Show Notes 208: Dr Chiraz Ennaceur: Building CorrosionRADAR Into a Global Deep Tech Leader

https://youtu.be/iUZ0oajqNAM

What if the biggest threat to the world's energy infrastructure is something you can't even look at? Dr Chiraz Ennaceur, CEO and Co-founder of Cambridge-based CorrosionRADAR, joined James and Faye for one of our most compelling conversations to date — a masterclass in deep tech entrepreneurship, customer-led product development, and building a global business from a genuinely unglamorous industrial problem.

The problem worth solving

Corrosion costs the global economy an estimated $3 trillion every year, and by 2030, replacing corroded steel is projected to account for up to 9% of greenhouse gas emissions. CorrosionRADAR tackles one particularly stubborn variant: corrosion under insulation (CUI), where the very material designed to protect industrial pipelines and vessels creates the perfect conditions for hidden decay.

"We are the doctor of things rather than the doctor of people. We go, we look, we diagnose, and we find solutions to make sure that things are running in a safe way."

The company's sensor technology — including what it claims is the world's longest CUI sensor at 50 metres — installs beneath insulation and feeds real-time data into its Clarity software platform, delivering granular risk assessment without ever needing to remove the insulation itself.

Key highlights from the episode:

• The founding story: Chiraz worked at TWI (The Welding Institute) for a decade before resigning in 2016 to pursue the entrepreneurial dream she'd had since her PhD in France. A two-weekend programme for female entrepreneurs gave her the confidence to act. "I resigned in July, just to show you the impact of that."

• The Cranfield connection: CorrosionRADAR is a spinout from Cranfield University, where co-founder Dr Prafull Sharma developed the core electromagnetic guided radar technology that underpins the product.

• Capital efficiency: The company has raised $14 million across multiple rounds — modest by deep tech standards — because it prioritised paying customers from day one. First customer signed within six months of founding. First investor secured in the same year.

• Who's backing them: Aramco Ventures — the investment arm of the world's largest oil company — started as a customer and became an investor. ADNOC and Chevron are also in the customer base.

• The team: CorrosionRADAR now employs nearly 50 people across Cambridge, the Middle East and a growing US operation, including newly appointed CMO Steve Tongish, previously of IQGeo, RealVNC and AVEVA.

• What's next: Three strategic pillars — moving from predictive to autonomous AI (powered by an in-house engine called Hakima), global expansion, and positioning for the new build energy transition market.

The founder's advice to founders:

"Don't wait for a perfect product. Go and find your early adopters — the ones happy to try something that isn't 100% working. Because there is a huge difference between your nice, clean lab and the crude places where this technology actually gets used."

On failure:

"Don't be afraid of it. For me, I would call it a learning journey."

Why this episode matters for founders and investors

This is a rare window into what disciplined, customer-obsessed deep tech company building actually looks like. CorrosionRADAR didn't chase the AI hype cycle or raise money it didn't need. It built hardware when everyone said to avoid hardware, stayed focused on five key customers when it could have spread thin, and turned a niche industrial problem into global market leadership.

If you're building in the industrial IoT, energy tech or sensor space — or you're an investor trying to understand what genuine product-market fit looks like in enterprise deep tech — this episode is essential listening.

🎧 Listen to the full episode on Cambridge Tech Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed it, a five-star review helps more people discover the show.

Hosted by James Parton and Faye Holland. Produced by Joe Donaghy of Cambridge TV. Media partner: Business Weekly.

Episode Transcript

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Welcome to the Cambridge Tech Podcast, talking all things technology from the heart of the UK's tech capital. Here are your hosts, Faye Holland and James Parton.

I'm absolutely delighted that today we are joined by Dr Chiraz Ennaceur, who is CEO of CorrosionRADAR. Thank you for inviting me. I'm really happy to be here and looking forward to a good session. We always like to open up by getting to know you a little bit better. So maybe you can take us back to your path at CorrosionRADAR.

Were you always interested in entrepreneurship and technology? What kind of academic path did you follow or career path to get you where you are today?

