mention a few specific name, but we are basically working in filling our Early Access Program.
We recently have been in IT expo, the IT Industry Flagship Conference. We just quite amazing interest from the channel partner that we are finalizing the deal with them and those things. Really, what we see is a pulling energy from the managed service provider market and channel toward having these as an add-on service to their existing solution.
Sal Daher: Now, it's been discussed in this podcast before, but the single most strongly supported result from research on the success of startups is the founding team, the number of founders, and how they work together. Can you tell me a little bit about the founding team and what's the division of labor?
Yousof Naderi: That's a great question. For DeepCharge, it actually started with three people that have worked together for multiple years as a part of the Genesis Lab, so Next Generation and System Lab. We have started with solving that problem, but then later each person played own role here. I focusing as the CEO of the company, the strategy, the vision, the direction, the hiring, the culture. We have our CTO, Ufuk Muncuck, U-F-U-K M-U-N-C-U-K, and really the energy and key person behind DeepCharge is Kaushik Chowdhury, K-A-U-S-H-I-K C-H-O-W-D-H-U-R-Y.
Without his support, we're not here that we are. He has played roles in innovation, in product development, in really shaping the technology. He is a faculty and really asked to building a deep technology, it requires a lot of resource and a lot of patience, and really passion to commercialize the technology. Otherwise, it is easy not to stop that works but I was really fortunate to work with Kaushik as my co-founder. Really, this teamwork and this group work enable us to be here, which I'm really excited about the next step of our journey.
Then having the right business people in the team. We hire and work with people that has a proven experience in the channel development, in business development in a particular go-to-market strategy that we want to go. Then also other subcontractor that we work. It is really, I would say, quite interesting collaboration that happens with this project to be where we are here.
I try to be aware of the word of weakness and the strength of each team member and build a complementary and harmonic team that really can develop the technology but put it into the market to have the right feedback and right people to execute this.
Sal Daher: Excellent. The technology was initially developed at non-diluted funding, research funding of the university setting. Now, presumably, you have agreements with Northeastern on the intellectual property so that they are licensed to DeepCharge.
Yousof Naderi: Yes, absolutely. We have Northeastern actually, as our advocate, our supporter. I want to thank you the Center for Research Innovation in Northeastern, and the people there from the earliest stage. They really support us in many ways, and also, in terms of licensing. We feel really confident about what we have been building with them and the license that we have. Also, we have our own new patents and intellectual property that came after that. It is a combination of the what we got there with a worldwide exclusive license.
Sal Daher: You're building your own patent portfolio?
Yousof Naderi: Absolutely.
Sal Daher: Within the company?
Yousof Naderi: Yes.
Sal Daher: Also presumably, you're going to be raising money in the future to back your company because you can't do this kind of work with non-diluted funding, You have to-
"... Now, to go to the next level, we feel that this is a right timing to look at the strategic investor and partner that can stay, share our vision, and be able to provide resources and help to make this success for everybody..."
Yousof Naderi: Yes, absolutely. For us, the goal wasn't about to the push and urgent of just fundraising because of the sake of fundraising. We wanted to build a sustainable long-term app company that solves a real problem. We feel that we have been successful in terms of the bootstrapping, with the resources being lean and being really selective to build something that we are very excited. Now, to go to the next level, we feel that this is a right timing to look at the strategic investor and partner that can stay, share our vision, and be able to provide resources and help to make this success for everybody.
Sal Daher: You're looking to continue bootstrapping, and to be capital efficient and part of that is finding a strategic partner that would have deep pockets but doesn't have the technology and you provide this unique technology and the partner can do some of the heavy lifting.
Yousof Naderi: I say a strategic partner, I mean, one partner is investor as well. I say a strategic investor.
Sal Daher: Okay. Right.
Yousof Naderi: [laughs] The partnership in a general sense.
Sal Daher: You will be looking for investors?
Yousof Naderi: Absolutely, yes.
