From Sewage to Science: How Claire Trant and Untap Health Are Revolutionising Disease Detection

Chris Whyte (: 00:02

Hello and welcome to Why Design. I'm your host, Chris Whyte And today I'm joined by Claire Trant, co-founder and CEO of Untap Health, a company using wastewater epidemiology to detect illnesses before symptoms even appear.

Claire's journey is one of resilience as much as it is about innovation. With a PhD in material science from Imperial College and experience at Rolls-Royce, she took the leap into entrepreneurship, building UNTAP from the ground up. But it hasn't been easy, navigating early stage funding, reshaping the company's mission, and dealing with the personal and professional challenges of leading a deep tech startup. In just a few years, UNTAP has gone from an idea to a company securing patents, raising millions in funding,

and developing hardware that's now been tested in real world settings. With a growing team and a pipeline of customers in sectors like healthcare and agriculture, the company is now shifting from development to scaling, turning its vision into reality. In this episode, we get into the realities of scaling a hardware company, the fundraising highs and lows, and what it's like to be a female founder in a male-dominated space. Claire also opens up about the setbacks she's faced,

and how she's come through it stronger than ever. If you're interested in what it really takes to build a company from scratch beyond the glossy success stories, this one's for you.

Chris Whyte (: 01:16

Claire, welcome to the podcast.

good to have you. so I'll do my best to introduce you, set the scene. So Claire you are co-founder and CEO of Untap, you're leading a company that's transforming how we detect and prevent illnesses, catching them before symptoms even appear using wastewater epidemiology. Your background in material science from Imperial College London, where you earned a PhD research in fatigue in aerospace engine alloys, along with your experience at Rolls-Royce gave you deep expertise in

data analysis, materials, and engineering problem solving, all of which have played a key role in developing untapped technology. Under your leadership, the company secured millions in funding, won multiple awards, and successfully patented its proprietary technology, huge milestones for a company tackling public health at scale. And with recognition from high growth Women Founder of the Year and the top 50 Women in Innovation, there you go, I've tripped up already.

You're making a serious impact in both deep tech and disease prevention. had the pleasure of working with you earlier, well, last year, should I say, on a strategic higher, and I'm excited to dive into your story. So we're to go through your personal growth journey so far with Untap, kind of what life is like as a female tech founder and the role of advisors and university links in shaping the company. So let's dive in, shall we? So, yeah, how was that as an intro,

Claire (: 02:14

So, going go ahead to

Yeah, that was great. Thank you very much. It's always a bit overwhelming, but definitely whelming when someone lists or goes through it all because saying it in a few sentences makes it sound like you've accomplished so much in a short period of time. And actually that's the of the iceberg, right? Four years of a lot of work and a lot of downs as well as the highs.

Chris Whyte (: 02:59

Absolutely, absolutely. And yeah, we were just kind of joking beforehand about how I was going to trip over the some of the words in your intro there. think actually it's quite nice having you on the call. I might book you in to do my intros in the future because usually I'm having to do several takes on the pre-intro. And anyone that listened to last week's episode before I picked it up would have heard the outtakes that I forgot to edit out.

Claire (: 03:23

Okay.

Chris Whyte (: 03:24

But yeah, great to have you

on. So let's start at the beginning, really. mean, or kind of let's go back to your academic kind of choices really. I mean, they're just incredible, really. A PhD in material science. So talk us through kind of the other day. how you got interested in physics, engineering, kind of all that kind of stuff, and then how that kind of transforms to kind of.

at Rolls-Royce and where you are today.

Claire (: 03:53

Yeah, absolutely. I started off doing physics at Imperial when I was obviously my undergraduate, my teenager, which was, it's a debate between that and my driving license, which is the harder accomplishment of my life. I might debate it was my driving license, took seven attempts at that one and I got my degree first time, but it was hard. It was really tough three years. I had a countdown calendar.

And some people are gifted at things like physics. I definitely wasn't. I had to work really hard at it. I got a 2.1, which I was deeply proud of, 60.0. I worked just hard enough, but yeah, it was a tough degree and Imperial is not an easy university. Then continued there to my masters and worked and continued and did my PhD in aerospace materials at Imperial College again.

Chris Whyte (: 04:21

amazing.

Claire (: 04:40

I was very lucky in my PhD choice. I actually said I'd never do a PhD. I was determined that it was not going to be my future, partially because my family told me that I was destined to do a PhD. My dad told me from the age of like 20. And because no one's parents can ever be right, I told him I'd never do a PhD. It wasn't for me. And then, and behold, I continued on and did a PhD. But what I had in my mind of a PhD was so different to what it really is.