I need to go back really a long time ago. So yeah, I'm a co-founder of CorrosionRADAR. My background is in mechanical engineering, so I have a PhD in mechanical engineering. I've done that a long time ago in France. So while I was doing my PhD, which was an applied PhD, so I was working with industry, I always had in the back of my mind to do my own thing. So I don't have any entrepreneurs in my family, but... I guess it happens every now and then. At that time in France, the ecosystem was not really supportive for spinning out ideas or so I parked the idea in my head. So my career then took a different path, which at the end led me here in Cambridge, where I worked for 10 years at TWI, the Welding Institute. And at some point in my career, I'm like, okay, I think it's time. I have two kids. They were both in school and I thought that dream came I need to act on it. Otherwise, I think I'll probably regret it. So in 2016, after I really had a good career at TWI, I decided to just resign and look into my entrepreneurship journey. The lucky thing that I was in Cambridge, I was surrounded by a lot of entrepreneurs. I think a lot of activities in Cambridge as well, help.

Help you or guide you in what exactly you can do or where to start because starting sometimes is overwhelming. You have the dream, you have the idea, but you don't know where to start. So through my network in Cambridge, I got to know that there is a brilliant work has been done in Cranfield University by what became my two co-founders, Dr. Prafull Sharma, who is the CTO, and Mehrdad Silatani, who is our CRO. Prafull had, he invented a cool I would not call product, MVP probably. And there was an IP generated after that, but the university was not clear or sure what to do with it. So through my network in Cambridge, they thought, okay, why don't have a look at this and help guiding kind of the process? Is it a spin out material? Is it? And that's started from that point. And it happened that what has been developed is really in the area that has been 10 years developing. Which is looking after assets integrity. So you have a lot of industries with asset-heavy industries, and you need to look into how to make them run in a safe way and in a cost-effective way. So developing technologies to really look into that is very important. We are like the doctor of things rather than the doctor of people. So we go, we look, we diagnose, and yeah, we find solutions to make sure that things are running in a safe way. So met the team in Cranfield and that was end of 2016 and I never looked back. So we incorporated the company in 2017, secured investment in the same year. We secured first customer the same year, negotiated the IP with Cranfield and yeah, And that's been the beginning of the journey and the beginning of also doing something about my dream of being entrepreneur, running something in the way how I see the best way of doing it in terms of culture, in terms of strategy, all of that. And they're the best kind of entrepreneurial journeys when you go, do you know what, I'm just going to resign and I'm just going to do it because then you can control and shape it. I want to say it didn't happen overnight. It took me probably a year dwelling. I'm like, I'm not in the right place. I really want to do something about what I have in mind and about entrepreneurship. And I think the fear of unknown stops you in the beginning. And once you get rid of that, You're like, "Okay, what do I have to lose?" Financially, you need to have a little bit of security, but I think if you don't act on it, I can't see myself not acting on it. If I did not do that and I'm 10 years later still doing what I was doing before, I would have probably had a big regret. So it was the best decision. And I want to say back to Cambridge, actually, I did, because this was an idea in my head for some times and just, we are in comfortable position, you have a good salary, you're growing in the company that you are in. So there's nothing wrong with the company and you make a decision. So I went for something, maybe you remember, Faye, it used to call Enterprise Wise. So it's a weekend, it's two weekends actually for female entrepreneurs. And I went there, I had a friend of mine who was running it, Shima, And I was like, okay, what I'm going to learn, but what I'm going to learn from it, I'm not sure I'm going to learn big thing. And actually, academically, I didn't learn anything, but the amount of confidence it gives you in terms of, okay, you can actually, a lot of people did it. Why not me? So that gave me a, so I did that in June. I resigned in July, just to show you the impact of that. Yeah. Yeah, that is the confidence and the connections and to know that you're not on your own when you're taking such a huge plunge. I have to say that we do go back quite a number of years because when we first met, you'd just won 21 to watch. I think in either the first or the second year of running it, I can't quite remember. And I remember when I met you, It just, the whole conversation blew me away that you were doing this role. And knowing your background, it's understandable why you ended up in this particular space. But it's a really pretty unglamorous industrial problem. And you just bring this massive amount of energy and focus to it, which is obviously what we're going to unpick during the podcast. But how has it been just top level in those seven years since we met? How has it been running the business? Has it lived up to what you wanted it to be?

It's been amazing. It's been ups and downs. It's been tough. It's not a job. It's a lifestyle. It impacts everything. Your life, your everything. But I loved it. It's something that I don't like doing something all the time. I don't like routine. I like challenges. So it's been, as I said, ups and downs. It's never a straight line. It's never during entrepreneurship is a tough journey. And during that, I had a pandemic. Amazing. Add to the challenge. And because also we'll talk about that later. Our main market is in the Middle East and now we are having a war. But I think that's what makes it more rewarding as well. Having a tech company, by design, you are solving a problem that nobody solved before. So you are already going into a challenge. But that's not the only thing. Building a team, getting your customers, making sure you are addressing the market, not bringing a nice product.

