#99: Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics)

--AI-Generated Transcript--

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:00:00]:
There is a a Moore's law equivalent for storage, Kepler's law, that talks about it, capacity doubling every, you know, every 2 years. So there is a lot because this is what's what's given rise to this industry that allows you I mean, think about where compute is now. Think about think about how many photos you have on your phone. A lot. You probably have thousands of photos on your phone. I mean, that was impossible 10 years ago.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:27]:
Let's discover the Cleveland entrepreneurial ecosystem. We are telling the stories of its entrepreneurs and those supporting them. Welcome to the Lay of the Land podcast, where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland. I am your host, Jeffrey Stern, and today, I had the real pleasure of speaking with Steve Santa Maria, who is the CEO of Folio Photonics, where he is focused on innovating storage media with the first ever enterprise scale immutable active archive solution that delivers breakthrough cost, security, and sustainability. Steve, who resides here in Chagrin Falls, is a seasoned technology executive, entrepreneur, and student of disruptive Technologies. Steve spent 14 years at Intel, where he led an array of strategic projects, including Intel's Microsoft Partnership, colloquially referred to as Wintel, investment in China Software Park Program, global expansion of the Intel Developer Program, formation of the Visual Computing Group to move Intel into more graphics oriented businesses, such as VR and 3 d animation, and the launching of various Intel service businesses. Prior to Intel, Steve had a successful sales and business development career with companies including Control Data, Ceridian, Parametric Technology, and Giga Information Group. And most recently, Steve started 2 companies of his own, Webtuner Corp, an over the top video streaming company, and Envelope VR, which created the first Windows Desktop Environment for Virtual Reality.

Jeffrey Stern [00:02:01]:
I really enjoyed getting Steve's perspective on the future of storage, the prospects for FOLIO photonics opportunity looking forward, Cleveland's whole ecosystem, and his reflections on leadership. I hope you all enjoy my conversation with Steve Santa Maria. So to start, I'd love if you could share a little bit about your your own journey, your your path to and from Cleveland. And I know you have quite a breadth of experience in your career across many organizations. And I I'd love to hear about, you know, your path from leadership at one of the largest companies in the world at at Intel to to entrepreneurship and your your interest in startups and how that all kinda transpired.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:02:46]:
Yeah. So I I'm a native New Yorker that grew up in the Midwest outside of Pittsburgh, and, I actually went to college at Allegheny College in Northwestern PA. When I graduated, I my first job was in Pittsburgh. I worked for Mellon Bank, and then I got recruited to go into sales for a company called Control Data. And the the territory is basically Cleveland, so I moved to Cleveland. I had some college friends here. I shared a house in Shaker Heights with 5 guys. I mean, it was crazy.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:03:19]:
I lived on a couch for the 1st couple months. Didn't know I was gonna make it in sales, turned out as a as an okay salesperson. But I lived here for that period for about oh gosh, 8 to 10 years. And, you went through, you know, a variety of different companies. When you're on the sales track, you you trade your contacts in the region and your territory to better products with higher commissions. And I did that there, you know, successfully from controlled data to parametric technology. Worked for Steve McHale at at US Connect for a number of years running his sales teams. And, then I got acquired by a company or no.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:03:57]:
I I was working with a company called Icat out of Seattle, which is an interactive online catalog kind of storefront that got bought by Intel. And it was kind of interesting. It was one of the easier jobs I had. I ran sales from Cleveland, kinda remotely, traveled quite a bit. And but then the .com thing happened where all of a sudden, I'm not getting recruited for new jobs all the time. And Intel approached me about moving to Seattle, you know, because they bought the company, but they're they're just took part of it for its tax. So they really didn't need me to be heading sales for this small business. So they asked me to if I would would go there and take over the Microsoft partnership.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:04:35]:
So I ran Wintel. And I was at a point in my life where it was good time for me to leave Cleveland and try something new. I was just start started dating a woman, and we moved out there together just to the Pacific Northwest by ourselves. And it was great. Got married. Had kids out in the West Coast, was Intel for 14 years, left. While at Intel, I had a number of different different, jobs. It's a it's a great place to work.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:05:00]:
A lot of structure. My boss eventually became the co CEO. And as she moved up, I moved up with her, did a variety of different things globally. I ran groups in China. I ran a graphics business. I ran developer relations. I did deals with Hollywood. You know, you name it.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:05:17]:
She did a real good job of just putting me in very interesting places. And I did run, you know, as part of the team that ran the largest, you know, duopoly on the planet, which is Intel, Wintel, Microsoft Windows. I I did a stint and worked closely with Intel's investment arm, which is called Intel Capital. And Intel Capital introduced me to the whole world of startups. And so I had a team that did basically deal evaluation for Intel investment. And after 4th years in Intel, I was approached by one of the CEOs that that we'd invested in to to take a job. And I was at the point where I wanted to try something new until I was tired of the big company. And so I left and went into a startup.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:05:55]:
It's called WebTuner, based in Seattle. It was kind of fun. It was kind of over the top TV, and, it was eventually sold. Then I started another company with some friends, a virtual reality company that was a in its heyday, we were super hot, and then it the the demise was just as fast. It was kinda crazy how fast it went from being great to being terrible. You know, shut the whole thing down. And and and at that point, I was just kind of looking around what to do next, still kind of figuring it out. And I got a friend of mine from here reached out and sent my resume into the North Coast Angels.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:06:32]:
Somehow, it it won its way through Northeast Ohio to Case Western, and they're spinning a company out called Folio Photonics, which is, you know, data storage data center data storage. I have that background in me. I worked in the data centers, and I I worked these technology products, and I came down and, met with the founder. I was a consultant for a number of years, and then I was asked to become the CEO. And then I moved my whole family here, and we went full circle. And I'm now living a mile from the house I lived in in Chagrin Falls in just a, you know, a different neighborhood. It's quite hilarious, but we're very close now to my wife's entire family's here too. So we had to see all the people we had seen, you know, for a very long time.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:07:13]:
So it's great. So that's kind of in a nutshell how I went that path, but it was it was a crazy path for sure.

Jeffrey Stern [00:07:19]:
Yeah. A lot a lot of different questions about your journey. But I I think what I wanna start with is just maybe a a detour on the the tech transfer process, and spin out from Case Western that you mentioned. Because I I've actually now had a few folks on where they've kind of navigated this process of taking some kind of endeavor at a university, often Case here in Cleveland. Like, in your opinion, how much unlocked potential is there in these kinds of projects, and, what what does that actually look like in practice?

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:07:49]:
Yeah. I was fortunate. The the tech the tech transfer is actually done by the founder, doctor Ken Singer. He's a professor of physics at Case Western. He went through a he wrote it. When he tells me the story, it took him 17 months to get the the licensing done to take his technology out of the university and to structure a folio. I came in a little bit later, when it when certain things were proven, certain patents were were starting to were getting approved and to commercialize it. But it was not like I said, I didn't go through the process myself, but I understand it it was a bit laborious.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:08:21]:
It which is striking to me, and I've had conversations with the local universities about the process because coming from the West Coast with Stanford, University of Washington, so all these schools that have very robust tech transfer, it's very easy to get, you know, to get the to get the the technology out of the university and into the hands of entrepreneurs. Here, it's a, you know, it's it's a lot of technology gets sold into the big established companies. So they want rev shares. They wanna kinda work out all these details where on the West Coast, a lot of it's about, let's get it into the market as fast as we possibly can. And if it all pans out, we we we make our money back on the upside, you know, long term valuation instead of verse on, you know, residuals and retainer fees and things like that that that get put in place with a lot of deals. So it's a little bit little bit different than the West Coast that's, you know, to be expected, but, you know, this this one of the challenges of being in the Midwest.