Sal Daher: Excellent. Excellent. What do you see putting on your future vision glasses, what do you see for where the industry is going to be five to ten years?
The Future of DeepCharge
Yousof Naderi: I think it's about different phase of wireless charging industry that I have witnesses to grow and change. Coming from really no adaptation, just a prototype and some idea to being in a phase that we have seen the Qi Charger and more widely adaptation of this technology. Everybody been using it, but very low-power devices to this stage, which I see it's going to be applicable to every devices that we have. From a low-power to the high-power.
Sal Daher: Example, low-power device is a cell phone or some kind of a Bluetooth device or something like that.
Yousof Naderi: Even tablet, I would call it. Most of the tablet.
Sal Daher: The high-power devices would be?
Yousof Naderi: The medium-power devices would be some of the laptops and monitors and then the high-power devices would be the gaming laptop to more power-hungry laptops, but also power tools and really, the electric vehicle.
Sal Daher: Ooh. An electric drill, you have a battery, and that the charges without the awful charger, that big honking thing. That's a dream come true.
Yousof Naderi: Look, in DeepCharge, we have shown those things. We have been built that, but that's not really the technology-wise. We have it today to do several of these things. The go-to-market is not there, but it's going to be much much more advantageous to see this type of the power tools being wireless, just charging on a surface. You just put them anywhere that you want. Also, what excites me is the electric vehicle and different type of those higher power devices. There are companies working in this area, but that's coming.
One different perspective I have about the future of this market is I see it going to be an infrastructure wireless charging that's going to win this market. You cannot limit the user experience and expect that that will be a winner in this market. That's a unique region that we have. All of our patent, our go-to-market, and everything DeepCharge is bringing is to create that infrastructure. We believe this is the right approach for this market.
Sal Daher: You think that your technology is robust enough that it could support the remote charging of electric vehicles.
Yousof Naderi: It's going to that level of power. The point is we have a unique architecture that support infrastructure wireless charging. Now it's a matter of time and the technology upgrade that goes to a different level of the power. That's not a technical barrier there. It's more about the strategy and product development strategy. What is important is to provide multi-device charging to provide the capability to be able to charge multiple type and number of devices at the same time to be intelligent enough to deliver the power according to the need of each device.
That's what we call it universal charging, universal multi-device charging and DeepCharge is leading that because you need software for that. It's not only the play of the hardware. That is one. When you look at the two, I think, axis of the future is, one, is a higher capability charging, including multi-device charging. Then another aspect is infrastructure charging. I put these two together and that's where the market is going.
Sal Daher: You're hoping to be addressing both those axis, multi-device, and also higher power devices. Very interesting. Yousof, we've talked about the company, the technology, how it came about. If there's anything else that you want to say on that, perhaps you could say it now, but I thought then I would do a very brief plug for the podcast. Then the second part of the podcast, we would go into your personal history because I think it's very helpful.
There might be a young Yousof just starting out somewhere and might be inspired by your history and what you've done. I want to get a little bit of a biography on you on that. Is there anything else that you want to say to bring to a close this part of the podcast where we're talking about the invention, the uses for it, how it's going to go to market, and so forth?
Yousof Naderi: I think the only piece I would like to add is we see this is a market that still need innovation and open for a startup and other strategic partner to come and fuel that. We think that we need to do better. This is an important problem. The frustration is high and DeepCharge is going play its role, but we are welcoming and inviting to have more opportunity in terms of company and investor to work in this market. You'll see that this is going to be a very important part of the daily life and work of future.
Sal Daher: Outstanding. The second half of a podcast, we're going to focus on Yousof's background and then we're going to ask Yousof for some advice to other founders. First, if you're enjoying this conversation, if you're a listener right now, you can make sure that conversations like this show up in your weekly feed by following us on the app that you use to listen to your podcasts. Because otherwise, you may not find us ever again.
