1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Tim Wilson of Artiman Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk about some of your portfolio highlights. What are you really proud of having invested in? As you choose the ones to talk about, specifically point out when you saw them, in what state did you see them, and what is it about them that attracted you?

Tim Wilson: I’ll start with a company that I invested in in 2004. It’s called InvenSense. The founder came in with two other co-founders. His model and idea was to build a motion sensor. I still remember his words. He said, “Here is the size of motion sensors today and I’m going to put one in every smartphone in the world.”

He didn’t have a product. He had a concept. He had a track record. He was a manufacturing whiz. He knows how to build things. We looked at him and said, “What would you do with this motion processor?” He started answering questions of what could be. We wrote a check and ultimately, that company went from three people into an IPO. It recently sold to TDK. That entrepreneur was passionate and committed. He understood his core competency and understood how to model and predict the outcome of R&D.

Sramana Mitra: You’re betting on domain knowledge effectively.

Tim Wilson: In this case, we were betting on domain knowledge and the fact that there was no market at that time for motion sensors in your pocket. In fact, smartphones barely existed. He looked at us and said, “We’re going to put cameras on these devices. Cameras will shake. I can use motion to compensate for your shaking hands.”

There was a very consistent, logical, and clear set of things that he had imagined about the world that we all bought into. Ultimately, it became real.

I’m going to give you one where the jury is still out on whether this will work. It’s called Silniva. We started with one guy. He’s in Tennessee. His formal education is in comparative literature. He’s done most of the armor for the US military that’s used throughout the military. He’s a nuclear weapons specialist as well. He and his son are running the world’s largest indoor farm for aquatic fish. He’s a multi-disciplinary guy, which Artiman loves.

He walked in and said, “We’re all familiar with silicon used as a solar cell.” Solar industry is driven by silicon. Silicon is used to convert photons into electricity. He said, “I think I can change the properties of silicon to enable silicon to convert heat into electricity or in reverse, give me electricity and I can make it cold.”

This is a hundred billion dollar market for refrigerating. There’s a hundred billion dollars of compressors and condensers that we buy every year in the world to cool humans and to freeze food. If we pull this off, we’d be the world’s first viable silicon thermal cell. Then we have a platform technology that can address very large markets and make a meaningful difference to the world in terms of how we cool ourselves and how we generate power.

Sramana Mitra: Very interesting. What I see in your descriptions, which is very refreshing to me is, you are willing to take on very complex technology projects that are at very early stages. Usually, we’re seeing, “We want to see a SaaS deal that has already got $1 million ARR. Then we’re willing to write the $2 million check.” You’re willing to work with promising technologists who are willing to take on huge problems but with unproven stage parameters.

Tim Wilson: There is certainly risk there. The risk that we do get into and sometimes make mistakes on is, are you in research mode or are you in development mode. We don’t like to take core research risk on. If it’s 10 years out and I’ve got something brewing in the lab, I have no problem waiting. It should stay in the lab.

In this case, they had done a lot of testing on it and had proven that the core idea and invention was feasible commercially as well as feasible technically and have done some preliminary measurements. We spend a lot of time on commercializing that. We don’t like to take on research risk, but we certainly will take on development risk if the idea is compelling.

Sramana Mitra: What are you doing in India? What kinds of deals do you see in India? How active are you in India?

Tim Wilson: We’d been there once. The first thing that we did was set up an office that could help build back office and find people and staff. We were looking, but we did not make an investment for a long time in India. The only thing that we saw first was the copy cat that says, take an idea that’s worked in other markets and replicate that. That was the first wave of e-commerce.

About five or six years ago, we started to see a different pattern coming out of India. I would say it started in healthcare. In the healthcare sector, we started to see companies with ideas and entrepreneurs that we could back. We now have a number of healthcare related investments in India. We run the largest oncology lab as a service. What that has given us is a platform for diagnostics to go into a self-pay market and get to revenue for some of our diagnostic companies very quickly.

We also started to see and have invested in other types of technology. For example, we’re in an imaging technology used for gunsight but also for navigation and homeland security. We’re seeing real technology companies that have entrepreneurs that understand enough of how to commercialize that.

Sramana Mitra: I enjoyed this conversation. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 3 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Tim Wilson of Artiman Ventures
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