Jeffrey Stern [00:09:12]:
Yeah. So so coming out of the you know, your experience at at Intel, WebTuner, I'm curious, You know, I understand that your resume got floated to the ether in in Northeast Ohio. But how are you thinking about, you know, what you wanted to do next in your own motivations at that point in your career? And why why go back to to a to a start up?

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:09:34]:
Well, I you know, once you get bit by the start up bug, you you kinda get bit by it. I mean, you get kind of addicted. The the pace of life of the start up is so much more fun than at a big company. Now and it comes at certain risk. Right? I mean, I never had to worry about making payroll or running out of money at Intel. Right? I mean

Jeffrey Stern [00:09:53]:
Right.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:09:53]:
I could go to the big bank of Intel if I'm over budget, and I could find money. I mean, just the way the way it is. Whereas at a start up, you know, you're you're you you keep one eye on your bank account and your burn rate, as you go through it, you know, gauging and setting up your next funding. So, yeah, the whole startup thing, it's it's addictive a little bit. And so I've done now I'm in my 3rd. And in some case, I can't even imagine, you know, going back to work at a big company. I I just talked to one of my dear friends from Intel just this morning, you know, and he's coming up on his 28th year. 28 years at Intel.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:10:28]:
I'm like, oh my god. I couldn't I couldn't I have a hard time. I was there for 14. I couldn't imagine twice as long. Right? So it's it's just a it's a different type of experience. And with a start up, for me, I wanted to be a CEO. I've been general manager. I ran big business units at Intel.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:10:46]:
In my start ups, I was a chief revenue officer, I was a chief operating officer, but I was never the CEO. And I wanted to do that. And so when the the opportunity presented itself, it became something that I kinda jumped at. And it's not when anyone thinks it is. I mean, I whatever, you know, whatever book you read about what a CEO does, I assure you for a start up, it's not that. It's the greatest surprise. I tell people that all the time. I tell them, what's your biggest surprise? I go, well, you're fundraising all the time, and every detail matters.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:11:14]:
And you better understand what's going on. I mean, it's just the level of detail. It it's shocking. You know? And then look. I took a company, you know, through COVID, And, you know, that was a whole there's no playbook for that. You know, I was talking to my VCs. I go, what are you doing? What do you you know, what are your portfolio companies? Well, they don't have a plan. We're trying to figure it out.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:11:33]:
I'm here putting one way past through our factory so that people have a circuit. They walk around so to avoid bumping into people in the hallway. You know, I'm crawling around my factory taping arrows to create a flow, and we put rules in. You go past the bathroom. You go in and you wash your hands. You go, you know, we're taking temperatures twice a day. You know? No. You cannot.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:11:55]:
The lunchroom's gone. We took it apart. But the the conference rooms that we had, you know, they used to hold 12 chairs, now hold 4. And you had to sit on far corners from each other. You know? It's because we didn't want everybody to get sick. It was hard. And it's like, I don't know what I was doing. You know? We got through it, and, you know, you know, like anything, we a bunch of us got sick.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:12:13]:
Sure. And, you know, you're out you're you're out for 2 weeks. Don't even bother coming in. You know? Know? How to how to work over shutdown? But at one point, we had only 2 people in the building at one time. And, you know, you stay very far apart and you're wearing a mask. I mean, there's no playbook for that. You just kinda figure it out and at the same time, watching your burn rate saying, okay. We gotta keep moving forward, keep developing, creep you know, keep inventing, keep moving.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:12:37]:
But now, you know, it's a whole another set of challenges. It was it was a challenging experience.

Jeffrey Stern [00:12:41]:
So so let's maybe set the stage here for, you know, what it is you're actually producing, and what all that figuring it out is for. So so tell us a little bit about Folio Photonics. And from from an overview, we can dive into the, you know, the broader space that that you're operating in.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:12:58]:
So Folio, the the technology was spun out of Case Western Reserve is is a next generation data storage product, a data storage technology. And you think of data storage, you're thinking, you know, you know, like, you know, the CDs, DVDs, tapes, etcetera, that store data. But this is really aimed at the enterprise and it's optical. So an optical product is kind of like Blu Ray. CD, DVD, Blu Ray are optical products. Great consumer technologies over the years. Billings of those things were manufactured. Everyone had a Blu Ray at one time in their life, but it never made it into the data center because capacity on a Blu Ray disc is too small when compared to a hard disk drive or a magnetic tape, which is terabytes of capacity.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:13:39]:
So the breakthrough that came out of Case was a way to to make an optical technology of very, very high capacity and very, very low cost. It's where IP is and, you know, if you want to get really into the weeds, you know, typical a Blu ray disc has 3 layers of storage capacity per side. It's manufactured via a sputtering process where layers are added. So the active layer that gets written to, then a buffer layer, active buffer till you get 3. They've never gotten beyond 3 because anything more, all of a sudden, manufacturing yields fall off. What folio does, and it's in the name folio, if you think of kind of a book and pages of a book, what we do is we create a photonic film that we that is extruded. So the extrusion process allows us to have many, many more layers at a very, very low cost in manufacturing. And then you cut the film and you laminate to the disc, and you have a high capacity disc.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:14:31]:
So we're making, you know, 8 and 16 layer films right now. And, you know, it's alternating between the the active photonic material and buffer layers. We can manufacture this by the by by the, you know, yard after yard, and then we sit there and cut and make a disk, and it's very, very inexpensive. And the cost is something that's that's critical. It's not when you think of yourself where you have a couple, you know, megabytes or gigabytes worth of data. You have to look at these data centers, and they have, you know, exabytes and zettabytes. I mean, it goes kind of, you know, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte, petabyte, exabyte. An exabyte is a is a 1000000 terabytes.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:15:14]:
A zettabyte is a 1000000000 terabytes. And if you're paying 30 or $40 a terabyte, like your Amazon who has 2 zettabytes, that's 2,000,000,000 times that number. It's massive amounts. And and the one thing that we have going for us is that, you know, the world's not creating less data. The world's becoming different. You're making more this this video, this audio that you're taking, you're gonna record, is gonna be stored on multiple places, you know, backed up here or there. It's up in the cloud. The cloud is a collection of huge data centers that have spinning hard disks, in that.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:15:46]:
And so this is the market that we're targeting. It's a, you know, it's like I tell my investors, it's a $100,000,000,000 plus market opportunity with a 28% CAGR growth, and it's dominated by 3 tape vendors, 3 HD vendors, and about a half a dozen SSD vendors. That's it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:16:05]:
Yeah.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:16:06]:
And and those technologies are all kind of legacy technology. So we're kind of a next gen going after that great big market. So it's it's kind of exciting right now.

