Katie Jinkins of Sixline Semiconductor, winner of last year's Governor's Business Plan Contest, says her approach to technology challenges is to “fail fast” as part of the innovation process.
Jinkins, CEO, co-founder and co-inventor of the Middleton-based startup, was a featured speaker at the recent Wisconsin Technology Council luncheon in Wauwatosa.
“We know it's not going to work for long, but we have to speed up our iteration cycles and find the next path,” she said last week. “You may keep failing and failing and failing, but eventually you'll find a way forward. And that's worked well for me so far, and that's why we're working on her SixLine This is what I continue to do.”
The Middleton-based company develops advanced electronic components based on “carbon nanotubes,” microstructures that are 50,000 times thinner than a human hair. Jinkins began researching these materials during her doctoral program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and began studying their “truly extraordinary” electrical properties, before officially launching in 2022, she said. Stated.
“This is the basis of SixLine: By replacing the current materials used in mobile phones and other electronic devices with our material, carbon nanotubes, we can deliver faster performance and reduce energy usage. , increasing bandwidth and lowering costs,'' she said.
Jinkins said the potential for increased bandwidth is beneficial for high-demand AI applications because it enables machine learning software to process data at scale. She emphasized the importance of patenting this technology and highlighted the potential impact of her company's solution.
“When this technology is fully commercialized and fully developed, its impact will be huge. So I'm hoping to pass on the intellectual property that I've developed to others to go down that path.” “I wasn’t there,” she said. . “As a co-inventor of the technology, and probably the most knowledgeable person in the technology, I think like I had a broad view and a narrow view that this is where we're going and this is the way we're going. I felt” to get there. ”
Still, she said she benefited from being “a little blind” to early failures in the field, noting that some entrepreneurs get caught up in the complexities of previous failed attempts and then become discouraged. He pointed out that there is a possibility that
“I knew it was a problem and I knew other people had tried it, but I don't think I knew all the details,” she said. “And that ignorance helped me a little bit.”
She also shared how the Tech Council's Governor's Business Plan Competition helped her hone her business and learn how to present it to others, while also connecting with Wisconsin's startup ecosystem and investors. We also discussed.
“So it was really, really valuable to really bring that network together and get feedback from the judges and other people in the community throughout the business plan,” she said.
This year's BPC winners will be announced next month at the Tech Council's Wisconsin Entrepreneurship Conference. It will be held June 5th and 6th at the Italian Community Center in Milwaukee.
Learn more about last week's events, coverage of last year's competition, and other stories about the company.