Technology and every day is you have a different challenge sometimes you are talking about the next five years and sometimes you are dealing with small tiny thing that's happening today and needs to be sorted stuff related pricing related or whatever so it's a It's not for everyone. It doesn't mean that people are better than others, but you have to love it. You can't do it for the money or the fame or whatever. You have to really love that type of work. Yeah, that was my journey the last actually nine years and I would do it again. That's fantastic. I loved your introduction with a doctor of things. So let's maybe move on to talk about the actual company and the product. So you're addressing corrosion under insulation. For the uninitiated, like myself, what does that mean and what's the use case and what's the problem you're solving?

So let me introduce you to corrosion. Corrosion is the biggest failure mechanism in the world. So as we are speaking now in this room, probably there are a lot of things corroding and we don't, we are not, they're not visible to us. So corrosion costs the world probably three million, three trillion dollars a year. It comes at different shapes and forms. It's also not a good thing for sustainability because probably by 2030, there will be 4% to 9% of greenhouse gas emissions are due to making steel to replace the one that have corroded. So it has a lot of impact. And corrosion comes at different shapes and forms. The one that CorrosionRADAR is dealing with is corrosion under insulation. So for a lot of industries, you have to build, assets, pipelines, equipment, vessels, whatever, you name it. And for certain reasons, you have to insulate them to keep the temperature at a certain level or to protect people from certain temperature. And once you insulate, it becomes like a blind spot. You don't see what's happening. And that insulation sometimes traps the water between the insulation and the external wall of the pipe or the equipment. And once the water is trapped, you get corrosion. And corrosion is not good news, especially for industries like the energy industry, where you're dealing with gas, you're dealing with oil, and having any failure, having any leaks is not a good thing. So you need to make sure that you know about it and you're doing something about it. So CorrosionRADAR, when we started dealing with corrosion under insulation, the industry did not have any way to monitor it. So the only way or the industrial way of dealing with it is visual inspection. So go remove the insulation and have a look. That's okay when you are dealing with a small pipeline sitting on the ground, but when you are having 30-meter columns or hundreds of kilometers of pipelines, that costs a lot of time and money. And then it also can give you safety risks as well because you cannot keep up every day on all the assets you have. So when we started, the industry was reactive. So wait for something to happen, deal with it. Our mission was to move it from reactive to predictive. So we started with developing hardware, which is in a tech company is not an easy thing to do because hardware comes with a lot of capital, a lot of compliance as well. We need to comply for. But we had to do that because we did not have any good quality data that we can rely on to really make the prediction. So we developed the first hardware, a long-range product we had, which we install underneath the insulation. And it gives us real-time data, which then we take and we do use our analytics to really... See what's happening under the insulation, like we are having like a nervous system underneath the insulation. What's happening and where exactly. So if you have a one kilometre pipeline, we will tell you you have a problem at this one metre and the risk is high, medium or low. And what you need to do about it. So people are more moving towards condition-based maintenance. So they do act on data and that saves again, cost, time and improve safeties. So that's the journey. And what we want to do is also move from now predictive to autonomous. So now we have developed a toolkit. We started with one product, which was the start of our IP. Because we are closer to the market, closer to our customers. So now we are actually evolving based on our understanding of how customers are actually, what the problems they have and what they need in the future and see the trends as well. Because when we started nine years ago, we were just talking about digitalization and IoT, they were new things. And now, nine years later, which is an amazing time actually to have a company in because things are really developing much faster than probably before. So now we are hearing about more AI driven things. We have cheaper, faster, better batteries as well. So for us, when we do digitalize the way how we deal with corrosion, We are developing a toolkit, so from a hardware point of view, but also we are developing more, we're building more on the data that we are getting. So the data brings a lot of information and we are trying to see how we can use that data lake that we are having to really help more our customers to deal with these problems in a better way.

To talk about the toolkits, as I said, we have the long-range sensor, but we are developing more and more. So recently we have launched actually, sorry, We have launched our also spot sensor, which addresses a different segment of the market. So with our long range, it's a long sensor, comes at 50 meters, the longest in the world, installed underneath the insulation and gives you information about what's happening from a corrosion point of view. To complement that, so we are launching this short-range or spot sensor that doesn't need removal of insulation. It's plug and play, really. So imagine this is the surface of your pipe. So we just put a small hole and we put our sensor in there and that's it. That then wirelessly gives you the information in your dashboard on what's happening in that location in terms of corrosion and then you can make the right decision. So this is just to give you an idea about the hardware part of our solution, but then the important part is the data and how we do analyze it and bring insight out of it. I was going to ask you about that actually, but so the sensor, so it's not using computer vision with cameras, etc. It's a sensor that goes into the actual pipe and monitors the pipe integrity.