Jeffrey Stern [00:16:13]:
No. It's it's very exciting. So so all this is in the context, as you mentioned, of, you know, hard storage, solid state storage. Maybe you could just paint a little bit picture of the, you know, how data storage has changed over time and and, you know, where, you know, the history of it came from and and how, you know, receptive the market is to to the innovation that you're bringing to it.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:16:36]:
Yeah. I mean, that's part of the challenge. I mean, data storage has been around since, I don't know, the first computers, 19 fifties. I mean, you have a compute element, you have a storage element that get provides the data that gets computed against. And then if you wanna keep it for any time, you're you're gonna store it. The original products, if you go way back to the mainframe days, they had, you know, they were cardboard cards. They had palm cards that were, you know, they were keypunch, and they would store them. You know? I I took a programming class.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:17:02]:
I called it updating myself, but our program was a a cardboard box of cards. Right? That was your that was your program. That was your data. Then came the magnetic tape, and, you know, magnetic tape's been around. It used to be like a big spool. You see those pictures of the old days of the IBM mainframes. Now it's in a cartridge, like, in kind of like an 8 track cartridge. It's very shocking to me when I came back into this industry that tape is still around, but it's still a $2,000,000,000 business and growing because they do amazing things with tape.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:17:32]:
Those tape guys are are just amazing, but there's only 2 vendors left. Fuji Film and Sony make the tape, and IBM makes the drives that write and read to it. That's it. The next big advance is the hard disk drive, which we all know from our our PC days. Right? Because it's a consumer product, But they also have them in in the enterprise in data centers where you have rack after rack of thousands of these drives. The hard disk drives that are spinning these these these, you know, metallic platters that they're writing and reading data to, and chart you know, magnetically storing the data. Now the it's very it's fast data. It's very good, but it has a very short life.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:18:04]:
A hard to describe lasts 4 years. So if you're store if you're the Cleveland Clinic, you wanna store patient data before a life of a patient plus 30 years or a 100 years, you're gonna migrate your data 25 times. You're gonna buy new media. You're gonna move it. You're gonna this massive migration problem. And then, you know, then came the SSDs, the the software the semiconductors, products, and they are just wicked fast. I mean, this is where all the great compute stuff or AI and machine learning goes, just process massive amounts of data, but they're also very expensive, you know, at roughly about $150 a terabyte. HDDs cost in the twenties, 20, 25 a terabyte.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:18:41]:
Magnetic tape costs about 8 to 10. You know, we're producing product that we're gonna we're looking at 3 to $5 a terabyte. Right? So from optical and it has it's more of an archival product, meaning stuff you wanna store a long time. It's not for that high compute. You know, you think of when you're doing a calculator, you know, 2 plus 2. Right? Bang. You know, in an instant, you know, what that is. But this is stuff like, hey.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:19:03]:
Here's my kids', you know, photos from when they were born or their 1st birthday, their 2nd birthday.

Jeffrey Stern [00:19:09]:
Right. There's just static things that are not changing.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:19:11]:
Static. Right? It's it's objecting. You're gonna pull it back and look at it. And that's where really the big market is going because nowadays, we're we're in a world where nobody wants to delete anything.

Jeffrey Stern [00:19:21]:
Right.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:19:21]:
The role is you create it because you don't know if you're gonna delete something that's important. Right? And so you may need it. So then and then, you know, there's a rise of a of a new job called a data scientist. Right? These data scientists weren't around 10 years ago. You know, I have a nephew that that took it in in college, and he's got great job offers. But it's 10 years ago, there weren't wasn't a thing because there really wasn't enough data to you to go analyze. Now you have massive amounts of data and you have tools And, you know, just think of, like, mapping softwares or satellite imagery. Think of the military applications.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:19:54]:
You know, they they take the same picture from the same satellite every day for 30 years, and they compare it. And then you can tell troop movements. You can say, you know, what's happening underneath it. That's all massive analysis that's being done by computers, and they want that data. So you're storing every single thing you do. You don't wanna delete it, but you have to be cognizant that is you if you have a 1000000 terabytes, you know, do the math. If you keep it all on on a on flash or SSD, you're paying a $150 a terabyte, it's $150,000,000. You put it on HDD at 20, it's $20,000,000.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:20:24]:
Put it on tape, it's 8. You know, it's expensive. And so you kinda start lining yourself up to to optimize, you know, what is the worth The data that you need access to, the smallest amount, you put it on the flash. You start you kinda you start staggering down so that you you are you optimize your budgets for what the what the use of the data is. Because a lot of data sits. It's in use for 10 years. Pulled up 20 years. Right?

Jeffrey Stern [00:20:47]:
You mentioned that what I feel like is often the the holy grail aspiration of companies, which is defined that, you know, 10 x exponential improvement in in something. And, you know, you mentioned just cost. So is it, like, what what does that look like in in practice? How much do you have to sell people at this point to convince them? You know, where is it in the education process of people's familiarity with, like, is this too good to be true? Does it follow, like, Moore's law, like, compute does? You know, are are people, like, attuned to thinking of it in that way?

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:21:21]:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there is a a Moore's law equivalent for storage, Kepler's law, that talks about it, capacity doubling every, you know, every 2 years. So there is a lot because this is what's what's given rise to this industry that allows you I mean, think about where compute is now. Think about think about how many photos you have on your phone.

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:42]:
A lot.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:21:43]:
You probably have thousands of photos on your phone. I mean, that was impossible 10 years ago. And that was just like, my daughter takes a 1000000000 Snapchat photos a day, and it just boom, gets stored, gets thrown up in the cloud. And it doesn't cost her anything. It cost, you know, our we paid $9 a terabyte, you know, for a a month of storage or some crazy number like that. It's so inexpensive. And that's the same thing. I have a I have a hard disk drive here from 1950 that I use, and it's about the size It's about 18 inches in diameter.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:22:10]:
It held, like, 18 megabytes of data. IBM made it. It cost $10,000 in the 19 fifties.

