Yeah.

Right? Even if that startup didn't end up working out, they have some experience, they know what to expect.

They, they know that things are gonna change rapidly, they know their role may not be super well-defined, and there may not be clear processes in place for everything, and that was actually a, a benefit.

So I, I feel like there's-- I don't think I appreciated it at the time, but, you know, exploring that early stage startup is a great way to kind of launch your career and get exposed to so many different things early on, even if things are hard and the, the, the probability's low that that exact idea is gonna work out, but that experience will, will build anybody's career up.

[ bubbles bubbling] Tell me about that, you know, you mentioned your, you know, the challenges of, of runway and cash and how'd you get that first money? What was that like?

It actually does it.

[laughs] Does the thing the paper says.

Who would've thought academic work could be replicated? Seeing that over and over again in my own hands, you know, having a team done it, putting out papers, patents, you know, and, you know, the, the, the, the outcome of Squeeze was obviously not the outcome that, that, um, we desired, but you n- you didn't want to see, I didn't wanna see the technology kind of potentially kind of lose its capability, its, its potential, um, through that outcome, and so it was really like, well, what can we do? How do we continue to k- take this idea of, of, um, kind of rapidly compressing a cell and making interesting products out of it? How can we adjust the concept and the business model to go forward? And I, you know, I-

Explain the relationship between the school and the world-renowned creator streamer and how it all came to be.

Well, we- we're very fortunate, uh, th- in proximity and location, uh, in that Jimmy Donaldson, uh, also known as MrBeast, uh, his mom was actually...

He's from Greenville, North Carolina.

Uh, his mom was an athletic academic advisor prior to me arriving, uh, at East Carolina.

And, and we've had a history of, uh, renting our athletic facilities, uh, to him to shoot content.

So several years ago, we had the world's largest, uh, dodgeball game in our, uh, basketball arena.

He'll, he'll shoot content at our various, uh, you know, athletic facilities.

Yeah, we got you now.