Yeah, that's correct. So the sensor will sense different elements, will sense the temperature, moisture, humidity and corrosion in real time. And that information will go to the software. We have software called Clarity. And through the software, we will combine all that data, also the information that we have on what type of pipe, what type of insulation. And from that, we will deduct a risk. Because that's the most important information that the industry needs is information. Do you have a risk at that location and what level of risk it is? And that will drive a decision. Do I need to do something about it to stop this corrosion and go and have a look or go and do a repair or not? So that's the way how the solution works. And as you say, it's clear that there's immense value in the data that you're collecting, not just for the individual customer, but I assume you would be aggregating and anonymizing that data so you've got I guess, industry leading insight in terms of the durability and the lifespan of infrastructure, which is going to be hugely valuable.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So it's good to be a specialist in something because we are the company to go to. When we are talking about corrosion under installation, it makes me proud. A small company in Cambridge, we are leading this space globally. We are the company that has the biggest number of installation, biggest number of customers and biggest number of data. And we don't have data from just one company. Site or one geography, we have it across different account, different geographies. And that's very valuable because we learn in an anonymized way as well, we learn a lot on what's the cause of this problem. And that will guide some decisions when we are building a new So also we can, because we are focusing on the energy sector at the moment, we are focusing on the energy of today, but whatever we are doing, going to inform the energy of tomorrow. So if you are building, I've talked about energy transition, if you are building a new, for example, plants to make it more greener or cleaner or yeah. Based on hydrogen or based on other things, we will need steel, we will need insulation and we will have this problem. But by learning on what's happening on the assets that are already there and going through these type of problems, we can design these new plants and new equipment in a much better way. The data is really important to help guide the assets that we are monitoring and managing today, but also very important for building a much more sustainable way of delivering energy for the future. And so Chiraz, when you relaunched, I think relatively recently, the Clarity platform, was there some degree of realization that there was more value in the data, both for you as an organization, but also for the clients? Or would you say that they're equal footing in terms of the hardware is required for the actual monitoring and the data? Are they even, or do you see one of them overtaking the other?

The hardware is a tool to get the data. That's the job of the hardware. It's very important. I think also, if I just divert a little bit, you see also, for example, in the investment ecosystem, there was a lot of movement towards just investing in AI and data and stuff. I think there is a realization now that, okay, that's important, but actually, if you don't have the right hardware to give you the right quality of data, you cannot have a good output. And I'm pleased to see a little bit more now movement towards, okay, actually we recognize hardware is a tough thing to do, absolutely, but it's worth it. So the hardware is important, but it's not the destination. It's a tool to help generate the data. And now, again, we are lucky to be living in a world where a lot of things are happening from a data point of view. We talk a lot about AI. For me, AI is another tool to elevate the data to really make it more prescriptive, make it more autonomous. Clarity is our kind of software. Behind the Clarity, we are developing a whole AI engine called Hakima. And the job of it is to make the move from predictive to prescriptive. So you are not just giving the data, but giving the clients what exactly they need to do. But also to autonomous. So what we are developing virtual engineers, we are developing virtual sensors, even with the latest and greatest technology we have now on sensing, make it cheaper, smaller, faster. You cannot sense everything. You cannot, if you have a pipeline of one kilometre, you cannot put a sensor everywhere. So how can we sense the areas that are not physically sensed? So combination between virtual sensors and physical sensor is the way forward. And corrosion are leading that space in corrosion under insulation for the corrosion under insulation solutions.

Yeah, so back to your question. I think we will see more development towards on how to make data much more powerful, but I see also in a good way that there is more realization that you need to invest in hardware and you need to have good hardware to make sure whatever you do with the data is solid. And is that hardware that you showed us, is that proprietary? That's all your own designs? Are you working with partners?

Yes, that's our own. So it's made in Britain and we do actually also manufacture them here. So it's our design manufactured here. And yeah, so that's one of the toolkit that we have and all our products are made here. And it sounds like you're deploying these sensors in quite challenging environments. So obviously you showed it was wireless for the data connectivity. But what's the power? Is it battery-based? Do you need power to those sensors?

