Christiaan Jordan is the founder of Sicona Battery Technologies, a start-up using a silicon metal in the anode side of Lithium-ion batteries to increase their capacity and shorten their charge time. Sicona is also an alumni for Cohort 2 of our Global Growth Program.
Can you give a brief rundown of what Sicona does?
Sicona is a battery materials technology company. We're commercialising silicon-based battery materials to increase the energy density, decrease the charge time, and also eventually reduce the cost of Lithium-ion batteries — mainly in electric vehicles to increase range, reduce charging times, and reduce cost of EVs. But it’s also applicable in any device that uses a lithium ion battery from laptops and cell phones, to drones that use increasingly larger batteries. So there’s quite a wide market that we play into, but our major focus and where we want to make the biggest difference is in the EV sector.
In another article you mentioned how there's not as many incentives for start-ups in Australia, compared to countries like the US.
You can still find a way forward. It's just tricky. We don't have local customers in say lithium-ion batteries as you would have in the US — it’s a much bigger market, more universities where research is being done in deep tech and in materials science. There’s more shots on goal for early stage entrepreneurs to get non-dilutive funding and get to a minimum viable product, as you would have in software. Except minimum viable product in hardware and deep tech is a physical thing. You need to figure out how to manufacture the supply chain, the customers, long sales cycles, all of those challenges. But it can be done in Australia.
What incentives were these countries providing?
In the US there’s quite a wide range of manufacturing and tax credits that you could monetise. There’s very large grant funding programs where they provide $50 to $200 million grants for advanced manufacturing and manufacturing in the battery materials segment where we operate. So that attracted a lot of companies to go set up and build out in the US.
Then beyond those legislated federal government grants in the US, you've got state level incentives as well, and county incentives. We found that local economic development agencies of different states — especially in the south-eastern United States — were really eager to get more high quality jobs created, and they lay out the red carpet for new companies and established companies. And for new projects too, with land and low cost energy supply, fast tracking permits — all sorts of stuff we don't have in Australia.
How can start-ups be better supported?
Maybe unlocking the superannuation savings, especially given this 3 million superannuation tax they're looking to implement shortly. I was thinking there could be more incentives for the superannuation industry and self-managed super funds to invest in early stage deep tech companies. It would then have more of that capital going into the ecosystem. You can also have a tax deduction like in Canada — they have stuff like that to stimulate investment in mining exploration companies. They can do something similar in Australia for say investing in deep tech, climate, or whatever you want to define. That could be one way to do it, as opposed to the government pushing stuff down from a federal level.
Going back to the partnership, can you talk more about it and why you decided to go to India?
This company - Himadri - I met at a battery conference in the US in 2022. I really hit it off with their founder and managing director. They led our Series A round in 2023, so they've been on the inside of the tent, so to speak, for the last couple of years now as we’ve scaled our technology. They could see how we were developing and have a well stated and publicised intent to do battery materials manufacturing in India.
They approached us and said they wanted to negotiate a license to utilise our technology and build a facility in India. Knowing that our constraint is capital they've committed through the license structure to fund 100% of the capital. We get paid a license fee based on sales for that project. We also get to participate in the development and learn through the whole process. So it really gets us over that first of a kind hurdle.
Do you have any tips for founders on negotiating?
Read a book on it. And if you only read one book, it would be Never Split the Difference. It's probably the best book ever written on negotiation by a guy who led the FBI hostage negotiation unit for many years.
With most things in business, it's not something that you just naturally have. It's not like having a natural talent to run fast. It’s a taught skill. So you just have to teach yourself. You have to read, get some materials and speak to people who have experienced these things before. Learn from them and then learn by doing yourself. Start building on that step by step, and then get out there and give it a crack.
You've been running Sicona for around 6 years. What would you say are the biggest challenges of running a climate company?
Look, the challenges are quite significant. It's not a single valley of death when you're building a company in this space, it’s multiple valleys of death. Multiple challenges will come your way, you know, random things that you never anticipated will happen. But just try to remain calm and steady and focused on your mission. Don't let the stress get to you, because it can be quite taxing on your mental health as a founder.
But just know that none of these things are personal. Try to stay calm and work through it systematically and surround yourself with other strong, calm individuals. You don't want chaos reigning. Make sure you've got a really good team around you.
One of the main practical challenges is running out of money before you achieve your mission. The number one challenge of any startup is the runway. So make sure you have a very good handle on your runway and that you start early on your engagements with investors. It's always going to take longer than you know. Don't just bank on one, take many shots on goal. You've got to kiss a lot of frogs (laughs). You got to get out there and start early.
Did you have any goals when you were starting out?
I’ve used the analogy before — you stand in front of a massive forest and you see this faint path leading into the forest. You just have the sense of, I need to follow that path. You can't see even five feet ahead of you. You just have a general sense of direction. But the most important thing is to say yes and start walking. Then as you walk and you get others to join you, the path will start opening up and things will become clearer.
That's the biggest thing. Many people who are quite analytical will go, “I want a clear business plan.” No plan survives contact with the first contact of the enemy. I'm a believer in that you need to get going. You need to do proper planning, don’t get me wrong, but some people plan too long and they don't move forward, like they’re trying to get too much certainty. There is no such thing as certainty in the startup journey. You won't have everything laid out in a clear path for you. You've got to start somewhere and plan as you go.
Where do you see the future of the batteries industry heading and are there any big shifts that you expect?
You know, there is no silver bullet. Economics matter a lot. Even if there are crazy solutions, it needs to be economical as well. In the battery industry — it's the sum of the parts that makes the whole. It’s people doing the hard yards with different components coming together in a system, which is well scaled with a supply chain that is commoditised and well-established; which is lithium ion batteries as an example. You’ll have the sum of the incremental, component changes coming together to give us the big breakthroughs that we want.
But scale will be the ultimate thing that will unlock the future of energy storage. It’s never as easy as a press release or something from a university would proclaim, it definitely has a lot of other facets to it.
I read in the news recently about MIT building a battery made of liquid sodium
Fair enough. But you've always then got to ask critically on the first principles. With liquid sodium: What raw materials go into it? What needs to be true for that to work at scale – like does it rely on X, Y, and Z process? What is the raw material you need? What is the manufacturing process? Is it a new manufacturing process? You've got to ask those fundamental questions before you get a handle of whether this thing has legs or not.
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