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Be as expressive as you want to in the writing, but do right because that helps us get found. What happens is you find that if there's one or two or three reviews of a particular episode, all of a sudden, thousands of people who normally would not see that episode are seeing it and actually, use of the week that your podcast launches, April 5th, 2023. On that day or the day after you go to Apple Podcasts and leave a review or one of your colleagues.
It's amazing what impact it has in terms of getting that particular episode found. Our podcasts are evergreen. You can listen to a podcast two years into the future, and it's still, there's a lot of value because we're talking about things that are pretty timeless, but the whole podcasting world is about the here and now. The most recent podcast is the one that gets privileged by the algorithm. Everything happens it's all about the current episode, the new episode of the week. Anyway, let's go on to your biography. Where are you from? You're from Iran?
Yousof's Immigrant Story
Yousof Naderi: Yes. I am born in Iran and immigrated to US now a while ago to pursue the graduation study. I got my PhD at Northeastern University and really having this unique immigrant background and experience, I think was part of my identity and what fueled me and bring me some maybe extra sauce and spice and passion to build something meaningful for people and have some impact in this world.
Sal Daher: Semyon Dukach, founder of One Way VC has been of this podcast, you can look up his interview. He was an amazing guy. He was an MIT's famous blackjack team. He is just a brilliant guy. He's very successful founder, and now he's a very successful VC with a thesis that people who come with one-way tickets to America with the idea of the immigrant founders have a remarkable energy or remarkable focus, and they're here to make a mark.
They didn't come to just hang out at the soda fountain and gab and so forth. They're here to make stuff happen because you've given up a lot when you're an immigrant. I came to America at age 11 from Brazil. You give up ties with your mother country, your friends, all these things. If you're older, I remember my parents. My dad did his PhD at Northeastern in mathematics. He would always speak with a foreign accent. He spoke very well, very eloquently, great vocabulary, but you could always detect that he was not from here.
You are always an outsider in a way. You are kind of like, you're mobilized to try stuff that someone who's from here says, no, I don't need to do that. I don't need the headache. I can have a very nice quiet life, but people who come from who immigrate are restless people. They're people who want to do something. They're not just content with things as they are, and they want to change. It's very exciting. Whenever I talk about immigrant founders, it brings to mind Semyon Dukach's brilliant idea of having a fun where all the companies that are backed are founded by immigrants. Awesome. Anyway, so how did you connect with Northeastern?
Yousof Naderi: That was actually, I did my PhD in computer engineering at Northeastern. That's all.
Sal Daher: No. You were a student in Iran in the University of Iran. How did you hear about Northeastern? You could have gone to Purdue University, you could have gone to Caltech, you could have gone to all these other places. What connected you to the Northeastern? I'm curious.
Yousof Naderi: I actually was interested in wireless network and wireless sensor network. I was doing some project there in terms of the multimedia efficient multimedia communication and a streaming in the sensor network. There was here in the ECE department at Northeastern two faculty that were doing very well, Kaushik. There was others, Stefano, I found that there is a resonance here, between what I'm doing and I just reach out. I reach out, "I think you need to ask the people. This is what I'm doing. Are you interested in some work?" That was basically how it happened.
Sal Daher: The hot zone in your particular field was at Northeaster. This is Ed Goluch, who's also a professor of Northeastern University. He's the founder of QSM Diagnostics, and he's been on the podcast. It's very different. It's a biotech startup, brilliant guy also. He has a little bit of that immigrant, his parents are immigrants, and he grew up with this immigrant ethos. Also, he came to Northeastern because this is an exciting place to be involved with aptamers and quorum sensing molecules and all that stuff.
That was the place where it was happening. It was the stuff he was excited about. He actually did work in Europe and then he came here. One of the exciting things about Boston is that there are all these different buckets here. Northeastern has amazing stuff that's going on. Boston University has amazing stuff. MIT, Harvard, other places around here. Tufts, U Mass, the campus in Boston, the different campuses. There's so much going on.