Jeffrey Stern [00:22:18]:
18 megabytes. Megabytes.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:22:19]:
And now I gotta and I have a disk now that's gonna hold a terabyte for for $5. And it's that's a million of those things. It's it's kinda crazy how the cost it's that that decrease in cost, which this is what allows these new usages, these new things that come that to happen to for you to create, you know, cloud and for, you know, some of these, you know, these, your your music editing, your video editing, you know, all that kind of stuff. You have to have very expensive storage. And, you know, that's what, you know, that we we bring to the market here. So, yeah. I mean, it's we are following that curve. We have a a price advantage because we have a material advantage.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:22:57]:
And, you know, if you you think of it, a lot of history a lot of technology is what they call the s curve. Right? So it starts out low, gains adoption, and then you start to peter out because you start running out of ways to continue to scale that product. And, you know, a lot of the magnetic technologies are on kind of a 40 year s curve where they're running out of ability to increase capacity. And so with our technology, we say, hey. We're starting at the bottom of an s curve. We're about to, you know, HDD is at the top of their s curve. You know, incremental gains cost a lot of money. We're starting at the bottom, so we have all this upside.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:23:28]:
So we'll go from 1 terabyte to 2 to 5 to 10 per terabyte per disk and continue to drive that cost curve down. And so, you know, that's that's the order of magnitude thing that you're talking talking about. We have good economics in terms of, of the order of magnitude in terms of pricing because let's let's be clear. Data storage is commodity. So you're storing a 0 or a 1. I mean, it's Right. Plus or minus magnetically, or it's for us, it's light versus dark spots. Right? But it's a 0 or 1.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:23:59]:
So it's a cost thing. So that comes into play is because off the bat, we have to be if we're gonna enter this market and and and gain share, we have to be lower than the lowest that's available. And so we and we clearly have sights on that. And once you get people with that that hurdle, well, then the other benefits come into play like, hey. Our our media life's over a 100 years. So you can store it once and not touch it again for a very long time. The the big one that's that's coming to play right now quite a bit is is is power savings. When you store on a folio disc, when the data is not used, the disc just sits.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:24:38]:
It doesn't spin. And it doesn't require air conditioning or any environment. It just sits. I mean, think of your own life. CDs, DVDs, and Blu rays that you had in the seat of your car or your kids' playroom. You you know, you never you didn't keep them in a cool, dry environment. You know, you just use them, and they're they're basically indestructible. So that's a that's an advantage that we have.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:24:58]:
Versus, you take a magnetic tape, you gotta keep it cold, you gotta keep it in a very dry place. Humidity is bad. 8 8 hard disk drives have to spin all the time. They're always spinning, always consuming power. So we have, like, a 1,000 x in terms of over 5 years of of power savings that we have over of some of these products. So So so these come into play, but sustainability and power savings, you know, I'll I'll share a fact. Today, 3% of world the world's electricity generated goes to power data centers. Wow.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:25:28]:
Think about that. It is they're projecting it'll be 10% by 2030 because we're more and more data centers are being built. Now storage is typically about 1 third of the of the power cost inside of a data center. So anything that you could knock off that and save 1% of global electricity, that's a huge, huge, huge advantage. And, you know, and in the US, you don't see it as much because we have you have ample access to power, but some of these, you know, other foreign countries, they don't have access to power. You know, they don't have that power generation, you know, the nuclear, the, you know, the the the coal fired, all the different ways, the hydro that we have here. So our our power is relatively low. You go to an island in the, you know, in the in the Caribbean, you know, their power bill is way is much different.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:26:11]:
So, you know, anything you do to help them save power is is a big thing for us. So, you know, that's kind of a a side benefit of optical. And the third one, it it's it's security. I mean, all you hear about is ransomware attacks. And what is a ransomware attack? It's someone goes in and basically corrupts your data and says, hey. Either pay me a couple $1,000,000 or your data's gone. Now, you know, dirty little secret here, HDDs and SSDs are always connected, and that's who they target. You know, you can take an optical disc.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:26:39]:
You take a tape. Tape has the same benefit. And just take it out of the system and put it on a shelf. There's no way someone can touch that. It has to be mounted, spun up, etcetera. So you have this thing called an air gap. You know, and that's that's a big, big advantage for this type of technology, especially on things you wanna save for a very long time that you don't need sub nanosecond access to. Right? Like your family photos.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:27:01]:
You know, I'd be very unhappy if someone got into my library and corrupted all my kids' baby photos and things like that. I'd be like, oh, I paid the I I paid the damn ransom. I don't wanna do that. So I look for you know, this is an opportunity for us. So those are the big three. Lowest cost in the industry, you know, the cybersecurity angle, and then real, real, real big in sustainability and power savings for our technology versus the the incumbent. So we're looking forward to kinda getting that market.

Jeffrey Stern [00:27:28]:
Yeah. I it's a it's a compelling sell. I I feel like I I am sold. So I'm what I'm curious about is, like, where there is resistance if there if there is any. And, you know, like, one one of the stories as you were talking that came to mind was I remember, you know, one of the challenges that NVIDIA has where, you know, production of chips and following the similar Moore's Law's trajectory is often, you know, what they're putting out is so far ahead that people don't feel ready yet. You know, like, you know, they don't have the the capabilities to even, like, use to fully utilize the the product that you're offering. Is there some what what is the resistance, if there is any?

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:28:04]:
Well, the resistance, like, a lot a lot of technology, you know, there's just legacy, you know, people don't wanna change.

Jeffrey Stern [00:28:10]:
Yeah.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:28:11]:
You know, I've been an HDD guy or guy for 25 years. You know, you wanna store data for a 100 years, I'll be dead before I need data in a 100 year. I mean, you get that conversation. So there's a lot of, you know, just inertia from the big storage guys that, you know, well, it's kinda working right now. Why do I wanna upset my Apple cart Apple cart? So but then things happen that cause them people to take notice. You know, you know, it and then the rising cost all of a sudden. You know, when it's 10% of your budget, you know, you know, okay. We can get by on that.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:28:43]:
But all oh, it's 20%. All of a sudden, well, then people come in. They go to their their data center guy and say, well, you have to delete data because we're not gonna pay for you to expand anymore. And they go, okay. You pick which of your data files we'll delete. Nobody wants to delete any data, so then they get their budgets approved. So money does come into it, and we're just getting over it. Now optical is a little bit different because it's always been viewed as a consumer technology.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:29:02]:
So we've kind of a hurdle saying that, yep. Started out as consumer technology, now we're moving to the data center. So it's it's more it's more robust. Right? It's it's enterprise ready. And, you know, that's kind of the the the space we're in right now. But enough people are very curious that we're starting to make, you know, some good headway for, you know, early, partners and early customers. So we're kind of the future looks really good for us. It's just that, yeah, we're anticipating.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:29:26]:
It's gonna be like anything else. You're gonna we'll work till we get a breakthrough, and then it's gonna happen. And it's gonna be a lot of crazy fun. Then a whole another set of problems come up. Right? Like

Jeffrey Stern [00:29:36]:
endless endless problems.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:29:37]:
Yeah. And Different problems. Better problems. Endless good problems. Right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:29:41]:
Well, one one of the other questions I have, you know, you mentioned the kind of commodity nature of it. And often, I think with commodities, it's somewhat of a a race to the bottom Uh-huh. In terms of, you know, right, like, the the cost of it. And so how do you think about that? You know, from a competitive perspective, from a differentiation perspective?

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:29:59]:
You know, for us, the race to the bottom is an advantage. Yeah. Because our cost we start with a lower cost basis than the other products. Right? I was talking to a guy at IBM, and he said, you know, the next generation tape product they come out with, it's like 450,000,000 investment to build that factory. I might so you gotta make at least 450. We don't spend that much money. You know, the the manufacturing process for film production, you know, don't need a clean room. We the extrusion is a very well known technology.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:30:29]:
Film head is highly scalable, a lot of volume. We just we just come in with a real nice place in terms of our our cost model. You know, we can get lower, and we have the margin to be able to embrace that. And, you know, once we get settled here, yeah, those guys wanna get in a price where, okay, good. We can discount a lot more than they can, just just for the bill of material costs alone, you know, that we're we're much less. So that's not something we fear. Right? But in in the end, it's all good. The the thing that people have to when I when I look at entering the market is, again, you have to realize the size of the market.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:31:02]:
In 2025, new capacity is gonna require about 3 and a half zettabytes. That's 3 and a half 1000000000 terabytes of data. You know, if we just sell 5 exabytes, I'm happy as a clam. I mean, the big guys won't even notice us that we were getting this little bit here. But we're a nice little company at that point. Now you're, you know, we're we're in the tens of millions of of of, you know, maybe closer to a 100 even of of revenue. Now, does that scare Western Digital? Well, hell no. They're $22,000,000,000 Right? Does it scare the Seagate's of the world, etcetera? No.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:31:35]:
But we'll start, and there'll be enough, there are enough edge cases and swim lanes that we can get ourselves established, you know, we believe, and start to get some, you know, get revenues in and start, you know, demonstrating use cases, and then we'll start slowly start moving up. It's kind of a land and expand strategy and then move throughout that enterprise. And we got we have people lined up already. Right? So we're kind of excited about that.