In my mind, PhDs are stuck in a room with a load of books or nowadays a computer and you're modelling or you're reading and you're deep diving something on your own. That wasn't what I did. My was an industrial PhD. So was with Rolls-Royce, working with people, looking at things as a collective, as a community. Also, I was very, I say lucky slash deeply unlucky in my PhD choice. Depends how you see things, right? But

My PhD was in something I'd never done before. It wasn't in anything I'd ever studied. And therefore I came in with a completely fresh set of eyes, but it did mean I had to learn an undergraduate degree in about three weeks. So you go in, you learn a whole new set of materials, you apply it to something you've never even heard of before, and you ask the most fundamental questions of your PhD supervisor and your peers, because you don't realize they're stupid questions. And I was really fortunate actually in this time, I'm going to call out one of my friends, Lucy.

who's still one of my closest friends today, she and I used to go and sit in such a cozy little sauna. And I'd ask her the questions I was too embarrassed to ask anyone else because she had a background in the topic. And so did that, my undergraduate, did my PhD with Rolls-Royce. And then COVID turned up. At the time I'd been working on and off consulting in deep tech, so worked in nuclear tech.

water tech and then sewage tech, deep diving the industries, deep diving different technologies within those industries. And when COVID turned up, we say, we started looking at wastewater based epidemiology. And what that means is taking a sample of sewage from a community and analyzing it for the health of that community. The way it's done is rather rudimentary. It's essentially using something.

not dissimilar to this at times, for those listening, that was a cup. And taking a cup of sewage and taking it to a lab and saying, in this community, there is this level of this illness, which is rather slow, not particularly pleasant and rather expensive when you have people involved. So I work in that, beginning of COVID. That's when my journey really started with the company.

Chris Whyte (: 07:15

Yeah, I remember those days it was, it's how they kind of assigned the tier system, isn't it? You know, based on the wastewater and, but it was always such a, yeah, it felt like such a slow process. so yeah, so it's very kind of early days really in terms of your kind of your career going kind of straight from, well, it's not really straight from academia, it? Because like you say, you've got that industry link.

Claire (: 07:40

Also,

I didn't go straight from my undergraduate straight to the PhD either. I worked for a years in between. Not for my PhD, there was a year before I started the company working as a consultant. So there was a few years of working. Also, I'm one of those people that can never really sit still. So my PhD had several other jobs. I teach maths to gifted students.

children and then also was a consultant. So on the side, just worked for two different companies looking at these technologies. So from the age of around 20, to the age of, what age I started the company, late 20s, about eight years, was a deep tech consultant for a lot of engineering companies. PhDs, industrial PhDs pay well, they pay that well. So it's always good to have a bit of extra cash coming in.

Chris Whyte (: 08:26

So what, going back to see the rebel in you not wanting to follow your parents advice, what changed your mind on the PhD then?

Claire (: 08:36

I can't believe I'm telling this story. This is really embarrassing. So I had a few glasses of wine one night and I was in a public space. There were other people around there and I was enjoying a few glasses of wine. I talked to a stranger and this stranger and I discussed, and I can't really remember much this conversation embarrassingly, discussed engineering, engineering PhDs. And he managed to convince me that my future was doing an engineering PhD.

Chris Whyte (: 08:38

Yeah

Claire (: 09:00

And the next day I woke up with a business card from him and I called him the following day and he reminded me of the conversation and convinced me all over again on the phone the following day that it was my future. so that random stranger at a bar completely changed what my future was going to be, which is quite terrifying actually when you think about the concept that you have your life planned out and then one night can change everything.

Chris Whyte (: 09:17

Wow.

Or maybe it was just kind of confirming kind of what you knew deep down and maybe it wasn't just mom and dad saying it, you know, but I love that story though. That's incredible. that stranger is partially responsible for the formation of untapped then, or at least putting you in the position to... This is the butterfly effect. So, that's awesome.

Claire (: 09:30

I think.

Maybe, maybe.

If

That's not to give them too much credit, but yeah, potentially. Yeah, indeed.

Chris Whyte (: 09:53

So untap them those early days with obviously COVID and everything. And was that like? Talk us through the early kind of formation of the business.

Claire (: 10:03

So just to give a bit of an intro, wastewater-based epidemiology, as I mentioned, is the measure of health from sewage. Sewage is really cool because you can measure the health of a community before they're sick. You excrete illnesses from day zero of infection. So this is nothing to do with catching, you can't catch illnesses from sewage, you can't catch COVID from sewage. What I'm saying is you can measure the health of people that contribute to the sample through the sewage.

been done actually since the: 1930

Chris Whyte (: 10:37

Alright.

Claire (: 10:56

obviously not the world's nicest or kindest system. So we then updated that system, the world did, the scientists at the time, to making manual testing. So you can test it in a lab. And that's what was done for the best part of 80 years on and off. It wasn't that widespread. But then for COVID, it really did take off. And today actually, it's still used for dengue fever, hepatitis.

beginning when we started in: 2021

was what if we can put this at every sewage treatment works in the UK? What if we can automate sewage surveillance? So you could say in every borough, in every city across the United Kingdom, whether there was going to be a COVID outbreak, whether there was going to be a flu outbreak, nor a virus outbreak. That was our initial mission. We've since changed that. So what we aim to do is have a small little box that could sit on sewage treatment works and analyze sewage and tell you about the illnesses. We've actually updated that mission.

And we've decided that we can dream a lot bigger, we can do a lot better. And we can actually put this box directly into a hospital, directly into a care home, directly even into an office and tell you about the health of people in that building. So imagine if you have a hospital and you can detect norovirus before people are sick and you can do widespread infection prevention and control methods to stop people contracting norovirus in that community, which fundamentally kills vulnerable people, which hospitals are full of. So if you can stop the spread of norovirus, you can save lives.

