Accion Systems

NATALYA BRIKNER: My name is Natalya Brikner, and I'm the CEO and founder of Accion Systems. So my co-founder and I met in the Space Propulsion Lab here at MIT, and we were doing our graduate work on a new type of ion source. And the ion source happened to be really great at propelling small satellites around in space. And had we been working on this 10 or 15 years ago, no one would have cared.

But it just so happened that in the past decade, the industry was trending towards smaller and smaller satellites that were lacking any sort of efficient satellite propulsion technology. So we were being beaten over the head, essentially, by interest from industry and decided to spin Accion out. And we actually formed the company while we were still students, and so, there was a bit of overlap.

Ion engines have been around since the 50s and 60s, actually, but Accion has kind of a new twist on ion propulsion. And, fundamentally, ion propulsion like any sort of rocket propulsion works by expelling some sort of matter out the back of a spacecraft and that propels the spacecraft forward. So most people think of the big rockets that Elon Musk makes at SpaceX. And that's a type of chemical propulsion. So there's the combustion of hot gases inside a chamber and then those are forced out the back of a nozzle and that pushes the rocket in the opposite direction.

Our engine is a type of electric propulsion, which rather than chemical energy, relies on electrical energy. So we accelerate some matter. It happens to be ions to high speeds and push those out the back of the spacecraft. And if you picture an astronaut riding on the back of a satellite throwing tennis balls off the back of it, each time he or she throws a tennis ball off the back, it pushes the satellite in the opposite direction. So that's effectively what we do with ions.

The whole world today, actually, relies on space a lot more than most people realize. It's very prevalent. So everything from DirecTV to Sirius Radio to GPS, and then even Monsanto uses satellites in the military. So essentially any industry or application in some way kind of touches the space industry or satellites.

And so, our technology is really geared at these smaller satellites that are starting to come online thanks, in large part, to Moore's law, which is making it possible to build very small capable satellites. So anyone interested in launching one of these satellites would, especially, benefit from Accion's technology.

And these smaller satellites, they're having the effect of making space more accessible and affordable to new industries. So previously only whole countries or governments could afford to launch satellites. But now that they're becoming smaller and smaller, they're cheaper to manufacture and launch. And new industries are starting to use them. Even high school students are building and launching satellites.

So some of the new industry is starting to use satellites in space more and more than in the past. Our institutions like big financial institutions, like banks, they're using satellite imagery to predict futures prices, for instance. And then, there are satellite constellations going into orbit for doing things like monitoring ships and tracking other assets as they move across the world.

Some of the other applications that Accion finds very exciting are things like, there's a mobile breast cancer clinic that used to wait 90 days before it would take the data and upload it at a doctor's office. And they recently signed with some sort of satellite services provider, and now they upload the data in real-time. And for some patients, that makes all the difference.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Accion's currently evaluating two paths for the long-term. In the near-term where we're very much a propulsion system provider. So essentially, a component provider to a larger system. In the future, though, because we strongly believe we have something that all of our customers really, genuinely need, we're considering a path to being the satellite services provider. So not just making the propulsion system, but actually launching and operating the satellites, and providing communication services from satellites that do use our technology.

So there are very few times in an industry, I think, where there's this schism. And in the space industry, it's due to this perfect storm of technology, and the political environment, and various other factors. And it's this wonderful opportunity for small companies and startups to come in and up-end the incumbents. And so, Accion wants to move from our foot-in-the-door propulsion system model, to eventually a service provider.

In the very early days, the most challenging aspect of trying to start a space hardware company, I think, was this paradox of you need to build a working prototype before you can get money, and start selling things, and fundraise. And to build the prototype, you need access to equipment, and you need expensive materials, and those things costs money. But to get the money, you need the prototype. But it's just this vicious cycle.

So in the beginning that was that was a challenge. To try to solve that problem, and get to the next stage of Accion, we have been doing a hybrid venture capital government funding model. So we've gone down both paths, and are trying to make them work simultaneously, which is interesting.

And I would say, if you ask my team, they'll have different answers as far as what's been most challenging. But for me personally, it's been coming at this from an engineering background, and not realizing how much people's feelings, and the psychology of leading a team would be such a big part of this. I had no idea.

To try to learn how to deal with the people aspect of running a company, I've just done taken an engineering approach-- reading lots of books, looking at the data on that. I do chat with a lot of folks that are slightly ahead of Accion's stage, so I can try to learn how they went through the things we're going through. I've been working with this wonderful woman who helps executive teams. And she's been helping me for free for a year and a half. So that's been wonderful and very helpful. So just basically gathering as much information, and even anecdotal advice as I can.