Yeah, all battery power. Again, we want to make sure these are fit for purpose. So battery power, because nobody wants to digitalize their assets and they have to go and take the data out of the, or make it not battery powered. So battery powered is a very important thing. So the batteries that we have is a minimum six, seven years, maybe more. And wireless, so we use, we don't develop the wireless gateways and stuff. We use whatever is, there's a lot of great advancement from that side as well. So we use what is available on the market. We customize, customize it to our solution. So yeah, it's plug and play and you put the sensors or the solution and you get your data on your desktop and on the dashboard. Fantastic. Okay. So that's a really interesting conversation around the product and the technology. Moving more to the commercial topics. So you've got Amarco, DAO, ADNOC as customers, but they've also invested as well, I believe. Some of them. Yeah. Yeah. So we are focusing on the energy sector, most importantly on oil and gas, petrochemical and chemical. We do have one of the biggest company in the world, which is Arab. It's the biggest probably oil and gas company. And started as a customer and then ended up as an investor as well, which is very good endorsement, I think, that they see. Because these corporate investors, they do invest for financial reasons, but most importantly, that is something they're going to add value to their company.

Yeah. That's very important. Yeah. And we work with companies like you named some, Nock and many others, Chevron. And so we work, we have a lot of presence in the Middle East. Actually, we have a whole team based there. But also we do work in other geographies, US, we are about also to increase our presence. There. Europe, we started, we are based in Europe, we started, our first couple of customers were in Europe, but there's a little bit of decline in the petrochem sectors. It may actually be reversed with what's happening in the world, but in Europe we're focusing more on the green side of the energy. So there's a lot of plans to build hydrogens and stuff. So we are positioning ourselves for these projects. But Yeah, in a way we are nearly energy or sector agnostic. We are providing solution wherever you have steel and wherever you have insulation. And this combination can lead to a problem. It happens to be the energy sector is a bigger user of this type of assets. That's our first kind of target. So I think picking up on the customer point of the conversation is... These are big customers that you've got. And part of it, I think, is because you've known what your USP is all the time. You know it's corrosion under insulation is what you're focused on. But a small startup coming out of Cambridge, going, having a conversation with some of these big companies, what was that process like? How did, was it bureaucratic? Were they conservative? Were they risk averse? How did it actually go? Amazing question. And how much time do you have? I'll try to summarize. I'm not going to talk about specific customer, but in general, and being in the energy sector, most of the companies that we're going to work with are much bigger than us. So we are talking about international companies that they have presence all around the globe. And as you said, the tiny company in Cambridge trying to make, and that's where the tough bit comes because you are dealing with many things. You're dealing with, you're bringing new way of doing things. So it's not, the customers are not comparing you to another product, B or C. They are comparing it to the status quo, which is doing things in a manual way to go to digitalize it. So in the beginning of the journey, we are not selling. We are really, it's creating the markets, educating the markets, and the language is different. So it's more collaboration, more technically driven. And in the other hand, you are dealing with customers that are huge customers. And the processes are rigid, you are not. And you are trying to navigate all of that. So for a small company like us, the beginning is really me as a founder and my founders were hands-on dealing with the customers. And the way how you progress is... That commitment, you're going to make it work and being flexible as well. So you are aware that it's not about how good is my solution, it's about how the customer can use it and finding that, calculating the ROI, finding what, bringing this to them. What does that mean in terms of changing their processes and helping them, not assuming that customer will answer things for you. You have to work hand in hand. So the first couple of years, for example, back to Aramco, for example, the first couple of years of interacting with Aramco, I was pretty much there every couple of weeks. I visited places where very remote in the middle of the desert. So it was a journey, but I think as a founder, you need to be really hands-on because you're not selling. You are really trying to understand the market, understand the customer. And also showing that you are committed because being a small company, the customers are like, okay, how sustainable are these guys? Are they going to exist in the next couple of years? So giving that assurance, making sure that you are there to really find the right, because at the end of the day, if it's not addressing the problem for them. They're not gonna you're gonna fall in that pilot purgatory even if you secure a first project so being really present being flexible being ready to change certain things the pricing the positioning the value proposition really listen to the customers are very important And you have to put your time and effort. As you said, big companies, a lot of processes, a lot of, you have to be patient in a certain way because this speed is mismatched. You're a small company, tech, things are happening in seconds. You're dealing with much bigger company where timescale is different. So yeah, work that out and put priorities. Because in the beginning we were talking to so many customers, happy to kissing a lot of frogs, happy to talk to whoever is interested to talk to us. And at some point we were like, okay, we can't do this. We were all over the place in Thailand and We can't do this. We have to focus. So I remember we had our strategy focusing on five key customers and that allowed us to really go deep into building the relationship, understanding the case study, understanding the business case, all of that. And then you create a beachhead. And then from that point onward, you use that as a reference and you use that learning to make it slightly easier. I will not say very easy, slightly easier to go to other accounts and do the same journey. By the nature of the fact that these companies have invested in you, shows that they've got that appetite for innovation and to back companies like yours. But what's your take on the state of the energy industry? How innovative is it?

