By Matt Hamblen Jul 22, 2024 3:06pm
Article on Fierce Electronics: https://www.fierceelectronics.com/sensors/best-sensors-2024-winner-haila-mission-zap-batteries-backscatter-tech?utm_medium=email&utm_source=nl&utm_campaign=FE-NL-FierceSensors&oly_enc_id=4478G9043034B5Y
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Charlotte Savage-Pollock accepted awards for Rising Star of the Year at Best of Sensors Awards 2024 in June, and a second award for Startup of the Year for Montreal-based HaiLa Technologies, which she founded in 2019. (Fierce Electronics)
When Charlotte Savage-Pollock, founder and chief innovation officer at HaiLa Technologies, was revealed as Rising Star of the Year at the Best of Sensors Awards 2024 in late June, she didn’t immediately run to the Sensors Converge main stage to receive her award.
A colleague yelled from the audience, “She’s meeting with a client!” That remark brought knowing laughter from many engineers in the crowd who understand how important marketing and investors matter in the success of electronics products.
However, Savage-Pollack did soon after make it onstage for the very next award, Startup of the Year, granted to Montreal-based HaiLa, her baby, first founded in 2019. HaiLa CEO Derek Kuhn, installed in 2021, stood close by.
She bounded onstage to accept both trophies, beaming as she posed for photos.
A single company has won two categories at a single Best of Sensors in past years but it is rare to win two and it is a first for both those categories where she and HaiLa were named as the winner.
In fact, the dual win is an interesting combination, a recognition that good ideas for technologies sometimes make it to the startup level but only with a remarkable amount of vim and vigor and plain old stamina from the founders. Suddenly, engineers part of a startup get rushed into the world of finance and management, where raising money from investors and finding good talent become critical. Meanwhile, the technology for any new startup may still need fine-tuning and customer proof points. Gradual growth. Then, eventually, a tech roadmap. Not a route for the faint-hearted, because many startups don’t make it.
HaiLa founder left engineering school to start backscatter company
Savage-Pollock left engineering school to pursue startup opportunities with backscatter technology and since that time, Haila has raised $16.8 million and has developed evaluation kits to help reduce power consumption for sensors and other devices. The company of 18 engineers was honored as Startup of the Year for its commitment to ultra-low power RF communication which extends Wi-Fi range and it has won the Nokia Bell Labs Open Innovation Challenge. Funding grants have come from SCTC, the Quebec government and Murata Electronics. The company name, HaiLa, honors actress-inventor Hedy Lamarr, who developed frequency hopping decades ago.
While the woman and the company have collected attention and financial backing, Savage-Pollack said in an interview with Fierce Electronics that the sustainability mission and message is what continues to drive her still, now several years in.
“Massive reductions in power consumption of a sensor’s wireless radio eliminates the need for batteries,” she said. “We have to focus on that vision and be a driving factor. We should be building things that are hyper-efficient and not throwing out batteries. That happens all the time. We will soon have 78 million batteries thrown into landfills per day from IoT globally. That shows you how important data is that we are willing to make this trade off. We need a massive change.”
For HaiLa, lemons powered an SoC with cherry tomatoes next in line
At Sensor Converge 2024, people lined up at the HaiLa booth to see a simple demonstration: lemons were being used to power HaiLa’s BSC2000 chip with 45 microwatts of power. The company is designing its third chip, the BSC3000 SoC, to reduce the power demand to sub-5 microwatts.
For that, only a cherry tomato would be needed. “With a lemon, we have the lowest-powered Wi-Fi chip on the market,” she said. “By comparison, standard radios are so power consuming…Why are we producing overkill products in a space where it doesn’t have to be overkill?”
She started researching backscatter at age 25 (she’s now 32) and in her last year as a biomechanical engineering student she learned about backscatter research at Stanford University that HaiLa now has obtained an exclusive IP license to use. “I was pulling my hair out until I met them to see it was proven theoretically, so we’re working it to prove it out experientially.”
She credits an almost-chance meeting with Helge Seetzen, CEO of TandemLaunch, with getting her on the startup rampway. “He saw on my resume that I’d been an NCAA athlete,” she said.
As a water polo athlete, she suffered a number of injuries including a concussion and a rotator cuff injury that ended her athletic career, which she believes have only strengthened her resolve today.
With the hiring of Derek Kuhn in 2021, HaiLa benefited with expertise in operations and product development. “We were a leading engineering business and needed to grow and focus on partnerships and design wins and we’ve been rolling ever since. We’re ahead with our tech, but growing our team and find talent is the hardest thing now. Our strength is in hiring seasoned experts.”
How Savage-Pollock copes with the nightmare side of a startup
While it’s clear Savage-Pollock is intimately involved with HaiLa’s growth, she quickly admits she’s no different from thousands of startup founders who have wrestled with finding the pathway to remaining resilient despite overwhelming obstacles. Many backers of startups, including powerhouses like Intel, offer psychological support and midnight emergency calls to founders to help them climb the ladder to higher success.
“I think I’m really good at masking the nightmare side of a startup,” she said. “It’s a roller coaster, seven years in. I have this cadence now where I allow myself to give up and wake up tomorrow. Resilience for me is my most notable character trait and that’s why I still feel confident. I have to focus on that low-power vision and be a driving factor for HaiLa.
“What drives me? Its 78 million batteries a day going to landfills. If only I can continue to get the product out. Psychology is really important. Mental health is an issue with founders across the board. The support from friends and family always pushes me to get through deep periods of uncertainty. I see the glass half full and the more you can push through and share struggles, the better. Nothing is better than shared struggles as a team together. You see yourself and you know you are proving to everyone we can do it all together. Whenever you are feeling dark, it’s important to shine a light on that. Don’t do that on your own. As a solo founder, I tell people don’t go into this alone.”
How tech startup founder copes with a heavily male profession
As a founder and woman engineer, she also sees her position as a role model where resilience has mattered. “A lot of people don’t think I look like an engineer. People tell me I should have been a flight attendant. So why do it? The hard path is the best path. I believe in struggle and short term pain for long term gain. We’re doing better with women in tech, but I know we can do a lot better. Diversity of thought especially from women will be revolutionary for the future. When a woman is slammed by a business person, my advice is to speak up, stand up and be resilient. Show up the next day and try again over and over again.
“What I’ve learned is that I know nothing. I have learned the importance of being resilient and the importance of believing in yourself. I learned the importance of following your vision and speaking up when the mission and the vision is moving to where you don’t want it to. Then, surround yourself with experts and people who inspire you.”
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