🧬 “We're Going to Burn Your Company to the Ground” | Steve Visco Rerelease (2/3)
October 29, 2026
Steve Visco's spinout found its first CEO in the audience. Rudolph Hurwich had already built Dymo, cashed out, and was hunting for another shot at something big. He offered to raise the angel round and take the job when Steve said he wasn't ready. The founding four were faculty: Steve, Lutgard De Jonghe at Berkeley, Michel Armand in Montreal and Grenoble, and Meilin Liu at Georgia Tech.
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“We're going to burn your company to the ground.”
Steve Visco's spinout found its first CEO in the audience. Rudolph Hurwich had already built Dymo, cashed out, and was hunting for another shot at something big. He offered to raise the angel round and take the job when Steve said he wasn't ready. The founding four were faculty: Steve, Lutgard De Jonghe at Berkeley, Michel Armand in Montreal and Grenoble, and Meilin Liu at Georgia Tech.
They opened the doors in 1991. Sony introduced lithium-ion the same year. The bar moved overnight. US names like Duracell never caught up. Korea did. Then China. Battery production started to look like the new oil. For about a decade the company lived on fundamental patents and joint development with chemical firms such as DuPont, not on shipping cells.
Two years in, a Silicon Valley lead-acid supplier wanted to merge and IPO on the back of three Berkeley Lab patents. Diligence found the lab had skipped the maintenance fees. The patents were abandoned, then reinstated after a fight with the patent office. A competitor's packs exploded at Motorola two days before the offering. The bankers said no more battery IPOs. Later, a lithium-sulfur follower copied claims, sued, and sent a CEO to Berkeley with a threat to burn the company down. They hired the lawyer who wrote the book on interference law and won. Steve's advice from the scar tissue: license by geography or application, never the whole stack, and build a picket fence, not one patent.
Key Topics Covered:
- Finding a CEO at a Berkeley-Stanford pitch
- Four faculty founders across three countries
- Sony ships lithium-ion in 1991
- Japan, Korea, China, and the new oil
- A decade as a licensing company
- Lead-acid for Apple and a red herring
- Berkeley Lab missed the maintenance fees
- Exploding packs and a killed IPO
- Lithium-sulfur patent trolls
- An interference suit backed by a hedge fund
- Winning at the USPTO appellate court
- License by geography, not the whole company
- Picket fences, PCT filings, and in-house IP
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Find our guest, Steve Visco, at these links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-j-visco-2910b57
Website: https://polyplus.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/
Website: https://www.excedr.com/
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin:
https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:
IP strategy for biotechs: https://www.excedr.com/resources/intellectual-property-strategy-for-biotechs
How to protect your IP: https://www.excedr.com/resources/how-to-protect-your-intellectual-property
How investors evaluate life sciences IP: https://www.excedr.com/resources/how-investors-evaluate-life-sciences-ip
How patent licensing works: https://www.excedr.com/resources/how-patent-licensing-works
PCT (WIPO): https://www.wipo.int/pct/en/
Federal Circuit: https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:
DuPont: https://www.dupont.com/
University of Montreal: https://www.umontreal.ca/en/
Georgia Institute of Technology: https://www.gatech.edu/
UC Berkeley Materials Science & Engineering: https://www.mse.berkeley.edu/
Lutgard De Jonghe: https://mse.berkeley.edu/people_new/de-jonghe/
Meilin Liu: https://www.mse.gatech.edu/people/meilin-liu
Rudolph Hurwich: https://hurwich.com/
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: https://www.lbl.gov/
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:57 Finding a CEO in the Audience
03:39 Four Faculty Founders
04:38 Sony Introduces Lithium-Ion
05:28 Ten Years as a Licensing Shop
06:16 The Center of Gravity Leaves the US
09:46 A Merger With Nothing to Sell
11:05 The Lab Let the Patents Lapse
12:38 Exploding Batteries Kill the IPO
13:53 Patent Trolls on Lithium-Sulfur
15:39 Burn Your Company to the Ground
16:15 The Lawyer Who Wrote the Book
19:08 How to License Without Giving Away the Company
22:26 A Picket Fence Around the Invention
32:20 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.