Jeffrey Stern [00:31:58]:
And and all this, you know, you're you're building it out in Northeast Ohio. Like, what what does the company look like? What, you know, what how how is it sounds like you might needed some amount of capital, maybe not the amount that you would need for other means of storage. But Yeah.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:32:12]:
I'm that's why we're all fundraising right now. Right? Because what the we announced in May, end of May, end of June, we we were writing and reading to an 8 layer folio disc. Okay? So that's a a major breakthrough. Previous to that, 4 layers was the a 4 layer disc was the mass, was kind of the maximum of an optical product that was was demonstrated, so we doubled that. We dropped the press release in August, kind of setting up for this fall for our fundraising. We're out there actively engaging with, the VC community and the venture community right now for to raise our b round to allow us to build the factory to make those discs. Yes. There's there's a certain capital cost in terms of equipment and then, you know, then building up the workforce, which is gets people in Cuyahoga County and Summit County and Jager County kind of excited because they try to land us with our jobs because, you know, we don't our manufacturing jobs aren't being paid, you know, $15 an hour.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:33:07]:
Our manufacturing jobs are, you know, getting paid $35.40 an hour. So it's, you know, this is the kind of jobs that we're trying to create a cycle for inside of, Northeast Ohio. So it is rather exciting. We we'll move from our building right now. We're in Solon. We have, you know, around 10,000 square feet. We need probably another 30,000. So we're starting to, you know, start to talk with, the realtors and, the brokers to to find that factory space.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:33:33]:
So we'll get that in place. So gotta buy some expensive equipment, gotta find a new building, gotta move everyone into the new building. We have partners for, you know, other components of drives and libraries that are being, you know, built for us in Europe, you know, advanced optics, things like that. So we're kind of putting the whole supply chain together. There's a lot there are a lot of moving parts, but it's what's fun right now is a year ago, they were just kind of a whole there was their their wish list, but now they're starting to manifest going, okay. We're on track here. We're on track here. We're on track here.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:34:04]:
Let's go, you know, move up the stack. Let's get this, that, etcetera. It's just, you know, I tell the team, I go, you know, just we have a plan, execute the plan. And, you know, I just say I didn't tell the time. I tell, how do you how do you peel a a pile of potatoes, one potato at a time? You know? Don't get distracted by the size of the pile. Just keep back grabbing potatoes. Doing your job. Peel the damn thing.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:34:24]:
Throw them in the bucket. Grab another one. Grab another potato. And pretty soon, you grab enough of them, then all of a sudden, you know, you're off to the races. And, you know, right now, it's it's it's fun because we we have some line of sight that we can see certain things. It's exciting.

Jeffrey Stern [00:34:36]:
Oh, that that is very exciting. How has it been fundraising? How is the story resonating? I mean, I'm sold. You know, I'm I'll I'll I'll give you some money. But

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:34:46]:
The, you know, it's we raised, I don't know, 14,000,000 so far with an a round for Local Angels. We have 2 VCs on. The state of Ohio through their JobsOhio program are also an investor. It was a task, but it it went well. The current market right now, you know, it's it's kind of, you know, we're I'm having all the conversations. There's interest in what we do. What's interesting now is that they with the with the dip in the technology stocks and the stock market that's hit in the last 6 months, it's, you know, everybody's, like, knocking down your valuation. Right? Go, well, you know what? Last year, you might have been valued at at 75,000,000.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:35:25]:
Now you're at 40. I'm like, oh, woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:35:27]:
You know, hang on a second. We didn't do anything different, but, you know, they're getting away. You know, it's it's kind of what the market what the market will bear. So we're still kind of looking through it. We're raising. We're we have some interested parties that where I pop out on a plane tomorrow. Off we go and, you know, hope to get this thing wrapped up this year. That will allow us to do the expansion and the commercialization that that we want to.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:35:49]:
We just signed a term sheet with a first customer and partner. You'll hear more about it. I can't say anything now. It's it's not a final agreement yet, but, you know, we're our attorneys are working away trying to get that banked into an agreement. So that'll be be exciting. That'll be announced probably later this fall. So things are moving forward. But, yeah, it's it's not as I don't wanna say it's just not a robust time to great time to be raising money, and, you know, a lot of people are are crying about it because it's tough right now.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:36:17]:
But, you know, we have a compelling story of compelling value proposition. It's not gonna get the the number that we need. We'll find it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:36:24]:
Yeah. What has you most excited as you think about, you know, what what's coming down the pike?

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:36:32]:
I I I am I am really looking forward to getting a commercial product done, qualed, and and start it in into a, you know, into an installation. Because right now, it's it's all prototype stuff, and it's PowerPoint presentation center. It's provable. I say, hey. Here's a damn disk. Put it in. Write your data to it. How much data can you write onto it? And, oh, by the way, it costs $5.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:36:57]:
Now do that with any other product. You can't. Then I'm blanking on you know, the conversation changes at that point. Right? So for me, it's about getting that first product done. I can't wait. And and along the way look. I've been here now since 2018. Right? The the naysayers, they're like, optical's dead.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:37:14]:
You'll never be able to do this. You can't do 8 layers. You can't do 16. You can't focus that. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All the people say, no. I'm gonna go around to all of you like, yeah. I wrote your name down in my book.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:37:26]:
Guess what? I'm gonna send you a note. It's done. It's done. It's done. Because there are people that did that. And it's like, know, part of the thing about being an entrepreneur in any environment is, you know, keeping your spirits up and and understand that you're gonna face rejection. And those are people saying, never gonna happen, not gonna work. And you gotta you gotta stay above it.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:37:42]:
And you gotta keep your team motivated. So right, wait, we're what, 20 people right now? I have an an office in Solon, we have a a research office in, Longmont, Colorado. I have, you know, 4 or 5 people out there. And, you know, I try to keep our, you know, our team highly motivated, which is hard during COVID, car you know, hard during all these other things, but, you know, it's kinda coming around right now. It's kind of exciting. So for me, getting the first product done, I'll be like, I will.

Jeffrey Stern [00:38:09]:
Yeah. No. That's awesome.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:38:10]:
I don't wanna be totally arrogant, but but my you said I couldn't. And guess what? We did. Here we are. It's very exciting.

Jeffrey Stern [00:38:17]:
It's one it's one of the more satisfying things

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:38:19]:
for any

Jeffrey Stern [00:38:20]:
sayer's wrong.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:38:20]:
And and the thing is, I probably won't even spend any time doing the hot because I'll have a million other things that I have to work on now. Right? About now. We have international. We have other manufacturing. We have supply chain. You know? But at that point, I will take a moment out and say, here's the first product out.

Jeffrey Stern [00:38:36]:
And Yeah. No. You gotta you gotta celebrate success.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:38:38]:
You you have to because otherwise, you're just you're just kinda just grinding. And I don't wanna grind all the time. I wanna I wanna do I wanna get that hot. That'll be fine.

Jeffrey Stern [00:38:45]:
So may maybe, you know, widening the the scope of that a little bit. What does success look like to you more more broadly? Like, if you achieve success, you know, what is the impact that you would have have hoped to have in in retrospect?