I guess that the need to be innovative is being driven by the net zero targets. They know that they've got to change their working practices and you play a key role in that.

So what are you kind of seeing? What kind of insights do you have from the industry?

It's a combination. The industry is a bit conservative because we're dealing with a lot of risk. Any mistake, any failure is not a good news. But it's an industry that there is a collaboration. I think you see a lot of joint industry projects. You see a lot of joint initiative where people want to share. I think we see much more of that, especially now we are going through also a lot of companies want to transition or bring more mixed energy to their portfolio. So it's a mixture. It's an industry where things take time, but there is a willingness to do things in a different way. We talked about AI earlier. Many companies we see really a lot of good work has been already done and a lot of adoption. So they are willing, but things sometimes take time, not just because of the scale of things as well. And these companies also, they are different plants and different countries. And every plant, every site, you have to go and do the sales again. So it's not, some of them are much more disjointed than others. But yeah, it's not like you've been approved at the top and everyone is like, it's still, you still need to do some work here.

James talked a little bit about funding a moment ago, and I just want to pick up on that. We hear about big funding rounds that are coming in all of the time, and that seems to be a marker of success for how the company's going. But if you actually look at CorrosionRADAR, my instinct is it's a different model because you've raised $14 million. So far so one could sometimes look at that and say that isn't actually a huge amount but you've had paying customers which is very different isn't it and I think most people would much rather have the paying customers than a huge cap table anyway so my question to you is that a fair reflection is it because you've had the paying customers that have meant you haven't had to raise as much or is have you found the raising capital landscape difficult where are you on that journey Yeah, another good question because at the heart of running or having an entrepreneurial journey, you have to decide where the money is going to come from. Some would do it at the minimum, some get investors. So we decided to get investors. I think we started from a strong point where most of the co-founder come from the industry and had a good understanding about the problem and a good understanding that it's not about having a cool, nice, amazing kit of technology. It has to really be the right one for the customer. So from day one, we decided to, we had an MVP. It was really basic. We decided to go and find customers. So we had our first customer, I think, signed really early on in the journey, probably the first six months. We had a really basic MVP. And that was the best decision we took because by installing it on the customer side, we learned so much. Because it's not about, as I said, having a perfect product. It's having the perfect product for the customer. So that helped in guiding the decisions. And not riding a wave, not riding the trend. Okay, this is what people want to hear and we're going to spend too much money. So we were trying to be lean, to be focused. We are really customer focused company and do things in a reasonable way. So we raised a couple of times. I'm not going to also hide the fact that a hardware company is more difficult to raise than AI software company because there are trends every now and then. But as I mentioned earlier, I'm glad to see actually the hardware is back onto the actually being appreciated. So I raised a couple of times and I would say probably the earlier raise are much more difficult because you have everything to prove as a team, as the market is not there yet. Once you have already shown revenue, shown traction, I think things get not easy, but slightly easier. And so we didn't raise much. Crazy amount of money because first of all, we didn't need it. We could do things in a much easier, leaner way. And also we focused on, we tried to focus the time on getting customers because that's the best money you can get. And we tried to raise when we needed really to get through another growth phase. And all our raises are also based on the observation we are seeing and what's going to make the customers manage this problem in a better way. So really customer driven decision, even I'm going through an investment round as we speak, as we have also a raise during the pandemic as well. I'm loving these.

Yeah. I'm loving these funding raises during different environments. And that is driven by our five years vision of how to really make use of the data and develop our tools, AI tool, to really make sure moving from predictive to autonomous, as I said earlier. I want to move on and talk about Cambridge. But before I do that, that kind of set that strength of customer centricity is coming through really strongly. So I just wanted to ask for kind of founders that might be listening, watching this, how fully baked was the product before you went to have the conversation with a customer? Or did you almost develop in real time based on the feedback that you were getting with customers? What's the, what's that timing look like?

