Ep.19 Mic Black - Inventor, Builder, Technologist. Cofounder at Rainstick - A novel indigenous biotech startup using electricity to help plants grow bigger and faster.
Get to know Mic Black, his new startup Rainstick, and a bit more about what it takes to build a deeptech company.
This week I got to sit down with Mic Black from Rainstick and formerly Mic’s Lab. Looking back, this was an extremely energising and refreshing conversation. Mic is your typical generalist hacker/builder who uses entrepreneurship as a means to test his crazy ideas and go deep on topics that he sees as important. He uses curiosity as the main driving force in his life.
His experience and skills span a variety of areas and domains, such as being a technical founder and entrepreneur, to deep tech inventor, to community and maker space builder. His knowledge and skill set are vast, having been involved in everything from art and design, to music, electronics, brain computer interfaces, biotech and more throughout his career.
Currently, he is the Co-founder of Rainstick, a startup that is combining indigenous knowledge systems and emerging bioelectric technology to encourage fungi and plants natural systems to grow faster, increase yield and target specific attributes.
In this conversation with Mic, we explore his journey and story so far, how he has developed an impressive technical skill set, some of the inspiring ventures he’s been involved in, how Rainstick will revolutionise the future of food and how to approach building deeptech companies.
Key notes and lessons from Mic:
He grew up building things such as music synthesisers and other technology from a young age and was also very interested in design and art in his early career (Multimedia design, special effects design)
He has limited formal qualifications in science and engineering, and instead opted towards “self-teaching” in order to acquire a vast knowledge and skill set
His insatiable curiosity about the world around him has allowed him to hone his knowledge and skills in various areas from design to electronics to biotech to neurotech and more as opposed to taking a more traditional route (e.g. get a PhD to develop specific knowledge and expertise)
He has been fascinated by the common theme that energy can be characterised into amplitude and frequency, which is involved in everything from sound waves, to brain impulses and intracellular communication
His curiosity and naivety on topics can be a superpower, as it allows him to question the fundamentals or status quo, which can be very useful as a “builder/entrepreneur” trying to do hard and interesting things
He has used the process of company creation to allow him to focus on different problems in specific fields for long periods of time. This is what he used to combine disparate areas of skill/knowledge and turn it into something that solves a problem and has real value.
A useful method or metric you can use to decide which companies or ventures to build: If you weren’t being paid to do this or had no money to do it, would you still be trying to do this or build it on the side. Therefore, using curiosity as a basis for going deep on a project is a good qualifier.
When building a deeptech company, founders normally have very limited evidence of success. Therefore, people normally get behind a narrative (story) and a personality. This is why crazy ideas can seem very enticing. While Founder’s have to have a disproportionate or unreasonable belief in this crazy idea or problem they want to solve, they also need to be careful and do their due diligence as they have responsibilities to their employees, co-founders and investors to make this thing work.
Mics Lab: No longer active as he’s focused on Rainstick. He saw the need for a commercial R&D lab, almost a skunkworks-esque system where he could have consultants solve any problem given to them and used it as a vehicle to treat R&D in a very commercial sense. This was a service-based business, but it was hard to scale beyond 9 staff and it was too dependent upon Mic. They did some crazy stuff like launching a meat pie into space, combat robots, brain computer interfaces. They were hired to do the impossible, but also charged a large sum. They were able to hire the best engineers and work with the best builders. A lot of the work has gone on to successful projects at universities and large companies. He was also using Mics lab as a platform to spin off new products and IP. When they weren’t doing consulting work for a fee, they would generate ideas internally, and developing IP up to a point where they could sell it off or license it out.
He enjoys banging house tracks while working. My key takeaway here, is that vibes are key.
Rainstick: They are harnessing electricity to help grow seeds and help plants grow faster and bigger. They are utilising indigenous knowledge in this area. They started in mushrooms as it was easier to see the effect through a microscope. There wasn’t a big enough market in mushrooms so they looked at doing it in plants and seeds, high value vegetables and microbial (yeast) etc. They went through ON Accelerate program by CSIRO and met Main Sequence Ventures. This startup is critical for food production, food security and positive sustainability/climate progress.
Don’t be so ignorant to dismiss ancient or indigenous knowledge. It may not have had the modern scientific method and its rigor applied to it, but it’s likely to have merit and valid use as they have continued to do something for so long, and you would not continue to do something unless it works.
Advice for those building in deeptech:
Curiosity is a driving force - would you still do it if you weren’t paid for it or if it cost you money?
Does this have to exist? Do you feel compelled to make this exist?
Keep asking questions and talk to people you don’t normally talk to
You will eventually find something no one else is looking for
If this all lines up, then start doing the business diligence and thorough validation of it and try turn the curiosity into a startup, but make sure you know which it is
His vision for the future:
Food in space!
Bioelectricity has been much more broadly accepted and we have a whole new understanding of the world
How does the world work and how does everything communicate?
Connect with Mic and Rainstick
LinkedIn: Mic Black | LinkedIn
Rainstick Website: www.rainstick.com.au
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