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:38:59]:
Well, there there are a couple of things. You know, coming to Ohio was a conscious decision that my wife and I made. We wanted to come back. So okay. Take out it being a very successful company, you know, good cash flow, growing, all that kind of stuff. But, you know, I look at the region and, you know, I wanna be part of the story here that says, hey. You know, he he came back and he introduced a high-tech company in here. You know, kinda break the mold of what's happening.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:39:31]:
Like, how excited am I that Intel put a big huge fab in Columbus, which is fabulous. It's gonna be great for the state of Ohio. Is it gonna be great for Northeast Ohio? I don't know. Or is it gonna be a big sucking style where everything go down all the good jobs go down 71 and all the smart people? But let's do something to invigorate this region. You know, I'm I'm very committed to that. You know, we we talked beforehand. You know, I when I came here, I got pulled into the the the block land, effort. And, you know, and so I like giving back.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:39:58]:
I love I like the idea of of, you know, creating great jobs in Northeast Ohio. I tell I tell my research engineers all the time, you know, I said, hey. Your job is to make us successful and then quit. Take all the money you made for me and start another company. It's kinda similar. I mean, you know, that's what Silicon Valley is. Right? Let's let's let's be clear. Intel is on the, you know, is on the east side of the 101, and then AMD is on the west side.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:40:24]:
NVIDIA is 3 miles away, a little bit south. I mean, they're all within spinning distance of each other. And, you know, I like to see this whole region change and become Yeah. More of a a tech hub. And and you you start to see people move to it. You know, university is starting to you're kinda gearing up. They're shifting some of the curriculum, some of the research into it, and it's it's more than just med tech. I mean, there's room for hard tech like the stuff that we do at FOLIO.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:40:47]:
There's room for software companies. There's, you know, it's it's a great place. You know, Cleveland, you have a great big lake. The weather is generally good. The cost of living is not bad compared to some of the other places. It's kind of a hidden jewel, and I'd like to call attention to that. I'm about bringing back to the area where I grew up, where my wife's family is from, etc. Like, you know, get back here a little bit.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:41:08]:
Let's start something. Let's just turn this place around a bit. You know, hey, the Browns went last night. It's a good thing. Right?

Jeffrey Stern [00:41:15]:
It is a good thing. I would be interested in going on a little detour and and just getting your your perspective as a as a former intel, you know, leader about this move to Ohio and inverting the situation. Like, what needs to happen for it to not, you know, benefit Cleveland? And how do we avoid that from happening?

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:41:35]:
Well, you know, it's podcast like what you're doing here. And, I mean, there's not a super great ecosystem here. Alright. I'll I'll give you a story. I started a VR company with 2 of my friends in Bellevue, Washington, which is right across the the big lake, Lake Washington from Seattle. And we kinda kicked around. You know, we kept meeting, and we we came up with a concept that made a lot of sense. We kinda mocked it up, and and we and we're going, okay.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:42:02]:
This idea hunts. And so as entrepreneurs going, now the next step is we need to raise money. And so in in Bellevue, you go to the Gaucho restaurant slash bar. And the bar at the El Gaucho in Bellevue is a big l shaped bar. And on Thursday nights, the short end of the l is kinda where all the VCs hang out. So we go walking down there, talking to, you know, seed capital, things like that talk, and we walk away, got a couple of business cards, had a great stake, by the way, called those guys, and we raised $2,000,000 about 3 weeks later. Just, you know, mining that and that network. So now then, okay, we got money.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:42:37]:
So now we grab the space in a building in Bellevue, and we said we gotta start hiring engineers. So you go back to the same bar, and now you go in the long arm, and it's all the Microsoft, Google, Facebook software guys. Been around for a while, done really well, and that's where we started, you know, recruiting engineers. You know? And we found kind of a 2 of our principal engineers that came out of that restaurant. So you have this huge network where you can go and you can kind of you can find money and you can find, you know, you can find people and things like that. And so that is what is kinda lacking here in Northeast Ohio. Like, where do you go? Is is there a place in Ohio City where tech people go hang out? I don't know because I haven't been there yet. I have I have my place where I go to with my friends, but they're all lawyers.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:43:22]:
And all I just talk about is suing people and doing things like that, and it's great fun. And I'm but I'm the odd duck in the group. You I'd like to find a place where there are more people like me where we can talk about the challenges. Because fundamentally, versus the West Coast, what takes a minute on the West Coast takes an hour in Cleveland or the Midwest. What takes an hour on the West Coast takes a day in Cleveland. What takes a day on the West Coast takes a week. What takes a week takes a month. There's just a there's a lot of friction in getting things done.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:43:49]:
Your hiring process is longer in terms of vetting and getting people in here. You know, your supply chain is a lot different. Things the nature on the West Coast is people want to move very quickly. Right? They they get it because you're just burning money if you're a start up. So things are faster. My attorneys, my West Coast attorneys, could flip a contract in 2 or 3 hours. Here, it will take 3 or 4 days. You know, it's often the case.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:44:14]:
That's just that's burn money. Right? I can't. I'm just wasting money at that point. And so, you know, I'd like to see more urgency. I'd like to see a a better network of resources for entrepreneurs to tap into. I mean, look, I I I proposed this at one of the meetings. I go, boy, think about all the IP that sits in Sherwin Williams, Eaton, Parker, all these big companies, And a lot of the stuff that they have IP around, and they're never gonna do a damn thing about it. But they have the patents filed.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:44:42]:
They own them. I go, what if they pulled all that and made it available so that an entrepreneur could come and just kinda go through it and see if something comes to mind and then cut a licensing deal. I mean, some of the in the bowels of these buildings, even the universities, the case of stuff like that, huge amounts of IP, but not all of it's being worked. So do the stuff that's not being worked and make it available to somebody to go find, you know, create that environment so that who knows what they're gonna invent? It's gonna be kinda crazy. I mean, the guy that, you know, he invented the sticky note was trying to come with the glue that would never that lasted forever. Instead, it came something that, you know, you can use over and over and over. I mean, it's accidents happen, and they're good. And I and I like to see that happen because there's foundationally, there's kind of a lot a lot to be said up here, right, in Northeast Ohio foundationally.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:45:31]:
So

Jeffrey Stern [00:45:32]:
Yeah. Well, no. All all that that resonates quite a lot. I think the the theme that I picked up on from from just a lot of people and some of my own impetus for for doing this is the it is it's it's somewhat of a density problem. Because there's a lot of people doing really cool stuff here, but it's it's how do you facilitate the interactions between those people in a way that doesn't, you know, require someone from Avon Lake to drive to Chagrin Falls and like to to

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:45:57]:
you know? And and frankly, the other thing that I I would ask is how do you keep the Snoopy big companies out of the conversation? Because, you know, sometimes, you know, when I assume the blockchain stuff, I thought, oh, hey. You know, we got some blockchain guys, and you could tell who they are because they're all wearing, you know, black t shirts and hoodies. Right? But then they're also well, 10 people from KeyBank came down, want to check out the meeting, and they just you know, it's not the right vibe. Right? I mean, let the startups do startup stuff. I mean, there's a time for the big companies to come in, but, you know, everyone's rushing to embrace sometimes. I I think it does a a disservice a lot and and something. Now I don't mean to pick on key. I'm just using that as just a Yeah.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:46:35]:
Yeah. But, you know, we have a lot of big corporations here. And, you know, that's and big corporations is is not where innovation or start up these type of things happen, you know, these kind of breakouts. Right? And so, you know, I'd I'd like to just see a little bit more vibrant of a community. And then, you know, and then the supporting. Look. The struggle that I've had to get a credit card for my company. Oh, good.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:46:57]:
We don't have any revenue yet, but we had a couple million in the bank. And people are just saying, no. No. No. No. We can't give you a credit card. You don't have any revenue. We go, you have my bank account.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:47:06]:
You know? Why can't you give me a credit? I mean, on the West Coast, Silicon Valley Bank, there are people that that cater to startups. Right? And they they they assume a little bit of risk. We pay a little bit more, but it's fine. You know, your insurance. Right? You have to offer good benefits, to to attract these people. Right? And, you know, you you going to places that pooled startups so that they could have, you know, you know, better rates and things like that. There's just a number of things that would be would be a lot easier that I could see, you know, opportunistically could improve around here. They'd be kinda great.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:47:37]:
I get on my soapbox every now and then and let you know.

