Aug 27, 2026 · 36 min · 12 segments
Great science doesn't guarantee a market. Nick Sandland spent years finding that out for other people, before he bet his own career on it. In this episode of The Plucky Bamboo Podcast, Nick Sandland…
Nick SandlandGuestChrisHostSo you must have looked at a lot of companies in that period, right?
Did you start to see patterns in why most of them wouldn't make it?
Uh, like I said, you know, there, there was a few that were clearly not gonna go anywhere just from a sort of the, the market wasn't there, you know.
Or, or the market wasn't big enough to justify it, or the CapEx required to build facilities was just astronomical.
Then there's, there's others where, you know, you've got to sort of peel back the layers of the onion a little bit just to sort of get to know, get to know the people, get to know their mindset, their business model.
Some of them were, let's say, realistic as to, you know, what, what the world is like out there, and they were prepared to be somewhat flexible in their approach.
Others were absolutely, "No, this is exactly what I wanna do, and I'm not prepared to change anything." And when you encounter that, that can somewhat be a challenge to adoption, because once you go out into the real world, then you've got to deal with other people and their requirements.
Yeah.
And I think-
... it's probably a bit, probably not a great idea to expect a plastics-
... supply chain to change their manufacturing methods for a-
Test on a new product.
Well, yeah, I mean, that, that, that is one of the things as to why I was brought into the organization because, you know, the, the company was founded by three professors of biology and chemistry at UC San Diego.
So you must have looked at a lot of companies in that period, right?
Did you start to see patterns in why most of them wouldn't make it?
Uh, like I said, you know, there, there was a few that were clearly not gonna go anywhere just from a sort of the, the market wasn't there, you know.
Or, or the market wasn't big enough to justify it, or the CapEx required to build facilities was just astronomical.
Then there's, there's others where, you know, you've got to sort of peel back the layers of the onion a little bit just to sort of get to know, get to know the people, get to know their mindset, their business model.
Some of them were, let's say, realistic as to, you know, what, what the world is like out there, and they were prepared to be somewhat flexible in their approach.
Others were absolutely, "No, this is exactly what I wanna do, and I'm not prepared to change anything." And when you encounter that, that can somewhat be a challenge to adoption, because once you go out into the real world, then you've got to deal with other people and their requirements.
Yeah.
And I think-
... it's probably a bit, probably not a great idea to expect a plastics-
... supply chain to change their manufacturing methods for a-
Test on a new product.
Well, yeah, I mean, that, that, that is one of the things as to why I was brought into the organization because, you know, the, the company was founded by three professors of biology and chemistry at UC San Diego.
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