That's just such a cool and like not like it's the point, right? The point of starting a company is to have an impact and that's fundamentally what will have a huge impact. And actually on that note, so we've made the hardware now. So it's taken three, four years to make it. And I'm probably cutting it this way way too early, but I'm very excited in our office. We're not testing it right now. Our hardware is working and we've made that mission and vision a reality. So we are testing our own company sewage and we are able to tell when there are outbreaks.

Chris Whyte (: 12:47

awesome.

No, that's cool.

Claire (: 13:11

before they happen.

Chris Whyte (: 13:13

It's so exciting. It's absolutely amazing. I saw your post on LinkedIn earlier this week, kind of sharing it. And I know when we started working together, was it back end of the summer? Was it like August time last year? yeah, obviously the business had been through some kind of an interesting kind of challenge over the year, obviously with the co-founder leaving and the, unfortunately, your sister passing away, you know, it was, you know.

Claire (: 13:25

August 4th.

Chris Whyte (: 13:39

there was lots of challenges and we worked together to bring in a chief product officer and literally we turned that, it was a pleasure working with you on that, know, and despite all the challenges. But I remember Neil kind of checking in with Neil in his second week and say, how's week one going? And he says, yeah, it's really interesting. So they've never turned the machine on before and we did it for the first time today and it worked. was like,

Claire (: 13:58

I should.

Chris Whyte (: 14:06

That's brilliant.

It is reassuring. Obviously it would have been fine if it didn't, I'm glad it did. And yeah, fast forward to today, you you've got new offices, which yeah, it's great to see all kitted out at Christmas and just, it's so exciting, especially in just that short space of time, like three or four months of how things have kind of come on and yeah, really exciting.

Claire (: 14:07

So.

There's that old adage of you're rowing together, go a lot faster. And we've really hit that in the past, probably two months. We're really rowing together. Yeah. It's just a hit on that. Like we had a bit of very 24. It seemed that the world had a terrible 24 and I was no exception. Unfortunately, my co-founder decided to leave. It was.

Chris Whyte (: 14:29

It's

Yeah, absolutely.

Claire (: 14:48

most likely the right decision for him and the company. We're both good friends still, but it's never pleasant to happen, right, to either party. So he left and I had a very personally hard year last year with my sister passing away. So the company, to be honest with you, we coasted, but we could have crumbled. We didn't. And sometimes you have to be proud, not of how far you've come, but of just staying stationary. And I'm proud of the fact that we did survive that.

When the end of the summer, when you helped us, you recruiting Neil, we needed a certain type of person. And we're very lucky that Kodoo provided exactly the type of person we needed. And Neil's came in at the right time, at the right place to get us really growing together. We now have a product, we have a team that's not ready just for this phase where we're at now, but ready for next week and next month.

We only have one hire left, we think, for the next six months. Don't hold me to that. But we believe we only need one more person the next six months to keep rowing, which I'm really pleased with because we have an awesome team that are getting on very well.

Chris Whyte (: 15:53

That's, it's incredible to hear you talk like that. you know, just in terms of the positivity out of, let's say 24 was challenging, but especially just to have one, one higher left to be able to kind of get through the next stage. I mean, that's, that, I mean, yeah, that's kind of one, one challenge left to tick off the box. And then you can work on the, of getting the team again, yeah, rowing, rowing faster and further. So,

That's. That's wonderful, yeah. Yeah, so so how I've seen Niels come in. I don't want to make this this whole podcast about kind of obviously the work I've done with you, but he's a key hire for the business. So you know, but what kind of impact is having someone like Neil with the experiences that he's had for a relatively young business like yours?

Claire (: 16:21

Getting the match fit is the phrase I like me all using. It's like he's getting everyone match fit.

Sure. Let's just run through where we're at. So, 21, we started the company and we had an idea, which was the sewage surveillance for government. We pivoted that at the end of 21, beginning of 22 to looking at individualized buildings. We had a proof of concept end of 22 and we raised £1.6 million pre-seed to make that proof of concept a reality. That's all the money we've raised to date, which

person team, a: 2000

Chris Whyte (: 17:23

Yeah.

Try it in.

Claire (: 17:38

examples and we wired them together, but we didn't have a fundamentally a box that we could plug in a customer site and say like, can charge, we can charge you for this. And so what we've enabled to achieve, I want to take no, by the way, Naveed, who's our head of engineering has been with us for three years and none of this was accomplished without him. So he very much has been the boxer, if anyone has read Animal Farm, of our company. He's really,

Chris Whyte (: 18:02

haha

Claire (: 18:03

blue, not the ending, the middle bit. he's really, he's been the workhorse. He's really accomplished so much with us. And I'm, yeah, since Neil joined, it's enabled the engineering team to communicate more effectively and deliver what customers need. I know I'm not the world's best engineering manager.

because I've tried to do it the past three years and I haven't been great at it. And Neil is great at that. that's, if you have everyone the same in a company, you're not going to succeed. You need very different people. He's come in as a different person to enable us to compliment each other and grow.