Jeffrey Stern [00:47:40]:
No. I I I love that. I would love to to to talk more with you about that. Oh, yeah. One of the the things I wanna circle back to though, actually, you mentioned earlier on was that, you know, perhaps the job that people perceive to be, you know, what it is to be a CEO is quite different from the the realities of it. And I wanna kinda gauge your perspective on on leadership. And I in preparation for this conversation, actually, I came across a term, you know, you carry with you, which is never washy, which is one that I actually also love. And so just for, you know, the sake of everyone who does not know what that is, I'd love if you could explain it, but also just your, you know, what do people need to understand about the the role of a CEO that they that they maybe don't, and and how how you think about leadership?

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:48:26]:
So, you know, for, you know, for leadership, you know, it's it's setting direction. You wanna give people quite a bit of freedom to to to kinda execute, but you have to stay very, very tuned to it, especially early on. Right? You know, trust is built as teams start hitting deliverables, things like that. But early on, you're you're you're watching everything to make sure that milestones are being met. Right? That, you know, that you you you do a plan, you execute a plan. So, you know, we're doing, you know, stand ups and retros and things like that. So a lot of communication and a lot of awareness being generated. Really, you know, also as a CEO, making sure that the interdependencies are in place, that, you know, people aren't being supported or, you know, or, you know, in that case, they're not being supported.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:49:12]:
So how how can you mitigate that? You know, solve you know, help solve those interpersonal, inner team, type of problems. But it's really about strategy. Right? It's about looking very, very long term and and kinda have a plan and have plans for the plan and plans for, you know, all the different options of the plan. You know, we have 3 or 4 plans. You know? Okay. Fundraising comes in at this. This is what we do. Comes in this, we do this.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:49:37]:
We do you know, we try to have all those those contingencies planned for her so that we can mitigate them and just don't you just turn and go so you're not, oh, stop. I gotta rethink the whole plan. Okay? So have a CEO so people can follow. Lay that road map. But strategy strategy is key. Now the the Nehemowashi thing is kind of interesting because as CEO, you're the number one salesperson of your company. You're the number one salesperson to the investment community and you spend a lot of time raising money. But all the strategic partners that you want to talk to I mean, we're dealing with big companies.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:50:07]:
We deal with Amazon. We deal with, you know, Microsoft. We deal with Western Digital, IBM, you know, Seagate. You name it. We're we're talking to these guys all the time. And now Mawashi comes into it. It's like because when you start engaging and this is where my experience at Intel, you know, it's hard to figure out how a decision is done in a big company. Right? And so you gotta you gotta have your foxes could help you find the ultimate decision maker, but you realize it's a lot of time, it's consensus and decision making.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:50:34]:
And so you invest a lot of time in building relationships. So when I go I just came back from the West Coast and I had meetings, for example, with Western Digital, and I'm gonna be there for I'm there for weeks. So I had, like, 7 or 8 different meetings. I had 1 or 2 breakfasts and a dinner. Went drinking out with a guy who's not even part of the who I'm working with is the core of Western Digital, but he gives me insights and he, you know, helps give me direction and helps lay the groundwork for, you know, it's the neemawashi side of it. Right? You're you're spending time understanding, you know, your partners, you know, their business, and you're you're branching out. It's very rarely one on one, make a decision, and go. Right? It's gonna find these other people.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:51:18]:
And culturally, especially when you work in big companies, you you gotta understand that. You have to invest a little bit in in Namilwaji. Right? It's like, spend the time, do the homework. It's a tax. Yeah. You know, stuff that we're doing now was started 3, 4 years ago. You know, as a, let's just have a meeting. Let's do this.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:51:35]:
And then, like, well, this leads to this, leads to that. A little bit of advice here, a little bit of advice that. You kind of work your way around, start popping up in in dialogues internally with these partners, and next thing you know, here we go. And so yeah. So I mean, I'm I'm I'm curious when you said that you knew the word because if if you've dealt with Japanese companies, you kinda know the word. But, you know, for a lot of, you know, US companies, we're not Nemo Washi. And it's

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:59]:
No. I I I don't think we are. I I hadn't come across it through actual Japanese companies, but through the the nature of the more of the day to day work that I I do, which is in product management, which is is all about getting the buy in of different stakeholders from customers, engineering, sales, success, design, and prioritizing what we need to be working on and have that be extensible and accretive. And it you need to do the groundwork and lay the foundation for people to come to agreements.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:52:29]:
Right. Because, you know, what what you want is you want people to buy into the vision, and they just naturally do the right thing. Right? So product management, that's a tough skill. Right? Because you are right. You're you're you're dealing with the engineers are saying, nope. It can't be done. This is what we need to do. And they're stubborn.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:52:44]:
This is what we wanna go do. Then you have kind of the the customer angle or the people in the field. Hey. Well, this is kind of what we wanna do, etcetera. Then you have, like, the financial guys in the company and the CEO saying, hey. We gotta make money on this thing. You know? Like, time to market, low cost, how we doing this, max margin. So it's an amorphous blob that you're trying to shape into a thing that works.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:53:05]:
So hats off to you for coming up that down that path because it's, you know, it's not easy, and you're always looking to find people who are good at it. It's a skill. It's definitely a skill. And then Nemo Washi does come up for sure in that respect. It's it's you're doing it all the time. I mean, it's just the way it is.

Jeffrey Stern [00:53:23]:
Yeah. It's fun, though.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:53:25]:
Hey. Look. I have a wife and 2 daughters. I'm doing Nehemi Washi at home all the time. Right?

Jeffrey Stern [00:53:31]:
That's awesome. Cool. I think we've we've covered a a lot of ground here. I wanna leave a little space, perhaps if there's something that you think is is particularly important that we haven't talked about yet. You know, whether that's part of your experience, you know, the the Cleveland ecosystem company building process, just kinda leave it leave it open for you here.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:53:53]:
Well, you know, listen, primarily to entrepreneurs out there, you know, you're gonna you're gonna shake a lot of trees to to kinda get where you want. You there's there's no excuse for not a lot of effort. You can find it. It's in Cleveland, you you know, and you're gonna have to network to it in a lot of cases. You're gonna work through it, and you're gonna call in favors. You know, I use my board extensively. I have an amazing board of Cleveland business people. They go from, like, Bob Pavey to, you know, Ron Richards of Cleveland Foundation, you know, you know, Felix Bruich, ex McKinsey, you know, is is chair of our board.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:54:28]:
You know, these people are super, super well connected. They love to they love to to give their time and and and and help you, give you advice. You don't have to you don't have to listen to it all, but, you know, it's it's they're just a great one to do it, and they and they broker relations, and you just have to work it. It's it's never just it's not as simple as I'm just you're solving a problem and boom, and you're off to the races. No. There's a lot of neemawashi going on, and you you know, you bet and Cleveland has it. It's just like you said earlier, it's not it's not a density, you know, where you can find it. Like, I've had you know, I I have friends inside of Lubrizol that I've shared.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:55:05]:
It has nothing to do with my business, but we but we talk to the same technology customers. And and I go, okay. No. There's a little piece here. Let's save this little nugget. And so you start collecting all these different things, And and it's just a lot of effort. And you you have to go into it with your eyes wide open and say, look. It's just not about inventing the the a better mousetrap.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:55:24]:
It's now, you know, going out there and finding all the different pieces that people that you need to contact to to bring it to market, and it's hard. But it's it's doable. It's not that it's not doable here. It's just a it's just not as natural. There's just a not a natural gravity to to create startups here that airs in the West Coast. And so, hey. I hope I'm successful. You know? I hope the next guy's successful.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:55:45]:
Then you start to create kind of a culture that allows this to happen. And, you know, and that's what we're hoping. You know, trying to, you know, it's be the, you know, start the the snowball rolling down the mountain. Let it let it grab get some momentum. Let it get bigger here, and let's overwhelm everything because it's it's it can happen. It's available out here. So, you know Yeah. My thing is, like, just keep grinding, man.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:56:06]:
It's every day. Just move the ball forward a little bit. You know? I mean, that's what I try to say. I come in every day. You know? You you're putting your hours in. Did I move the ball? Did I advance it a little bit? You know? That's my goal all the time. And you you keep doing that, and

