Episode 157: From University Patent to Trade Sale with Carolyn Hicks of Brill Power
Gaule's Question TimeShow Notes
Carolyn Hicks shares the Brill Power journey from early university IP through grants, fundraising, product development, corporate engagement, and acquisition integration. Practical lessons for founders building in complex B2B and hardware-heavy markets.
Chapters 00:00 Intro and background 01:00 How Brill Power started 02:00 The technology and early IP 07:00 Grants, pitch events, and early traction 09:40 First meaningful investment and investor fit 17:10 Scaling products, hiring, and manufacturing 20:20 Corporate partnering, decision makers, and IP risk 24:20 Acquisition and integration 27:00 Gender, confidence, and founder communication
If you are building deep tech in a regulated or complex market, message Andrew Gaule for a discussion on your experiences.
More from Gaule's Question Time
AI is rapidly moving from a tool used by individuals towards becoming part of the workforce.
What turns an AI experiment into useful organisational change?
In this episode of Gaule’s Question Time, Andrew Gaule speaks with AI engineer Matt Cortland about the Guinness Index, a project that used an AI voice agent to call pubs and collect the cost of a pint of Guinness.
In this episode of Gaule’s Question Time, Andrew Gaule speaks with Devendra Sharma, Chief Data and AI Officer at Exadel, about the practical realities of implementing AI in organisations. They discuss why AI is not magic, why data and inputs matter, how leaders should identify use cases, and why organisations need to redesign processes before applying AI. The conversation also covers governance, compliance, agentic AI risks, human in the loop review, knowledge management and software development.
What does AI change for leaders, teams and service models? In this conversation, Andrew Gaule speaks with Cilla McKay about AI as a leadership and change challenge, not just a technology decision. They explore North Star thinking, human centred design, AI literacy, psychological safety and how to redesign work around human and AI collaboration.