Chris Whyte (: 18:40

I think that's the key thing, isn't it? Is having the, it's been able to step back and reflect on what you're really good at and what, and the skills that you already have in the team, where the gaps are, where the opportunities are. And yeah, trying to find like for like, you like say it's not going to get you business anywhere, but I think it takes a certain, yeah, mental resilience and attitude to be able to be quite honest and candid with yourself that yeah.

Claire (: 19:02

Thanks for watching.

Okay.

Chris Whyte (: 19:06

your words, you're not a great engineering manager. So let's

get someone that is. And that's great. And as you were talking, I just remembered the ending of Animal Farm and Box's character. It's been 25 years since I've read that book. So...

Claire (: 19:16

It's great.

It came to me

as I was saying it and I regret saying it immediately. That is not what I meant at all. Other than he's really been, he's been a steady pair of hands that has consistently out consistently put out a prototype after prototype. And if anyone here has been to our office, I know Chris you have, you'll see modular designs over the years. One day.

Chris Whyte (: 19:24

Yeah.

Claire (: 19:46

in our office, what we're going to have is the evolution of our system. And we're to have it nicely up on the wall. We've got some of them here now, which show what it was like in 2022, what it was like in 2023, and all the iterations along the way and be proud of the fact that it looks a bit rubbish sometimes, it works. And we're the first company in the world to have ever made this work. But yeah, Naveen has been here the whole time and built it and Neil brought people together.

Chris Whyte (: 20:02

awesome.

Claire (: 20:16

and enable those people to really flourish. We now have a team of 15, 14, 15 people and they're predominantly engineers because this is a multidisciplinary engineering process. have everything biological up to full scale hardware and people in between with electronics. So we have a full skill set here to make this product work.

Chris Whyte (: 20:39

Yeah. And, and just reflect on some of our conversations with, with Neil, at Christmas as well, actually, saying that, you know, obviously him coming into the business has, or had the potential to be very disruptive to, you know, a team that have been through thick and thin, you know, over three or four years. And, you know, this new person coming in at C-suite level, you know, it had the potential to go catastrophically wrong, but he said to the credit of the team there, they just, they,

took to kind of the adjusted kind of no one's you know, it's not falling apart at all. They're kind of they're all on board with the changes that he might have suggested. And, you know, I don't think he's coming in and wanting to revolutionize or anything like that. But, you know, it's, yes, credit to the culture and the team spirit. And again, everyone rowing together. So that's fantastic. Yeah.

Claire (: 21:26

Yeah absolutely. Yeah

gain. I wasn't around much in: 2024

And despite me not being around much, people still stayed with the company and believed in us and carried on going. That's a testament to them, not to me. So I'm very proud of the fact that we've got such an amazing group around us. Neil is an addition to that. we're growing together now. And I really hope the next person that joins us and our one remaining hire this year is head of BD. Put a little plug out there. It's on LinkedIn.

Chris Whyte (: 22:07

Hehehehe

Claire (: 22:08

Adds to that culture. As someone very intelligently said, when we were only eight or nine people, every person that joins is a 10th of the culture. And that is so important in a small company in a way I had never thought of in quite those terms before. So we're really hiring for personality as well as for experience.

Chris Whyte (: 22:30

It's yeah, I bang on about it all the time to my clients and people that I speak to. It's if they've got the skills, but the personality doesn't line up or their or the mission, the values, you know, there's potentially going to be a problem there. And you can train skills, you can send them on courses, you can sit them with the expert, you know.

but it takes a long time to change someone's personality and change their viewpoint. I mean, how long did it take you to realize? Well, absolutely. yeah, it's so important. So, but shall we talk about...

Claire (: 22:58

I'm not sure you ever can change. You can only just guide people a bit off course, right?

Also, you spend

more time at work than you do at home with your partner, Fundamentally, you spend more time, most time you have, and the most brain power is spent in that environment. Why would you want to spend it with people you don't like? But, and if I have sign off rights on who can join the company, especially at this stage, why would I want to spend time with people I don't like? It just, it seems foolish. So that really is not my MO.

Chris Whyte (: 23:11

Well, yeah.

Yeah, that's it. At the end of the day, employment is a choice. It certainly doesn't probably doesn't feel that way to a lot of people who unfortunately out of work or you know, if you're miserable, but you know, it's a it's employment by choice. And yeah, you get to choose your colleagues, don't get to choose your families. Choose wisely. But so obviously, we've been through Yeah, it's been a challenging kind of year or so. And

Claire (: 23:38

this.

you.

Chris Whyte (: 23:56

I mean, starting a tech startup itself isn't without its challenges. So would you say last year was probably the hardest you've had in terms of the most challenging period of the business?

Claire (: 24:05

I probably, well, if I personally last year was, I hope the hardest year I ever had my entire life, but

The business probably not actually so we raised our pre-seed of 1.6 million which sounds great on paper was not easy because it was the end of COVID but you know what I mean? There's a lot of money of importance diagnostics at that point and so raising a pre-seed for another diagnostics company was not easy but we're not just another diagnostics company right? We're not a diagnostics company at all.