Jeffrey Stern [00:56:20]:
all of a sudden, all

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:56:20]:
of a sudden, I swear to that, sound cool. And then you celebrate quickly. Now I'm and you realize you got another one to go do. You go do that. So that's it. But other than that, you know, Cleveland's a great place, and, you can find, you know, their success stories out there. They're and everyone's willing to help. I mean, I help entrepreneurs who I've met in this journey who've called me up and said, hey.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:56:40]:
I'm I'm gonna pitch you this idea, and I've I spent one that that just got its 1st fundraising. And, you know, he sent me, here's my pitch deck. I go, okay. This sucks. And, you know, I say it with love. Yeah. This sucks. And let's let's tighten this thing up.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:56:53]:
And then we spent, you know, evenings for for 2, 3 weeks. And all of a sudden, boom, he got it, and he and he sent me a very nice bottle of wine. He goes, thank you very much. You know? That's all I want. And, you know, hey. You gave me a thank you, and he got he you raised his first round of money out of that. And so, you know, help each other out. Right? Because it's one success, we all succeed.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:57:13]:
You know, it's kinda good like that.

Jeffrey Stern [00:57:14]:
Yeah. I I appreciate your your simultaneous pragmatism and optimism.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:57:20]:
You're okay. Pragmatism and optimism.

Jeffrey Stern [00:57:24]:
Because I've I don't know. I I feel like the it's it's it's somewhat different from the the broader narrative here.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:57:32]:
Well, look, I'm a glass half full type of guy by by nature. But, you know, you know, but I do recognize certain limitations and, you know, that and I just you have to you just gotta, like you said, pragmatically approach them, knock them off. Right? Saying, okay. This is a this is a risk. This is a challenge. We need to mitigate it. We gotta resolve it, move on. But you can't let it bring you down.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:57:57]:
As CEO, if you if you if you have a down day, it bleeds across the organization. Oh, you know, I if I'm cranky, I don't want everyone else to be cranky. You know? So you gotta kinda keep them up, keep it going, keep that face on, and keep moving forward. I mean, that's the the joy of of leadership, right, and the challenge. So that's my that's what it is.

Jeffrey Stern [00:58:17]:
Well, earlier, you mentioned that Cleveland in and of itself is somewhat of a of a hidden gem, which, you know, sets the stage for my my traditional closing question for everyone, which is for your favorite hidden gem in Cleveland. And, you know, maybe it is Cleveland, but, I'll I'll pose that.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:58:36]:
Look. I'm I'm I'm I live on the east side of Chagrin Falls, and I love that little village. And there are there are things around here. Now the the hidden gem that other cities don't have are the metro parks. And and everyone says, oh, the metro parks, but, you know, specifically look. I have a a giant labradoodle that likes to swim, and we go down to, you know, the the you know, off Solon Road, there's Quarry Rock, and then there's, like, the Lookabout Lodge off of, of Miles. And we just go hiking in the woods. Very rarely is anyone there, so bang.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:59:07]:
I could have him off leash. Next thing you know, he's in the river. I'm in the river. I mean, the waterfalls, it's just sometimes you just take a bump and go, oh my god. We just climbed down a series of 6 waterfalls, and we're 5 miles from our house. And we're and there's no one here. And so to me, the Metropark systems that are tied around the Chagrin River, you know, I explore them all the time. You know, it's just you can just wait them.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:59:34]:
You know, in the summertime when it's hot, everyone goes to where the parks are, but okay, get in the water, walk 200 yards downstream, and you're where no one else has been, and you're finding all these pools and falls. It's kinda great. So it's my thing. I'm a foodie. I like Italian food. My go to in Chigrette, I love I'm Italian because in my book, they have the best eggplant Parmesan, and I get yelled that every time we go there because I only get one thing. That's why I never change. My wife does it.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [00:59:59]:
And, I have a group of guys that, that go up to, Flower, which is in Moreland Hills off of of Somme. And on Tuesdays, they've half price bottles of wine. And so we started going there when I moved back with, like, my one of my best one of my best friends who lives here, and he's a a lawyer, with one of the big firms in town. And it it's grown to where we've bought a dozen guys. Anywhere from 6 to 12 guys show up every Tuesday. In fact, I'm gonna go there tonight. And I don't need a reservation. They're gonna go when they hold us a table.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [01:00:28]:
We we come in. Through the pandemic, we went every Tuesday night.

Jeffrey Stern [01:00:32]:
Oh, wow.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [01:00:33]:
And it's kinda cool, and it's just a great atmosphere. I love it. And, so those are my those are my gems. I love the town of Chagrin. I love the metroparks, the easy access, and then a 100 yards off the path and you're in places where no one else no one else is, take your dog and have a blast. And then I gave you my 2 favorite restaurants, and that seemed tough for me to get a table. So

Jeffrey Stern [01:00:54]:
Yeah. Hopefully, we don't, you know, rush on Tuesdays.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [01:01:00]:
Secret.

Jeffrey Stern [01:01:02]:
Now to to our dozens of dedicated listeners, I think we'll be alright.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [01:01:05]:
This is great. So thank you for having me.

Jeffrey Stern [01:01:08]:
Yeah. Thank you so much, Steve. Really appreciate it. If if folks had anything they wanted to follow-up with you about, what would be the the best way for them to do so?

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [01:01:15]:
Go to the website, you know, www.foliophotonics.com. You can connect to me. There's a, you know, email the company, and it'll come to me. And, it'll come to somebody here or direct it to me saying, hey. I got a question. I wanna do this. I wanna buy data storage products from you.

Jeffrey Stern [01:01:32]:
Hopefully, that's why.

Steve Santamaria (Folio Photonics) [01:01:33]:
Or if you're an engineer and you want a cool job, that's really cool too as we grow because, you know, finding good engineers is always a lot of fun. But ring us up. Love to do it.

Jeffrey Stern [01:01:45]:
That's all for this week. Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show, so if you have any feedback, please send over an email to jeffrey@layoftheland.f m, or find us on Twitter at podlayoftheland or @ sternjefe, j e f e. If you or someone you know would make a good guest for our show, please reach out as well and let us know. And if you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or on your preferred podcast player. Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland founders and builders we love having on the show.