Fireside AI

Today I'm joined by Paul Wilson, founder and CEO at Stack in Glasgow.

Paul, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Catherine.

It's a pleasure to be here.

It's great to talk with you.

So I'd love to start by learning a bit about you and tell us about yourself and a little
bit about STAT.

Sure.

So my background is tech, international tech, mainly in big tech on a global basis.

I got into electronics manufacturing when I was 19.

And not by career design, I just happened to need a job at 19 and I went into a company
called Selectron in 1993.

Selectron were the true pioneers of contract manufacturing of electronics.

Milpitas based, Silicon Valley company.

I was there 14 years and it was a real kind of hyperscale, a really fast moving, growing
business.

And that's what I did from 19.

So it was a pretty incredible experience to join a pioneer who went on an incredible
growth journey.

during the time I was there.

So we were making equipment for telecoms and IT companies like Cisco and Ericsson and
Nokia Siemens and so on.

yeah, know that American Silicon Valley growth culture, I was into that at 19.

So I had stock options, for example, right in my early 20s, our stock was really driven by
growth.

and we just went on this incredible M &A activity all over the world.

being involved in high volume, making world-class products for the biggest names and large
volumes on an international basis, international supply chains is something I've done

since 19.

So after Selectron, I started a consultancy company over in Eastern Europe.

I'd been working in Eastern Europe for about 10 years by then, so this was the early 2000s
and we saw this incredible amount of activity of companies going into manufacturing supply

chain, trading in and out of countries like Hungary and Romania and so on.

So we set up our own company where we could help companies trade in and out and set up
operations in Eastern Europe.

Fortunately, from a couple of chance phone calls, we won a contract with Blackberry when
Blackberry were starting to good volumes and looking at their own uh international supply

chain uh outside of Canada and North America.

So we ended up multiple consultants in Blackberry and in the tier one supply chain of
Blackberry.

That led to building relationships with the Blackberry folks and in 2009 I joined
Blackberry as VP of Supply Chain Operations and moved to Canada in Waterloo.

So much of the...

Inspiration and the kind of benchmarking that I do when it comes to the accelerator uh
activity and entrepreneurship, the kind of benchmark in the case study is Waterloo,

Ontario, Canada, which is just an incredible tech scene just now.

So I joined a Taiwanese company called Whistron Corporation, a spin out of Acer computers.

But I stayed in Canada and I built a team.

We acquired R &D centers of Blackberry and I built a smartphone.

business unit with colleagues in Wistron.

So we were designing and manufacturing smartphones.

And then from smartphones, I went into smart home technology.

So taking the same kind of connectivity, computing, sensing stuff that was in the
smartphone and taking it into things like voice assistants.

security systems, smart thermostats, robot, vacuum cleaners and so on.

So I stayed in Canada, Waterloo, for 11 years in total and I saw

The transition of being a population of 300k to 400k depending on the boundary, I saw them
being a real dependent economy and city based on the success of Blackberry and Blackberry

obviously getting in some trouble and I saw the effort that they did as a federal
government, provincial government and a local government connected with academia and

connected with industry on

how they went about not just replacing Blackberry, but positioning Waterloo as being a
real tech champion of homegrown startups for decades to come.

it was a great journey.

My career positioned me well.

I somehow ended up in pioneering companies and pioneering technologies.

And the consistency is this smart connected.

uh computing sensing type products.

So yeah, I started to want to come back to Scotland and

I was kind of figuring out what I would do, what contribution, what chapter that would be.

I just kind of got into this thing of how is Waterloo, how is Canada creating so many
competitive, homegrown tech companies?

And when I was reaching back into Scotland to figure out what I was going to do as I came
home, clearly the pace and the consistency of

creating competitive homegrown companies was somehow behind Canada.

So anyway, I decided to start STAC, and STAC is SmartThings Accelerator Center, and it's
about helping uh homegrown tech companies in Scotland and a few in wider UK get

competitive in the international tech scene marketplace.

Great, so I can see exactly how all of those career experiences and seeing how it worked
in Canada sort of funneled into the inspiration for creating Stacks.

So tell me, what does Stacks do?

How do you explain it to people?

So we are a full suite of acceleration support.

So we're a physical space.

So first and foremost, we're a significant co-working space, which is our Beyond suite,
the Beyond.

And the Beyond is a 260 desk capacity co-working space with electronics lab, mechanical
lab, media lab.

And we have about 50 startups in here.

at any one time.

Within the beyond, have STAC, which is Smart Things Accelerate Centre, and we have the
SCALE program.

So the SCALE program is a company building 18 month mentorship program.

So it takes young companies, but not at the very earliest stage.

It takes startup companies who are specializing in this smart and deep tech space.

two, three years into their journey, they have a product of some substance, have founders
of high potential, and they have done some market validation that gives confidence that

they are solving problems with demand, and that demand is on a kind significant scale,
ideally on an international scale.

So we have a mentorship program that runs every nine months.