My advice for any founder starting this journey, don't wait for a perfect product. Wherever you have, take it, go outside, target the early adopters because don't go to the pragmatic that they are looking for a full working solution. These are not your targets in the beginning of journey, but there is a pool of people. Happy to try something that is not 100% working, try to find those, target them, and develop with the insights, with your experience. Because especially in the heavy industry that we are in, there is a huge difference between your nice, clean lab developing something and... I don't know how to describe it, and the crude places where, be it offshore, onshore, it's a different world, different way of working, different way of seeing things. So you really need that insight as early as you can, because you will run into a risk where you're going to develop amazing tool, amazing product from a technical point of view, It's not needed. It's not what the customer wants. And that's where you waste the money and your money, your time and investors money.

Yeah. That's for me, probably advice number one.

Yeah, that's great advice. So we've mentioned Cambridge a couple of times in the conversation. What has being based in Cambridge meant to you and what role has that played in the success of the company?

And then I guess the second part of that question is, it sounds like most of your customer deployments right now, at least are in the Middle East. So how has being in Cambridge and then servicing the Middle East, how does that dynamic work for you?

Cambridge brand is always good company based in Cambridge. I have to say it helped me in the beginning. I talked about my journey, me personally. Also through our network, we found a lot of our first members of a team because in the beginning you don't have a lot of money, you are not very competitive. People joined for the vision, for the trust in you as well. So that was very important. People in the beginning as well, initiatives like the 21 to watch. Gives you visibility, gives you credibility. There is something that you can use as well for your, to increase kind of trust also, wherever you are talking to investors, customers. I have to say at the beginning, that was it, but Right now we are really global. It's good to be in Cambridge in terms of maybe talent, but also sometimes the talent you need to look elsewhere, especially for AI or software, because it can get a little bit cheaper, unfortunately. So beginning, amazing. But as we grow, it's less because we are focused on more global things. And I would love to see more actually support from the Cambridge ecosystem to companies that are actually on the scalability journey, because I think that's also a problem in the UK in general. There's a lot of support to start something, but to make unicorns or a little bit less than tiny unicorns. I feel there is a lot of things we can do in Cambridge and across the country.

Yeah. Yeah, we hear that a lot. And I think the data backs that up as well, doesn't it?

I think we should talk about the team a little. You mentioned Prafull and Mehrdad at the top of the conversation. And you've also just, I believe, recruited in Steve Tongish, who's a very impressive and well-known Cambridge CMO. So tell us a little bit about the team, both here in Cambridge, and you said there's a team in the Middle East as well.

Yeah, I think we're losing count at the moment. I think we are nearly 50 now.

Yeah, starting from two, three people. We have a good team in the Middle East because, again, we need to be next to our customers, understanding them, being the culture, be it the way how they buy, how they sell, all of that. And we are also building a team in the U.S. Because that's another second market that we want to grow and we see potential there.

Yeah, so the team started with the co-founders. We used our network in the beginning, really, because it is tough to bring people to something that's new, not clear what's happening. And Back to Cambridge is really helpful. That's helped people, recommend people. The mindset also is there. People, yeah, can join small companies. So that's very helpful.

Yeah, so the team, and you need different skills at different stages of the company. In the beginning, it was more technical heavy. So we needed to develop the product and make sure that is also, because with the hardware, we have a lot of compliance. We are putting these in a very harsh environment, so they have to survive that. A lot of things technically change. And then you start to see the balance shifting a little bit. Technical is still there, but you have more finding that first sales team as well, because it's founder-led and it's a different mindset. I'm bringing more, I have to say, the company is nine years old. Only this year, I gave my role of CEO slash CRO away. So now one of the co-founder is the CRO, Chief Revenue Officer, who's dealing with sales. Just to let you know that how sales is the heart of basically what you do. And it's not this transactional sales. It's the... The understanding of your customer. So the team has to be also selected on that basis on what we are doing technically, but also what we are doing in terms of we are customer focused. So people need to have the right mindset. And one of the things having my own company leading it in the own way, I wanted to have the right culture. It's a tough journey, and I don't want it to be tough for stupid reasons, toxic environments, things that they should probably not be there to get your energy not in the right place. So really, we are giving option shares to everyone. So if we make success of this, everyone has to be part of it. A lot of passion in the team, make sure that people understand that we are actually making an impact here. We are making someone's life much easier because they are using our product. Make sure that, because it's a tech company, we are doing a lot of things for the first time. Nobody knows everything. So having an open culture where we are challenging each other's thinking in a respectful way, We are, yeah, we can have a meeting where there's a disagreement, but it's not a big deal. We are all fighting the same fight. And I'm really happy where we are at the moment. I had a consultant a couple of weeks ago. We are working with them to help us in certain aspects. And after the meeting, he said, this is an amazing team, the way how you talk, the way how you open. And for me, you know what? That was really... It was a proud moment. Forget about sales, forget about revenue. That's for me, it was a very important thing. And yeah, people building the right team with the right culture, the right team for the different phases, because every phase, every year you need a different focus and make sure the communication is flowing, make sure people know what we are doing, where we are and why we are doing it. I think, yeah, it gets, you get much joy in navigating through this journey. It's living the culture, isn't it? That certain culture can only come from the leadership team. So that's a big tick for you, you co-founders. And I just want to actually, before I hand over to James, that the board, you have a really impressive board who've been with you pretty much all along, haven't you? So what kind of input are they giving you?

