The risk of scaling 100x

In 2022, Via Separations was getting ready to build its commercial-scale filtration system, a technology that could help cut emissions and costs for a wide range of industries like paper, chemicals, and food processing. 

And when the company faced two paths — scale up 10x or 100x — CEO and co-founder Shreya Dave decided to scale faster by building a commercial project at a paper mill in Alberta, Canada. It was a choice that put Via in a race against cash burn and the onset of the cold Canadian winter.

The stakes for the company were high. The goal was to replace energy-intensive industrial evaporation at the paper mill with a first-of-a-kind membrane, akin to a pasta strainer, made of graphene dioxide. 

Shreya and her team had worked for years in an MIT lab to develop the membrane, hoping to extract materials with far less energy. Initial tests had shown promise. Scaling up 100x would prove their technology was viable for broader commercial applications.

That is, if they could overcome the challenges.

In this episode, Lara Pierpoint talks to Shreya Dave, co-founder and CEO of Via Separations, about the risk of going big. They cover things like the challenges of finding a first customer and grappling with how fast to scale. Plus, Shreya explains what she would have done differently.

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