We typically take intake cohorts of 15 companies every...

every nine months and we give them this real rich, uh all from experience, mentors, a
mentorship program that builds companies.

So quite unique compared to other accelerators who get you ready for investment or get you
ready to be introduced to a particular market sector.

We go deep.

18 months is quite a long time, so we really try and build the companies around the tech.

So we get into sales and marketing and talent acquisition and product development, IP,
fundraising, legal, finance and so on.

So we go really deep to build competitive uh companies.

Then we have a talent acquisition platform.

We have an investment syndicate and an investment uh platform.

And recently we've been doing technology sourcing as a service that

connects our 90 rich innovative start-ups to the demands of a bunch of corporates who have
an appetite for innovation.

So when I say full suite, it's because it does all of that together as one company.

Great.

That is a huge range of support for startups, I think, and a lot of that very valuable for
startup founders.

I'm curious to know a little bit more though about the sorts of companies that come
through your doors and the sorts of things they build.

And particularly, you know, this is podcast about AI.

So particularly when it comes to AI technology, what are the sorts of things you see your
companies building at the moment?

Yeah, we got lots of stuff going on around health and social care.

About 30 % actually of our intake will be in that kind of focus area, Gafferty.

So typically it will involve an element of hardware that could be a wearable, it could be
an advanced sensor, right, that's collecting a specific vital sign or biomarker that's

taken into the edge or taken into the cloud and then creating.

rich data sets and the algorithms are running from there.

So things like fall prediction and fall prevention, right?

So algorithms that are looking at mobility, stability, bone density, hydration, and then
predicting elderly people who are typically living at home, what's their kind of risk of

having a fall and giving them...

uh

some support of how to build a core or what support they need externally to make sure that
they're not falling.

We've got a really nice company working on pediatric AI platforms starting with sleep
apnea.

So seemingly sleep apnea in kids is misdiagnosed or really difficult to diagnose
accurately and efficiently.

They guys have built up this really nice data set, a kind of sensor collecting data that
can be collected at a kid's home and then they've got the AI doing the diagnosis and the,

not just the diagnosis but also the recommendation on what happens next.

Is it surgery or is it some sort of medicine that the kid needs to take?

So things like that, real...

problem first uh type entrepreneurs we've got here.

A lot of stuff doing good.

So whether it's social health or healthcare or even lots of stuff going on around
sustainability and renewable energy and things like that.

So it sounds like compared to a lot of AI development right now, which is around language
models and language processing and agents, you actually got a lot of companies building

sort of unique sensors into devices and then building the AI on top of those, collecting
the data, building things that couldn't necessarily come from language models.

They have to come from these unique sources of data.

And that's where we're in this really interesting period where hardware plus software plus
data, right, and the AI is really allowing us to do things that could be done before or

doing it more efficiently.

And some people still ask, is that a hardware focused organization?

No, not these days.

Hardware is in many cases the kind of sensor, the enabler.

the collector, the vehicle, but the values in the algorithm that's on the coin door or on
the edge.

And you've seen a lot of startups come through already and I'm curious to know other
particular challenges you see that are common across your cohorts.

Do people have particular barriers they run into or particular hurdles they have to
overcome?

What do you see there?

Yeah, you know, the obvious one is also the most common challenge, right?

So you're actually building a company and the company should make sales, right?

That's how the company will generate profits and grow and make an impact.

Ultimately, you've got to be selling that product, but it's the sales part that
consistently that is somehow overlooked and the tech is...

too often prioritized.

So we were like, okay, the tech's cool, the tech's great, the tech's really kind of
creating your competitive edge and your competitive space, but yeah, let's go sell that.

Let's go find out who wants that, let's validate that, let's make sure the model's right
in terms of are you selling it or is it subscription, is there service involved, what's

the price points and so on.

Yeah, really get sales focused is what we need to kind of calibrate their minds right on
the early stage.

Let's get this ready over 18 months to sell, right?

Is something too often overlooked?

That's something I can empathise with coming from a technology background myself.

I know I'm all too keen to focus on the technology and less on the sales.

em So you have built up a network, I think, of really strong industry and academic
partners to work together with Stack.

So I'm curious about how they shape the accelerator and how they help and contribute to
the ecosystem.

Yeah, so the academia for sure is the fuel, That's the kind of white blood, if you like,
of the innovation, and the corporates, we've got two different corporate models.

So first of all, we get 90 % of our funding from corporates.

we've...

Encouraged, invited, so far 20 corporates to come and join STAP to be quite uniquely an
industry-led model.

So they bring funding first and foremost, but they bring their technology or their
services to the benefit of the STAP's we support.

So we got everything from semiconductors to design services, supply chain, manufacturing,
compliance.

um test equipment for wireless products.

have professional services around IP, legal, uh finance, accountancy and when these real
high potential founders start to see wealth generation in the forecast we have a wealth

manager in Murphy Wealth that helps them understand what they want out.

of this journey personally.

So we have all these corporates and they bring their technology and services to the
benefit of our startups, but they also bring their passion themselves, their black books,

their market insight.