How we visage the world is there's public health and there's diagnostics. We're either micro public health or macro diagnostics with a gap in between. But that's what it was like. kept being told we're another COVID company. No one likes being rejected a thousand times. So we received the funding. It took a bit longer than we would have liked. So cashflow was a non-trivial concern for a couple of months. But that's the nature of every small company, every startup has.

some stories they'll only tell in the pub around those times. well, I'm not divulging the secrets of those times. Those times are really hard because you question yourself, you question your vision, you question everything. And we're about to well, we're raising again now. So yay. Look forward to having those concerns in a couple of months. But you wouldn't be human without having those questions and those concerns. It's very, very normal.

Chris Whyte (: 25:10

or on a podcast.

Claire (: 25:33

And also having those fundraising periods makes you question, you're a sat in echo chamber of 15 people, you're building your company. You don't really get the same type of interrogation as to why you've chosen certain things, your business model, your projections, all that kind of thing. So it's quite good to be interrogated. And that's a really positive part of that process. So no, that was not the worst I would say. Fundraising back then was hard because of cashflow constraints.

Chris Whyte (: 25:57

Thank

Claire (: 26:01

But now we have in 2025, something that we can sell to customers and we're scaling this year and next year. We're looking back rose tinted spectacles on the company's history. Hopefully it's onwards and upwards.

Chris Whyte (: 26:16

Yeah, you're in a different proposition or position, aren't you? So very challenging. There's a bit more money going around the thing in 21, 22, but like say you had those challenges of with another diagnostic company, even though you weren't, but there's that view. now money's a bit tighter in general, but you've got the advantage of having a thing that works and you're going to have a head of business development. So hopefully start building up a pipeline. So

bit more of a sure thing if there ever is one, know, from an investment point of view, you can say, well, this is the track we're on. This is how we this is our go to market now, as opposed to this is our go to concept. So I think so. What would you

Claire (: 26:57

Yeah, so

this year we're going to Human Health. So we've got a lot of customers in the pipeline. We've got in excess of 1,500 customer sites. I say that because the customer sites, depends if they acquire some more hospitals or not. So it does change on the number. We have an excess of 1,500 customer sites and they're all human in our pipeline.

But we're now also starting the process of also testing for avian flu. So chickens and cows, so they've been pivot, not pivot so much as expansion to further markets due to the concerns around avian flu this year. So this year we're going out to animals and to humans and scaling throughout the course of the next 18 months to start making some cash. Very exciting.

Chris Whyte (: 27:25

Okay, yeah.

is very exciting. what would you say has been from the investment journey, the kind of fundraising because, yeah, whilst I've known you, it's every other week you've been flying off somewhere to meet investors. What, yeah, you got to mix the two of them. But what would you say have been the key learnings for you kind of, and especially kind of going from the two kind of fundraising rounds there?

Claire (: 27:57

Not always, but sometimes it's been for holiday.

Chris Whyte (: 28:09

Yeah, you'd be happy to share with other people kind of about to embark on a fundraising journey.

Chris Whyte (: 28:18

I'm interrupting this episode to share some exciting things happening around Why Design. At the core of this podcast are the incredible design journeys my guests have been on and where they're heading. These journeys stem from the relationships they build, the communities they're part of, and the amazing achievements that come from collaboration. So beyond the podcast, we're hosting regular online huddles and quarterly meetups in the UK with plans underway for an annual gathering in the US.

We're also running hands-on workshops both in person at Makerspaces and online to connect and inspire people in physical product development. So if you'd like to join us or stay in the loop about upcoming events, sign up at teamkodu.com forward slash events or click the link in the show notes. Now back to the episode.

Claire (: 29:09

And there are definitely good ways of doing it, bad ways of doing it, but I'm not the Oracle and the good ways of doing it. I definitely can give you some bad ways. We have not got it perfect. It takes a long time and you speak to a lot, you've kissed a lot of frogs. It just takes a while, right? And people that you thought were dead certs aren't always. It's, it's a bit of a slog. It's however been great for us in

Chris Whyte (: 29:24

Hmm.

Claire (: 29:38

rethinking our company vision, mission, pricing, go to market. Like we've been asked the right questions and they're the people I want, give me money. Having people that ask you the right questions is so important. So I value that a lot and raising, was taking a while, a few months, maybe not that long, but it's felt like a while. We didn't choose the best time of year to start. We started raising in December last year.

And everyone's burnt out and just looking forward to spending time with family and going to holiday potentially. So we started in earnest, beginning of the this year. Last year was very much a test the waters for the market. Are we raising the amount of money? Is our narrative correct? All that sort of thing. It just all takes a lot longer than you think it's going to take.

Chris Whyte (: 30:24

Yeah, it's a trial and error and every time you get knocked back, as long as you get feedback or you get questions asked, it's helping with the following ones, I suppose. you mentioned and you've introduced me to advisors as well. To what extent do Imperial and the advisors there have, in terms of that pitching process, are they more on the tech side of

Claire (: 30:44

Yeah, I probably should have shouted at Imperial more in this. I'm phenomenally lucky to have been supported by Imperial College throughout not just my undergraduate education, my PhD education, but throughout the whole startup. I went to do a women in entrepreneurship course essentially at Imperial after I left, so 21 potentially.