NATALYA BRIKNER: There have been a couple instances that I can point to, like, really solid turning points in my life where people have gone out of their way to help me, and it's actually changed the path that I was going to take. And maybe I got used to that, and so now I'm not shy about asking for help or leaning on other folks if I need something.

And of course, I'm always trying to now find ways to pay that forward, and hopefully will continue to be able to do that more down the road. And I think maybe this is a symptom of imposter syndrome, but coming to a place like MIT, I really feel like the only way I was able to finish my problem sets and get them in on time was by reaching out to other people in the class, and teaming up and working on things together.

And some people are just too afraid, or shy to do that, or are embarrassed that they're asking for help, but it was maybe the only way I made it through MIT. In my college undergraduate class, I was the only woman out of 40. And so I've made it part of my mission to get more girls into STEM fields from a young age. And that ties into to trying to pay forward the help I've gotten in the past.

And I heard something really wonderful the other day. One of the groups I'm a part of, the woman that founded it, said, I love the mission, but we've gotta stop just targeting girls, and putting them through these clubs and classes alone. We've actually really got to integrate them with the boys of the same age, because otherwise, they both hit the job market at the same time, and then we're back with the same problem that we started with.

So the group I've been working with currently really embraces that. And we work with middle school and high school boys and girls, and get them to basically just destroy electronic components, and try to rebuild them into some kind of prototype.

It's called Youth Cities. And the fall program is these middle school and high school boys and girls that have a STEM leaning. They have to apply to this program. And the fall one, they're trying to solve a problem for Boston Children's Hospital. And this year's challenge is medicine adherence in various countries. And so at the end of this, they have to come up with a prototype and pitch their business plan to the audience. And some of them are 9 years old. And it's very entertaining, but really wonderful.

This year, I haven't seen their prototypes yet, but last year, the team that won were two 5th graders. And they built insole for tennis shoes that functioned as a controller for games you would play on your cell phone. And so if you wanted to play your cellphone games because the controller was in your shoes, you had to stand up and move a bit. So they used that prototype to address the challenge last year, which was childhood obesity.

I think the fortune award really highlights how curious people are about space, and how integral we as humans see it to our future. So people have this childlike sense of wonder when they think about space. And I think that was really highlighted to that fortune event. And the other thing I think it underscores is that the market we're addressing in the space industry doesn't really have a defined ceiling right now.

The possibilities are essentially endless, and it's really a new emerging market. So that was very inspiring for Axion to hear. Lewis and I were awarded the 30 under 30 for the manufacturing category. And it meant a lot to us, because we knew people on previous lists that we looked up to and respected a lot. And so it was an honor to be included on that list last year. And frankly, at the end of the day, it's very helpful when you're trying to lead a team of people and get them behind you when things like that happen. So every little thing helps.

NATALYA BRIKNER: So I am a essentially rocket scientist by training. And now, I do paperwork. So the rest of the team does a lot of engineering and R&D. And I try to answer three main questions each day. And my workday is structured around those which are, do we have enough money in the bank?

Are we doing enough to be technologically competitive and carve out our nation, the market? And do we have the right people on the team? So at any given day-- those questions kind of dictate how I'll spend my time. And currently, I'm thinking about fundraising again. Someone once told me before we really started acting on that, you would always be fundraising.

And I thought, no, you're exaggerating, but it's very true. And if I'm not fundraising, I'm recruiting. So those two things have been taking up a lot of my time. And then my co-founder, Lewis, actually leads a lot of the technology direction and decides what products to spin out and what R&D things we should focus on.

So I was interested in math and aliens when I was in high school. So I decided to do something a little more practical, I guess, and decided to major in college in aerospace engineering and then stuck with that throughout bachelors, masters, and a PhD. And after college, I had an internship at a big aerospace giant.

And I thought hardly anything really new ever went into that building or left that building. And that prompted me to apply to grad school. So I went to Duke and did my master's degree and was working on a micro-chemical rocket. And I finished my masters in nine months.

And my research advisor there said, you can't stay at Duke. You have to go to MIT. He's like, I order you to leave immediately. And I said no. I didn't want to. And so he gave me his credit card and told me to book eight trips to MIT and to go sit outside the labs of two professors, one of which would become my PhD advisor.

So I booked eight trips up to MIT. And I still wasn't actually convinced that I was going to come at a life in North Carolina. The cost of living was great. And then he actually didn't get tenure at Duke. And so then the decision became a bit easier. And so I called Paulo Lozano, the director of the Space Propulsion Lab.