It's an incredibly powerful corporate partnership that we have that we've just mobilized
and rallied all around these startups that we support.

So I think we're quite unique being 90 % funded from...

from the industry.

We are also the second part of the corporate model we have is the technology sourcing.

So we now have a bunch of big tech companies or critical infrastructure here in Scotland,
Aberdeen, Glasgow, Southampton airports, Sonos, Volvo and Chinese company Longchair that

they're actually sharing with us their needs for innovation and we're connecting.

you know, the ring match of our tech startups and collaboration is getting created with
these bigger corporations.

So that's creating the market opportunity for the startups and creating volume and
internationalization at the same time as we get some deals done with these.

There's a lot of conversation in the UK, are our founders ambitious?

And we seem to get into this, what's the difference between the US and the UK and maybe
the US are a bit more ambitious.

we don't get involved too much on that conversation.

We just say, well, we've got contacts, we've got credibility, we've got know-how into the
big tech and into the corporates.

Let's go and provide that service that connects the innovation to the corporate.

So that's what we're doing.

in the two areas and corporates.

And then we've got really nice relationships with the universities.

So Scotland's seemingly got the highest density of university population in the world
between the kind of cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow and of course St.

Andrews and Dundee, right, all in this kind of central belt.

and that gives us a real rich pipeline of talent into the universities.

So we actually did University of Glasgow's first ever deep tech accelerator in Vinny VG,
so we were contracted to deliver that program.

15 really high quality, mainly spin outs from University of Glasgow came on to a version
of the stack program and...

He did that last October and it was really successful.

So now we are getting these ventures within the university incorporated and spun out.

And then we're looking for them to come on the extended staff program.

So we've got a real nice, early but maturing and uh rich pipeline of talent coming into
us.

So a virtual circle and research coming out being sort of built by startups adopted by big
tech and the circle continues and building up a nice scalable infrastructure.

Yeah, and hopefully we generate some wealth who then, you know, once they scale, they feed
back into the next generation too.

That's what I saw in Waterloo, the successful startups as they were building and the
founders were creating some wealth.

It was all getting funneled back into the next generation.

It was this really impressive, know, perpetual cycle that got started there.

Hmm.

So a nice impact in the future of stack is about sort of building up that cycle and
keeping it going over the generations.

The only mission in a few years time, if you were to look back, what would you say?

If you could say something was successful about stack and you achieved your ambitions,
what would you like to say

That's a big part of why I did this, right?

So there's a bunch of Scots who have been working internationally, right?

And they've all developed kind of successful international careers.

And at the same time, we don't see the same coming from the startups here.

So the only mission and the only legacy that we want to leave is to get a competitive
cluster of smart and deep tech homegrown companies.

And then if you're traveling abroad to the States or wherever it is and you get asked the
question, who are the best known, most competitive, most successful, homegrown Scots

brands?

It's not a challenge.

You can just ring them off, right?

It's this guy and this guy and this guy.

So that's what we want.

We want to get a competitive bunch of Scottish companies competing internationally.

Yeah, mean, there's for sure the talent, the innovations there, Catherine, the ideas,
every bit as good as what I saw in Canada.

Somehow for the past two decades, we've not been unlocking this to its potential and
getting it to go, know, wider, longer, right?

For so long, we've been cashing in too early, if you like, to acquisitions and investment
from the US.

This is really quite on point just now in the political scene that everybody wants to see
Scotland, the UK get more competitive, right, and build bigger companies that go a bit

further instead of cashing in too early on our knowledge and IP.

Absolutely agree with you.

think that's a fantastic mission.

And I really hope in two years, five years time, we're having this conversation and we can
reel off that list of, you know, successful Scottish homegrown tech companies that

everybody's talking about.

And just to wrap up then, uh maybe you can leave us with what's the most surprising
lesson, the one thing you've learned through your time at Stack?

Okay, I guess the one thing that has pleasantly surprised us how much people shared that
desire to go and support, to go and help, to go compete.

I've been positively overwhelmed by the support to join the mission and to make a
contribution.

So a real positive, pleasant surprise there.

That's a lovely, lovely thought to end on.

And so we're going to wrap up now and I'm just curious to know if people want to find out
more about you, if they're interested in stack, where should they go to find out more?

Check out our LinkedIn site, it's really well updated.

We've got a great comms team who share all the events, the work that we do and everything
going on.

So that's a real kind of real time uh view of what we do.

And then go to our website, stack.ac.

If you want to join us in some way, we're encouraging more more people and corporations to
get involved.

So there's a very open door if you want to join stack.ac.

uh

You have a co-working space in Glasgow too, so if people are passing by, I'm sure they can
come and say hi.

It's called the Beyond, it's in Finistone, it's in the Cool Hood in Glasgow and you've got
fine people inside.

Come and pay us a visit.

It's been great to talk with you, Paul.

Thanks so much for joining.

You too, Catherine.

Talk to you soon.