And in that process, they taught you to pitch and they gave you some training. And then you went into a competition and it was a very friendly competition. And they gave me my first ever Britney Mike. And there was like 120, 130 people in the audience. It was my first ever experience of being on a stage with a presentation and presenting with that many people. Some of them wasn't academic actually, but it was quite a lot of people in a proper theater. And judges asked you questions.

about the company. It was a very friendly way doing it. And we did lots of practices. It didn't feel scary. And I'm not sure why, because feel like it should have. But they did it really well, phenomenally well. And we enjoyed that process. They then asked me if I would represent Imperial in a European pitching competition. And so did. We have a little information about it before it was called stage two. And it was

maybe 50 startups across Europe went to pitch at it. And it was a two minute pitch each. And I was a bit more scared at this one, because there's about a thousand people in the audience. And I felt deeply underprepared, but went on stage anyway and presented. And I sort of remember thinking like, what could really go wrong? I can't die on stage. So what can really go wrong?

as I walked on and it went well. won the competition. won six out of 13 prizes, best European innovation, about 50 grand if not more of cash. It's not bad for two minutes of work. And it felt great. That was honestly a real highlight of the company at that point. It was like a bit of validation that sometimes you need. So Imperial allowed us to that one and then I guess.

Chris Whyte (: 32:34

Amazing.

Claire (: 32:59

Took the company under their wing a little after that because it was good for them and good for me. And done a lot of things alongside Imperial since then. I'm a big advocate for them. The Enterprise Lab has supported me in doing pitching competitions. They've financed me to travel. I've presented a lot of events, brought banners along, been mentored by Imperial. So we've got mentors, advisors.

Chris Whyte (: 33:01

Mm-hmm.

Claire (: 33:25

They've got the IVMS scheme, which is the Imperial Venture Mentoring Scheme. I hope that's right. Which has supported us fundamentally, has been a huge, huge support throughout the company's journey. And then also they've got the advisors and residents. That's not what they're called. called the EIRs, experts in residence. And they've been amazing. I call some of them once every six months and have check-ins.

We probably wouldn't still be here without the support of Imperial College. They have not paid me to say this and they have no equity in the company, but have been a phenomenal support and base throughout the whole journey. We're really lucky.

Chris Whyte (: 34:06

It's, that's incredible. And yeah, it just shows the just having someone in your corner, but impartial. And obviously, there's something in it for them. But really, it's, you know, like you say, there's there's no equity on the table here. They're doing it kind of because you're affiliated and because they want want to be helpful, you know, but just having Yeah.

Claire (: 34:26

Because they're good people, genuinely

each person involved in that is they're part of the organisation, yes, but they're all individuals that are making the active choice to be in your corner.

Chris Whyte (: 34:37

awesome. I know from my experience, know, having, you know, it could be a lonely existence being a founder, you know, especially when it's just me and the cats at Kodoo, know, so having communities that I'm part of where there's other founders and having the business that does my back office, we have regular check-ins, you know, and it's just not necessarily holding you accountable, but

Claire (: 34:39

Thank

Thank

Chris Whyte (: 35:00

just kind of asking those questions. Are you sure that's a good idea? Or, you know, have you thought about this and just

th woman founder of the year,: 2023

So obviously you just talked about that one. Yeah. So you probably...

Claire (: 35:31

We've won quite a few awards now. Well, that was a

different one. So we also we won the UK BAA High Great Women Founder of the Year. We won stage two of our four women.

things of the year, UKRI, Women in Innovation, Top 20 Global Startup, GBX, Upstart Awards, and we've won some more. We've won quite a few now. Yeah, it's a real luxury.

Chris Whyte (: 35:54

That's awesome. But it's incredible to be recognized like that. And especially, I think we need to celebrate women in engineering full stop, let alone women founders. a bit of an obvious question, but has that kind of experience as a female founder shaped your approach to leadership and how you've gone about things with Untapp?

Claire (: 36:15

I've never been a bloke. I don't really know how men experience the world. So I find that a really hard question to answer if I'm truly honest. I think that some things are harder for women and some things are easier for women. But honestly, being asked when I'm planning on having kids by investors kind of annoys me.

Which is a valid question sometimes, I can see the logic but, oof, does it annoy you? There are pros and cons, there are pros and cons, but again, I've never been a bloke. Starting a company is not easy, I'm sure it's not easy for a man either. As a woman, there are some things that make it harder for sure. And I think also naturally,

Chris Whyte (: 36:38

Yeah.

Claire (: 36:52

Maybe other women don't feel this way. just assume they do. You want your team to like you. You care about them. You deeply care about the fact that they're happy, that they can fulfill their potential at work, but also that everyone's in an environment in which they can succeed. Also they are happy as well. That's important. And maybe guys don't worry about that. It's not an additional variable on their matrix as much. I don't know. Maybe that's me being biased towards the...

Chris Whyte (: 37:16

Yeah.

Claire (: 37:19

alpha male stereotype. But that's something.

