Episode #36
Ep 36. Enzymes, Antennas and the Valley of Death: How Startups Are Scaling their Innovations with Luciano Caruso and Chloe So (xFashion District)
This is a special episode in partnership with Fashion District London What actually happens in the years between "the science works" and "we're a real supplier"? In this episode of No Ordinary Cloth, Mili is joined by two founders walking that tightrope right now — mid-crossing, not the polished after-the-fact version of the story. Luciano Caruso, Chief Commercial Officer of Epoch Biodesign, explains how the company's AI-designed enzymes recycle nylon — including nylon 6.6, the tough, blended, historically unrecyclable material behind everything from yoga pants to tyre cords to under-the-bonnet automotive parts — at room temperature, without the heat, pressure and harsh chemicals of conventional chemical recycling. Fresh off acquiring a 52,000-ton-capacity polymer plant in Spain, he walks through what it actually takes to de-risk a deep-tech material business: technology milestones, then production milestones, then commercial milestones, each one making the next round of investment easier to raise. Chloe So, co-founder and CEO of Pulpatronics, is solving a much smaller-looking problem with an equally large footprint: the roughly 45 billion RFID tags thrown away every year, each one built around a metal antenna that jams recycling processes. Pulpatronics turns paper itself into that antenna using laser-etched circuits, cutting CO2 emissions by 60% and cost by 30% — and she's candid about what it actually looks like to scale from 50 hand-finished tags a day toward the millions the industry runs on. In this conversation, we discuss Why nylon — despite being one of the most useful materials on earth, from apparel to airbags to EV battery trays — is so stubbornly hard to recycle, and how Epoch's AI-designed enzymes "unbake the cake" at room temperature instead of using heat, pressure and harsh chemicals What's actually inside the RFID tag on every clothing hang tag, why it can't easily be recycled, and how Pulpatronics replaces the metal antenna with a laser-etched paper circuit The "valley of death" in plain terms: the gap between science that works and a business that's self-sufficient, and the different way each founder is trying to close it — technology, production and commercial milestones for Epoch; first repeat customers and manufacturing scale-up for Pulpatronics Why Epoch bought a 60-person, 60-year-old polymer plant in Spain rather than building one from scratch, and what "de-risking" actually looks like for a deep-tech material startup Why big corporates hesitate to invest in or partner with startups even once the technology is proven — and what it actually takes to become a "drop-in" solution, commercially as well as technically The moment Chloe's team pulled its own R&D engineers onto the factory floor to hand-build a customer's sample order — and what that period of pressure did for the team Why ecosystem partners — accelerators, university networks, corporate investors like Inditex, Lululemon and H&M Foundation — matter as much as the technology itself What's kept each founder going, and the advice they'd give other founders Resources: Epoch Biodesign Pulpatronics Connect with Mili: LinkedIn | Instagram | Buy me a coffee Subscribe and leave a review — I love to hear your feedback. Recommended listening: Ep 20. Ecosystem Partners for Textile Startups (Fashion for Good, Fashion District & Mills Fabrica) Cover art: Photo by Siora, Photography on Unsplash. Music: Inspired Ambient, Orchestraman
