It looks fake, or at least like a good illusion. Gecko Materials founder Capella Karst has a bottle of wine dangling from her little finger, but the only thing keeping it from shattering is her startup's super-strong dry adhesive. It is. market.
But it's not a trick. This is the result of years of academic research that Kerst built on by inventing a way to mass-produce the adhesive. Inspired by the way real-life gecko feet grip surfaces, you can think of it as a new kind of Velcro. The difference, however, is that you only need one side, it leaves no residue, and you can remove it as quickly as you installed it. It runs at least 120,000 times and can remain connected for seconds, minutes, or even years, as Kerst said in a recent interview with TechCrunch.
Karst has been demonstrating this sleight-of-hand style all over the place over the past few years: at VC happy hours, during pitch meetings, on TikTok and Instagram reels. And it works. Not just mechanically, but as a way to quickly attract investors and customers. Gecko raised a $2 million seed round in 2021 in less than 36 hours and boasts Ford, Pacific Gas & Electric, and even NASA as early customers.
Yes, before Kerst pitched on the Startup Battlefield stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, Gecko Materials' adhesives have already made their way to space.
The adhesive is incredibly strong. A 1-square-inch tile can support a 15-pound load vertically, and six are enough to tow a car. It works by exploiting van der Waals forces, which involve interactions at the intermolecular level.
Because it can be complicated to understand, Kerst prefers to rely on non-Gecko materials.
“It's not excrement, it's not tape, it's not glue, it's not microhooks,” Karst explained. No charging of any kind is required. Nor is it based on suction, which some other companies that promise gecko-like adhesives tend to use, Karst said with a wry smile. Suction-based methods concentrate force, which can apply uneven force and cause fractures or leave behind fragments, she said.
In fact, she said, Gecko's material resembles microscopic hairs that are 1/100th the size of human hair. When applied to a smooth or semi-smooth surface, it is pulled downward and “sheared,” creating a “very strong force.” If you pull it in the opposite direction beyond 20 degrees to the plane of that scissor, it will come loose within milliseconds.
This allows the force to be applied evenly and, just as importantly, to be released evenly. This means it can be used on very delicate objects such as quartz wafers, glass, solar panels, and even food products such as eggs and rotten tomatoes.
So far, this means it's a great material for robots and drones that do frequent picking and placement, which is one reason Gecko found early success with manufacturers.
“We eliminate the traditional pitfalls of adhesives,” says Karst.
The wine bottle demo is emblematic of how Kerst wants to approach mass production of Gecko adhesives. It's simple but has an impact. The demo “brings out ideas from people,” Kirst told TechCrunch. “While we are a public benefit corporation and for-profit, we want to help people save energy, time and money, and bring innovation back to the hardware space.”
It's such an attractive product that she wanted to play around with it, so much so that in a recent interview on the YouTube show The Pitch, she told potential investors that she was willing to pony up $1,200 on the spot to take home. (Partly, funnily enough, so investors can show it to their magician friends.)
As Gecko expands production, the goal is to lower its costs, Kirst acknowledges. The current cost is about 10 times that of other common adhesive options such as 3M's Command Strips. But Gecko already has a software gross margin of more than 80% on the material, and Karst was quick to point out that the 3M command strips are actually only one-time use.
Gecko has already generated more than $700,000 in revenue in 2023, and Kirst said the company has a “clear path” to $75 million in annual recurring revenue for current paying customers over five years. said. The company is also in the process of raising another round of funding to expand its business.
“I'm really passionate about making local manufacturing more sustainable and bringing it to the world,” Karst said. She doesn't shy away from the Velcro comparison either. “I see a path for Gecko Materials to become a household name, a global name. Obviously, we're already a cosmic name,” she smiled.