Chris Whyte (: 37:21

I mean, yeah, I think

they, I mean, they certainly do. I know I was always conflicted with kind of the, the kind of the logic of decisions versus the empathy and the emotion of decisions when it came to kind of teams that I've managed in the past. And, know, I think there are blokes out there that care and I'm sure there's women out there that are ruthless, but I think it's potentially, maybe it's the stereotypes, maybe it's the perception.

as well. You know, it's okay. I'll do the air quotes here. It's okay for a bloke to be kind of more business minded and kind of driven because that's what middle aged white blokes do, you know.

Claire (: 37:58

I've

got to say I'm not called confident, I'm called aggressive often and that maybe I'm bit aggressive, I don't know, but that does pee me off. Potentially, blokes be seen as, member be seen as more confident, whereas because I'm woman being like I'm aggressive or maybe I'm just aggressive, who knows.

My friends will probably comment on this, saying, no, you're just aggressive. I'll find out later.

Chris Whyte (: 38:15

Right, yeah.

I think it's, it's potentially, and I'm by no means any expert here, but I think maybe it's kind of those traits that have made you successful, that confidence or whatever label you want to put on it. But because that strays from the perceived norm of what can people expect of a man and female roles in business, you know, and the same with kind of men, if they're empathetic, they're not the macho alpha male. So they stray from that. Maybe that's the thing that

Claire (: 38:33

Thank

Okay.

Chris Whyte (: 38:45

other people have an issue with and you know, and that is genuinely their problem. But you kind of being assertive, that's probably better word for it, isn't it rather than aggressive, but you know, that's probably got you to where you are. I think going on, obviously, what you said earlier about kind of being asked kind of when when or if you're to have children by investors,

I think that's personally, that's got nothing to do with business, because if you're building a business, you're going to have people around you. So

you know, and how many women work through anyway, founders, know plenty of women founders who are back at work a few weeks later, but you know, what are kind of challenges can you kind of think of that's specific to kind of gender, but you know, any challenges you face that male founders might not that you've come across?

Claire (: 39:12

Steven.

Sexism is the only one that would potentially be one I've really not come across that much. I'm lucky, wrong word, fortunate potentially. My background is my dad isn't an entrepreneur and in business. I've grown up in an engineering environment where there's a lot of men and I've always been okay with that. It's never been something that's truly bothered me.

But I can imagine for some people that haven't experienced that, it's tricky, right? I've been, more often than not, my meetings are eight men that remember me. And I don't even notice. Very sometimes you do. And sometimes you're ignored and you feel like there was one meeting where one of my senior team said they treated you like a daughter throughout that. That's annoying. That's really annoying. Someone treats you like a daughter or like a kid. When you're in your first season, you don't want to be treated like a kid.

But no one, when they're running a company, to be like, yeah, even if they're 19. So yeah, that was frustrating. Well, I've been kind of okay with it. We've created an environment here of the team where we're 14, 15 people, depending on you want to count our fractional CFO or not. We have five women, which is unheard of for a hardware company. So we're quite heavily women. So it really doesn't feel like that's different for us. We've built an environment where.

it's normalized and any problem that women would have is felt by a third of our organization. So it's not about any disparity or anything. It's very much part of the norm.

Chris Whyte (: 41:08

What you're saying there about being the only woman in the room and not necessarily having as loud a voice. And I'm getting deja vu now, because I think I mentioned on the last podcast I recorded, but I'm reading Creativity, Inc. at the moment by one of the Pixar founders. And that's quite an interesting journey, like an autobiography to read, because a few chapters he dedicates to the women that he worked and the women directors and how they

Claire (: 41:23

Okay.

It's

Chris Whyte (: 41:38

they recognized what they were alerted to, I suppose, they become aware that there was an imbalance in terms of the movies and the films, kind of the crew that made them up. they had a minority of women leaders. So they put together like a working lunch group of women who kind of various different levels, but they would always bring in a guest speaker and that could be a woman or a male. it was, they'd always be talking about how to.

Claire (: 41:51

you

you

Chris Whyte (: 42:07

had to get ahead and get what you want in life. And I thought that was quite, quite interesting, you know, because one of them, they were talking about the voice and presence in meetings. And literally, he talks about getting, the women around the lunch table to stand up and tell tell the group what they want, but then tell it loud. mean, I'm probably not doing it justice when I'm talking about it. Yeah.

Claire (: 42:30

With scary things like, you

know, Bad Blood or anyone that's seen the film about the Elizabeth. don't know, sounding voice leaves my mind, but Theranos, she used to speak in a deep voice. It's so sad that people feel me to do that to, I'm about to try and, my brain is tricky, it's doing that. I'm not going to go lower. The film needs to do that to be taken seriously. That's madness.

Chris Whyte (: 42:45

Yeah.

I

Claire (: 42:55

And if I ever start doing that, please feel free to travel to London Bridge and slap me because that's not right. That's just not right at all. I tried to be inauthentic. I remember back in 23, I had someone advise me that I should be more professional at work and that I should have my work self, my home self. So tried this for maybe two months and I felt that I was being someone at work that was inauthentic and I kept cracking.

