Joe Matteo : MicroTypes

This week we got the chance to go visit Joe Matteo at his home in Walland, TN. He and his wife live in an amazing log cabin style home that sits on top of a hill. The glass wall in their living room frames out miles and miles of beautiful east Tennessee mountains. Joe spent his early career working on Defense Robotics but decided soon that he wanted to learn more about being an entrepreneur. While living in San Fransisco he was recruited by a Knoxville company called CTI to work on cyclotrons. To jump ahead in time, CTI is one of Knoxville's great success stories. They advanced medical imaging technology using PET scanners substantially and eventually ended up selling half the company for $1 Billion. Back to the story: Joe decided to take the opportunity because CTI was founded and run by a group of entrepreneurial thinking men. In the early days CTI primarily made products for researchers in radioactive drugs and medical imaging fields. The company was dedicated to interaction with customers and trying to understand their needs. They also relied on outside collaboration with larger companies or national laboratories to utilize facilities and resources without high fixed costs. Joe decided to step out on his own in 1994, that year he founded Matteo Automation & Robotics. He won two SBIR grants and was awarded two patents for the work he did in rapid prototyping with his first company. A short time later one of the founders of CTI decided to retire and asked Joe to come take over his position in the company. After some thought Joe agreed and put his company on the back burner. During his time as Division Director at CTI he gained a lot of skills which included rapid manufacturing, building facilities, executing contracts, sales and marketing, & business development. Joe was asked to head up the LA TechCenter, a research lab started by CTI to develop new technologies. Two new microfluidics technologies came out of that venture one of which CTI decided to pursue and the other of which Joe asked to take out and pursue on his own. The company that Joe started around this microfluidics technology was called NanoTek and they focused on glass based microchemistry. Over a period of 4 years Joe and his team at NanoTek were on track to launch their technology into the drug delivery market in the clinical world, for this they needed a distribution partner. The plan was to continue to develop the technology however a window of opportunity came when Advion a mass spec company offered to buy NanoTek. Joe and his partners decided to sell in Aug 2008. Joe moved to Ithica NY where Advion is headquartered to help transition the company. His main observation during this time was that innovation slowed substantially because they no longer had small business speed. The company also lost eligibility to receive more SBIR grants which reduced funding to R&D. Joe has since moved back home and started another business called MicroTypes.

His new company consults on rapid product development. Joe has a pretty amazing workshop in the basement of his house with CNC mills and vacuum molding equipment. He uses this stuff to help companies develop products quickly in order to find out what doesnt work, then learn from it and make something else that does work. Some of the key pieces of advice or key learns that I took away from our visit with Joe were that your value in a business sense doesn't necessarily come from the great things you have been able to accomplish but its is more about how you have persevered through the failures. He also said that everyone has great opportunities, the question is whether you know enough to recognize them and have enough guts to jump on them.