Yeah, our chairman, Richard Green, you know, he's always been, always, the best time you spend is on your customer, not on anything else. So... He's been very supportive on that side.

Yeah, very supportive board, very supportive chairman. Yeah, we have a number of investors, but I don't know if it's luck or good management, but I feel like we are all pushing in the same direction. And so far, everyone has been really helpful. You hear sometimes horror stories on the boards, but we've been lucky so far. We don't have any of that. And it helps. So we are focusing on the right thing rather than dealing with issues that should not be there in the first place, you know. We've covered lots of ground. It's been an incredible conversation. As we move towards the wrap, let's talk about the future. It sounds like things are incredibly exciting, incredibly bright. You've touched on things like the development around data and AI and the new platform, second markets into the US. What does that kind of medium-term roadmap look like? What are the priorities coming up?

Yeah, so as I said, we are raising at the moment. So our priorities are, we have three pillars we want to develop. Moving from predictive to autonomous, meaning developing our AI engine. Global expansion. So we are recruiting people. We're starting in the US, but then we are expanding. We have also, we are building a strong partnership or partners network. And the other one is also we want to get in the new build because the energy, there's energy. Energy is a continuous thing. We can't survive without energy in all its forms, be it energy transition, be it different things. So we are trying also to position ourselves to be a solution for these new builds and stuff. And that needs a lot of engagement early stage when you are, when they are designing things. The plants and stuff so that needs a different type of different team and different type of work so these are the three things we are focusing on in addition to also bringing our so i talked about launching our spot sensor developing our also more tools so we are called the a toolbox for the hardware. But the three pillars is what I mentioned is the autonomous way of doing things, global expansion and getting more into the green, called greenfield projects. Exciting times. It's been absolutely brilliant talking to you. And my last question is that big, horrible personal question from how we started right at the beginning of the podcast when you were sitting in your corporate role with that itch to be an entrepreneur and you went, no, I'm going to resign and I'm going to do it. What one piece of advice would you give to someone who's you back then?

Oh, yeah, just do it. I think this is probably have been seen before. Just do it because we get comfortable in things that sometimes are not very comfortable, but we convince ourselves, OK, yeah, it's OK. And I can... For me, it was... In what I was doing in the past is that passion sometimes was missing. Sometimes you work in a corporate, okay, you are doing things in a certain way, but you're losing the spark. And moving from a comfortable place to jumping into the unknown, entrepreneurship, is it what, 70% of companies don't succeed? And for me was what helped me mentally. It's like failure was okay. If I failed, For me, it was a gain still because I would have done part of the journey. I would have learned a lot. And the next one will be based on... So failure, I was not scared. I was not like, oh my God, I have to succeed. I was comfortable with failure because I didn't see it as a failure. I saw it as a learning, was a learning journey. So don't, for me, the advice is don't be afraid of failing because you call it failure. For me, I would call it a learning journey. And nothing is secure because a lot of people are in secured jobs. What is it? And they don't want to go from a secure job to even not founding, even joining a smaller company or startup. There's no secure job. Just make sure you do something that you are passionate about and don't jump into this journey thinking it's going to be easy. It's not going to be easy, but you have to be comfortable because that's the thing. The beauty of it is for it not to be easy because if it was easy, it's going to be boring and there's nothing special about it. So back to summarizing the advice. If you have that itch, just act on it once you feel ready and don't, yeah, don't be afraid of failure because whatever happened, you would have learned a lot out of the joke.

Thanks so much for your time. It's been a great conversation and we can't wait to track progress. Thank you very much. Thank you for inviting me. I enjoyed it.

Today's show was produced by Joe Donaghy of Cambridge TV and supported by our media partner, Business Weekly. The Cambridge Tech Podcast is available on all major podcast platforms and on cambridgetechpodcast.com. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please give it a five-star review. It'll really help others discover the show.

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