By the way, Northeastern University is located near the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, which is another treasure. I love that Huntington Avenue connection there. I wanted to ask you. You're a professor. You're a very capable guy. You're getting a salary every month. Why do this crazy, as they say in Arabic, majnun thing of starting a company?
Why Yousof Started DeepCharge
Yousof Naderi: It's a very interesting question. I back to really the internal passion and interest being in an intersection of the research and commercialization. That's what excite me. Now that I'm-
Sal Daher: Do you have models of this in your family?
Yousof Naderi: I would say not in one person, but I had both academy and also very successful business people in that, but I didn't really connect this necessarily up to a point that I experiment and experience both of these paths. I see that both of these basically to innovation and business, real value and impact fuel me, provide me the energy. I couldn't be asking for better, basically, pass than building something like DeepCharge's building. I started with not knowing that academia or business, but it came up naturally to the point that.
I would say I got more learning in business the last four years, five years that maybe I did. Over the academic side, it's just so exciting and interesting to learn from the finance to really the business pieces and the trick and those detail. I think I recreate myself by jumping now after getting that technical knowledge to the business side. I would say it's not easy, but I love what I do and that's the reason I'm here.
Sal Daher: Awesome. What advice do you have for other founders?
Advice to the Audience
Yousof Naderi: When I go back and look at what make a big difference, I think it's about people let you speak. You can have the best idea. You can have the best innovation, which usually come, particularly in university. What make a big difference is to speak and have the right people around you. I'm talking about the right business advisor, but also speaking with the customer potential people, hearing what works for them, what they like and don't like.
I got a lot of, I think, improvement and jump in the business side by having really exceptional mentors and advisors. I would say keep that. It's not only about the idea, it's not only about also execution. It's about the right idea with the right execution. To get to that, you need really feedback from the right people. That's art, it's not science.
Sal Daher: This is very wise because someone from a scientific technology background would tend to think it's all about the tech. In fact, the tech is one important, it's a crucial aspect of it. Without the tech, there isn't the business. on the other hand, the business is not just the tech, the tech is only part of it. Creating a product that people will buy requires a tremendous exchange of ideas, exchange of knowledge, and understanding that nobody has the answer, the answer is going to come from the cooperation of a lot of different voices. I think it's very wise, it's a very sound advice.
Yousof Naderi: We actually change a few times our technology in terms of pivoting it because of those voices. It wasn't easy.
Sal Daher: Describe one of those pivots that was really significant?
"... I think one of the biggest pivots was just that type of technology that they use..."
Yousof Naderi: I think one of the biggest pivots was just that type of technology that they use. We started to building this beam forming longer-scale, RF-based, wireless charging solution.
Sal Daher: Radiofrequency.
Yousof Naderi: Radiofrequency, higher frequency, that was radiative, but you can put it like a Wi-Fi access point from one location of your room and basically multiple of this. They beam for me and charge the devices, and we were particularly successful in that. Really, talking with customers, seeing the market and resending all of the requirements, what the long-term success means in terms of safety, efficiency. What type of the user experience we want to deliver, we decided that this is not a right technology. It wasn't easy to change it, but we decided to do it because it's not about technology, it's about user experience. This is one example I can give.
Sal Daher: That's very telling. Yousof, let's bring the conversation to a close. I want to express my deep gratitude to you for making time for your very busy schedule to be on the Angel Invest Boston podcast.
Yousof Naderi: Thank you, also, Sal. I'm excited to share some of the experience to your audience, and I hope this will be useful for them.
Sal Daher: Professor Yousof Naderi of Northeastern diversity, Co-founder of DeepCharge, who is putting the charging of devices, not from points, but into the infrastructure. Also, another shout out to Lon Isaacson, Angel Investor, who put me in touch with Yousof. This is Angel Invest Boston. Thanks for listening. I'm Sal Daher.
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I'm glad you were able to join us. Our engineer is Raul Rosa, our theme is composed by John McKusick. Our graphic design is by Katharine Woodman-Maynard. Our host is coached by Grace Daher.
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