On Building An AI-Powered Solution For Wine Makers

Jacob Manning

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Published: June 5th, 2022

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Jacob Manning

Founder, Winely

Founders

Employees

Winely

https://www.winely.ai/

from Dunedin, Otago

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Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future Peter Thiel

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As CEO and co-founder of Winely, my team and I have been working on using advancements in AI to provide real-time precision fermentation analysis to the wine industry. This data vision and analysis, given in real-time, helps to significantly reduce manual sampling for wineries whilst also providing for future predictability of the ferment.

This can save them huge amounts of time, labor, and costly interventions, in what many agree has been a traditionally dangerous, menial task.

We are excited about our Series A round of funding as we continue to expand our team. In addition, we are continuing to establish new partnerships with some of the most successful wineries globally.

We are adding new resources to our R&D laboratory so that we may continue to evolve our tech, which is currently in its sixth-generation stage.

What's your backstory and how did you get into entrepreneurship?

By nature, I was drawn to being an accountant. However, at the same time, I had always wanted to be a founder of something, even though back in the 1990s, you rarely heard about "founders" or "startups", especially in New Zealand.

While studying to be an accountant, I fell in love with science, which led to my first startup focused on helping farmers become certified organic. At the time, it wasn't easy to transition to organic farming. There were several hurdles related to maintaining yield for organic soil. I left my existing accounting role to help build a couple of products to facilitate adoption.

One was a nitrogen binding agent and another was a biological agent. That was the first venture and my first exposure to what would be considered deep technical science. I spent about five-and-a-half years building the technology, explaining it to Australia, and servicing all of Australiasia. Then, needing to learn more, I went back to university to study biotechnology. During that time, I fell in love with the Winely mission.

Regarding business funding, Early-stage angel investors, Callaghan innovation have provided R&D support and funding. South Australian govt. sponsored us to set up our Australia site in SA. We also received multiple awards

Take us through your entrepreneurial journey. How did you go from day 1 to today?

Our journey was probably different from the normal high-tech, high-growth company. Because we are in the deep tech space, many conceptual ideas happened while I was undertaking academic research. At this time, scientists and our research lab were understanding and discussing next-generation fuels. I knew then that the use of yeast and understanding of fermentation would be critical to the next generation of products.

Therefore, it's first having that initial understanding that there is going to be this massive opportunity in the future, and then really taking your time to properly conceptualize as new consecutive technologies become available to help you complete the puzzle of what your technology would look like.

In our case, protein folding contributed to breakthroughs in our technology. If we tried to build it as soon as the idea had been conceptualized, it would have been impossible. It was about four years between concept and then actually going out to talk to potential customers.

How are you doing today and what does the future look like?

We are at an exciting inflection point in that this will be the last time we are in the “small startup phase”. We are just about to go into the scale-up mode that we often see in the media. In our case, it's going to be the Series A funding and the expansion in resources, including more hiring. As we get more customer conversions, we will be propelled to the growth stage which I’m excited about.

My greatest lesson for deep tech founders is to look to solve a problem today, which helps fund the problem you are solving tomorrow.

In the meantime, what is inspiring is the amount of data we are gathering. Having more understanding and comprehension of fermentation than the rest of the industry and all of the academic bodies combined is very exciting. We’re now using this knowledge in deep tech to solve global challenges.

Currently, we have been working with innovative facilities to build and develop the technology and to ensure it solves both today's problems and future problems the these facilities are predominantly across Australia & NZ.

We're now moving our technology to its commercial stage for mass delivery. Now with billions of data points, we have an extremely deep understanding of fermentation which allows us to unlock amazing insight for dermatologists.

Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?

I have generic advice for founders. But over the last 5 years, I've been predominantly advising deep tech founders. My greatest lesson for deep tech founders is to look to solve a problem today, which helps fund the problem you are solving tomorrow.

Founders, as entrepreneurs, should aim to always be lean in running their operations; identify what’s important, and don’t over-invest in ideas. Instead get them out quickly to test, learn and then iterate.

Deep tech startups tend to be academic entrepreneurs who build first and find the market second - massive failure rate. My approach is to do something like a space tech company does - provide immediate value today to someone in need (niche market) and then invest in the deeply technical and expensive future solution.

What platform/tools do you use for your business?

As the CEO, I use all the boring tools that you can think of. But as a team, We use Slack, and we still use a lot of Atlassian.

In the lab, our biological tech stacks are the foundation on which a lot of our technology is built. We have really fun stuff in the lab, like small bio-fermenters so that we can test our technology and algorithms. They can make a mess but it’s the fun part.

We have built a lot of custom rigs, jigs, and stations for our lean manufacturing. As well as programming technology, including IoT (Internet of Things), off-the-shelf infrastructure, etc. The MK1, our first technology edition, required a lot of software, hardware, machine learning, IoT infrastructure, and network.

Because we now have an amazing team of engineers who can build all these things from scratch, it makes a huge difference in terms of scaling our operations.

What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?

I've been reading a lot of research papers—it's super exciting to see what's coming out and what's brand new in our space. I especially like to keep up with Drew Endy from Stanford. He is an inspiring figure, as well as Craig Venter. Craig Venter did the early Human Genome Project, and now he is popping up wherever I go to do research, so it's inspiring to have him in our space.

I guess I haven't had a lot of time to read books, except when I'm traveling. However, I did like Zero to One by Peter Thiel. Also, I've been listening to David Sinclair's “Lifespan” podcast; it's super popular in California. He's an ex-Sydney, Australian, academic working at Princeton in the medical research area. What makes him attractive is how he explains things in a profoundly contextual way, as he aims to make his material accessible to the public.

It inspires me to think about how to make something super complex, and palatable to the public. How can we put the technology part of our business into layman's terms? When it comes to our specific area of expertise, we must make sure we align our language with theirs.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?

I’ve mentored founders for about six years now, and my lesson is to those founders, as entrepreneurs, should aim to always be lean in running their operations; identify what’s important, and don’t over-invest in ideas. Instead get them out quickly to test, learn and then iterate. I could have done better with my earlier startups if I had applied that approach.

The other advice I give when I coach deep tech founders is that as soon as you have something you know that you are going to engage with fully and dedicate your life to—stop building any technology and see if you can find a group of users today who are willing to pay, gauge, and help you co-build that technology. Getting into the field alone can take 10 years of investor capital with no revenue. So that’s a good approach for deep tech founders to stop and think about… It’s something I wish I knew earlier on.

Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?

We have C-Suite roles coming out in the next four months. We are also looking for some in-market people across the U.S. and France in addition to doing another big hiring round in June and July for engineers and scientists across the spaces that we operate. We’re especially looking for people familiar with IoT sensors, as well as people who have expertise with the alternative protein market, and people who can help build this sort of technology.

For job inquiries, please contact us at [email protected].

Where can we go to learn more?

For more information, please go to our website.

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