And he said, you want to come? And I said sure. And then I packed up and came to MIT. And I didn't mention that we had started a different space propulsion company at Duke. And that kind of fell apart. And I thought, I never want to start a company ever again.

This was my one-- I want to work on rockets. This was my one chance to work on a rocket start-up. That opportunity will never come up again. So I'm going to go do my PhD and be a professor or a research scientist somewhere afterwards. And then I get to MIT.

And then there's so much commercial interest around what I was working on there, that I got my second chance to work on a rocket start-up. But I miss research a bit. It is nice to have a break after doing a PhD. So I'm not completely ready to throw in the towel, and go back, and find a job at a lab. But I do like to help out at Accion and lab when I can.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Two things. One challenge for us is that we're technically regulated as a munition or a rocket, even though we produce enough thrust with one thruster chip to hold up a mosquito. So not anything very dangerous. But because we're regulated as a-- we're on the US munitions list, we

Actually can't sell to other countries without export licenses that turn out to be almost nearly impossible to get for some countries. So that's been a big challenge for a startup to try to tackle. We can't use normal email servers. We can't use Dropbox. We can't let non-US persons into our lab. So that's been challenging.

Someone over-generalized us as a rocket at some point in the classification, and it hadn't been an issue until now. You have all these startups popping up that don't really have the resources to deal with it, so. Actually, there is a new rule being drafted, that's supposed to come out any day now, that moves us off of the munitions list, and onto a much tamer regulation. And so, we're looking forward to that.

We started out with the assumption that a space startup could only really sell to other space startups when our product was first out the door, because it lacks the flight heritage and all of the reliability data that folks like Lockheed, and Boeing, and NASA would need to see.

But in reality, we've actually found it to be the complete opposite. And the bigger aerospace companies have internal R&D budgets that will evaporate if they don't spend them. So they've actually been our first customers, and have been eager to buy our very beta products. Yeah, so that was an assumption we had going in, that turned out to be completely wrong.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NATALYA BRIKNER: Accion right now, we're trying to focus on one main product and do it really well, execute on that, and then start going into production of some early orders.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

We are looking at the market opportunity for kind of a small product pivot, so another function onboard a satellite that we would have the manufacturing capabilities and sales channels to transition to in a straightforward way. I don't want to say easy because it probably won't be easy. So we're looking at a small product pivot there. But mainly, the whole team is focused on, get this one product finished and working well and get it into production. And then, we'll split off and do a bit more R&D and other product development.

One of our strategies as far as kind of roadmapping R&D is to look at our core competencies that we've had to build up to make our first product and see where those might apply in other industries. So that might be an interesting approach. We'll have to see. So we've generated some new intellectual property in power electronics and in some electrodes, and both of those might actually have applications in other industries. So that's one way we're considering branching out into R&D.

The other is a bit more related to Accion's long-term goals-- so making this small product pivot to a related technology, and then eventually the big leap into being a satellite services provider. So there are a lot of things that need to happen along the way, and that's the very long-term plan.

The roadmap for us looks like a year until our release of our first generation of our first product. At that point, probably two years of R&D and development for that other type of product I mentioned. And then, once those are fielded-- so probably five years from now-- we'll start seriously looking at the case for expanding into a satellite services provider.

It's an interesting time, though, in the industry because there are a ton of new space startups every day. So I think something like in 2005 there were 80 space companies in the world. And last year, there were 800. And so, I think we're kind of at the crest of the wave in the satellite industry. So we'll soon get to the backside, and we'll kind of see how it shakes out a bit. And then, meanwhile, Accion will be getting our foot in the door and making a name for ourselves as a player in the industry. And then, we'll go from there.

Accion, we've designed our product to use the most boring manufacturing techniques we can think of. So we have three main components, the power electronics-- and those are sent out to a traditional PCB house, and we get them back and assemble them.

Our propellant supply system is basically like a Tupperware container. So our propellant allows us to forego the use of any big, pressurized tanks or pumps or valves. And so we get to store all of our propellant for any mission in this plastic box, essentially, which really simplifies our design and any sort of reliability concerns over the lifetime. And that we conventionally machine using a mill, and so that was designed intentionally to be able to be sent out to any machine shop in the area.

And then, our thruster head is made using MEMS techniques-- so Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems-- the same processes used in the computer processor industry. So these chips we send out and get back today finally in batches of around 200. So our numbers are going up there, and all of these processes are very mature, and I think that's going to be a key differentiator for us as far as cost down--