🌱 Ep 36. Enzymes, Antennas and the Valley of Death: How Startups Are Scaling their Innovations with Luciano Caruso and Chloe So (xFashion District)

This is a special episode in partnership with Fashion District London What actually happens in the years between "the science works" and "we're a real supplier"? In this episode of No Ordinary Cloth, Mili is joined by two founders walking that tightrope right now — mid-crossing, not the polished after-the-fact version of the story. Luciano Caruso, Chief Commercial Officer of Epoch Biodesign, explains how the company's AI-designed enzymes recycle nylon — including nylon 6.6, the tough, blended, historically unrecyclable material behind everything from yoga pants to tyre cords to under-the-bonnet automotive parts — at room temperature, without the heat, pressure and harsh chemicals of conventional chemical recycling. Fresh off acquiring a 52,000-ton-capacity polymer plant in Spain, he walks through what it actually takes to de-risk a deep-tech material business: technology milestones, then production milestones, then commercial milestones, each one making the next round of investment easier to raise. Chloe So, co-founder and CEO of Pulpatronics, is solving a much smaller-looking problem with an equally large footprint: the roughly 45 billion RFID tags thrown away every year, each one built around a metal antenna that jams recycling processes. Pulpatronics turns paper itself into that antenna using laser-etched circuits, cutting CO2 emissions by 60% and cost by 30% — and she's candid about what it actually looks like to scale from 50 hand-finished tags a day toward the millions the industry runs on. In this conversation, we discuss * Why nylon — despite being one of the most useful materials on earth, from apparel to airbags to EV battery trays — is so stubbornly hard to recycle, and how Epoch's AI-designed enzymes "unbake the cake" at room temperature instead of using heat, pressure and harsh chemicals * What's actually inside the RFID tag on every clothing hang tag, why it can't easily be recycled, and how Pulpatronics replaces the metal antenna with a laser-etched paper circuit * The "valley of death" in plain terms: the gap between science that works and a business that's self-sufficient, and the different way each founder is trying to close it — technology, production and commercial milestones for Epoch; first repeat customers and manufacturing scale-up for Pulpatronics * Why Epoch bought a 60-person, 60-year-old polymer plant in Spain rather than building one from scratch, and what "de-risking" actually looks like for a deep-tech material startup * Why big corporates hesitate to invest in or partner with startups even once the technology is proven — and what it actually takes to become a "drop-in" solution, commercially as well as technically * The moment Chloe's team pulled its own R&D engineers onto the factory floor to hand-build a customer's sample order — and what that period of pressure did for the team * Why ecosystem partners — accelerators, university networks, corporate investors like Inditex, Lululemon and H&M Foundation — matter as much as the technology itself * What's kept each founder going, and the advice they'd give other founders Resources: Epoch Biodesign [https://www.epochbiodesign.com/] Pulpatronics [https://www.pulpatronics.com/] Connect with Mili:  LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/mjtharakan/]   |   Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/noordinarycloth/]   |   Buy me a coffee [https://buymeacoffee.com/noordinarycloth] Subscribe and leave a review — I love to hear your feedback. Recommended listening: Ep 20. Ecosystem Partners for Textile Startups (Fashion for Good, Fashion District & Mills Fabrica) Cover art: Photo by Siora, Photography on Unsplash. Music: Inspired Ambient, Orchestraman