Chris Whyte (: 43:01

You

Claire (: 43:18

I kept cracking and doing things I was deeply embarrassed about because it was like you were being blue the whole time and then suddenly a flash of red came out and it was such a change that it felt really weird, unnatural. So I'm not going to try and be anyone but myself, but a slightly more professional version that swears a bit less. And that's my, that's my aim. We're, we're all going to be ourselves, but a bit more professional. And if that means my voice is not going be really low and authoritative, so be it.

Chris Whyte (: 43:47

I think I'm probably just a little bit more Midlands around my friends, but other than that, I'm the same person. I'm not speaking to clients and candidates, but yeah, one of my old bosses, he used to say to his son, who was probably about four five at the time, he said he had a work voice and a home voice and his work voice was very squeaky. he believed... No, that was quite funny.

Claire (: 43:57

Thank you.

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 44:13

So, well, I think, we've ticked off quite a lot of key topics there really and got kind of got into the weeds with some stuff there. let's look at kind of moving forward, kind of things that you're looking forward to. know we mentioned before the call, obviously you're doing something as a group, actually, something really, really important. You've raised quite a lot of money so far, haven't you? So, and

for anyone watching, it will explain.

running gear that she's wearing, but perhaps you could tell us about the marathon that you're training for.

Claire (: 44:38

Yeah,

absolutely. So I am currently training for a marathon April 6th in Brighton with my family, running with my cousin, my brother and another cousin. Sadly, when my cousin's trained so hard, she broke her femur. So she has had to pull out. It's actually absurd how hard she must have pushed herself to have done that. And

that tells you the amount of effort that I'm now having to put in and a panic to compete with these people. So sadly my sister passed away last year, so we're running in memory and also to raise money for diagnostics. And we have raised to date 80,000 pounds, that's It's a lot of money. now, so the marathon is from the recording six weeks away.

Chris Whyte (: 45:04

Yeah.

incredible.

Claire (: 45:25

And of course I'm doing a lot of last minute training. booked a physio, a chiropractor, a nutritionist. get my gait analyzed and I'm panicking is what you can hear there. I'm really doing all the 1 % things, which if I just started training one month earlier, would have made so much more difference. But hey, we're here now. So my team have very kindly, we run once a week together and this week was our biggest running club to date. Five of us went together and we ran 7K. It was lovely. And

Chris Whyte (: 45:49

It's amazing.

Claire (: 45:52

We will keep doing so until the marathon. So we are, yeah, we're doing it together. It's a nice thing to do. talking, it's also just good to run and talk about things. We're not what worked, what other stuff, which is not an opportunity you get that often, embarrassingly. Yeah. Very proud, but also it means that I'm in running kit in the office probably too often.

Chris Whyte (: 46:13

I think there's plenty of people wear running kit and they don't actually do any running. So I think you're absolutely fine. And the amount you've raised is incredible.

Claire (: 46:23

We're

really proud of it. We set a target of £50,000. We smashed it up to £75,000 and we've already smashed it again. We've got six weeks to go. There's some calls that are really important and this one's really important to me. I've been mentioning it every wedding, every social occasion I've been to. If people would like to donate, I'm sure the link will be in chat.

Chris Whyte (: 46:30

Yeah.

We're gonna put

the link in the show notes. I'm going to post about it and wax a lyrical on LinkedIn, because I think it's such an amazing cause. Yeah, it's incredible. Have you done a marathon before or is this your first one? Yeah.

Claire (: 46:47

Thank you.

They were when I was 22 and a bit lighter

and a bit younger, a bit more sprightly in four hours. Amy just won a 330. I can't believe I'm saying that publicly. I'm terrified. yeah, thinking some toast frost and hopefully I have my toes at the end of it.

Chris Whyte (: 47:08

Well if you get the break the 330 mark I think you're then in line for doing the Boston Marathon aren't you? I think they've got pretty harsh...

Claire (: 47:15

I'll don't say that. I'll

get addicted and then we'll suddenly end up being marathon runner as a hobby. not, that'd be too time consuming. I to run a startup too.

Chris Whyte (: 47:21

Well,

you could tie that in with an investment trip because there's lots of life sciences businesses out there, isn't

Claire (: 47:29

I like your attitude. Thank you. It's

actually funny. obviously our technology is sewage analysis. And so I was thinking, what festivals do I want to go to? Maybe we could put the tech at the festival. Just trying to tie things together in life works very well.

Chris Whyte (: 47:38

Yeah?

Well, yeah, you could get a trip down to Villa Park and see a black Sabbath when they roll Ozzy out. That's all that.

Claire (: 47:51

Exactly,

some good analysis. So that's one thing I'm looking forward to, type 2 fun this year. And we're also, I'm looking forward to closing some money in the company and going back to customers. We are going out to customers this year and we're going out to hospitals and farms for avian flu. Avian flu, over a million birds have been killed already this year. The price of eggs has impacted the US.

It was $22 for a pack of six eggs in one store in the US recently. Yeah, because so many birds are being killed in the US for avian flu. We have a problem here. It's not as expensive here yet. Hopefully it isn't. So we're looking at these sorts of problems and doing testing for those. But we're also speaking to cruise ships. We're also speaking to the military. We're also speaking to all these different sectors. We have a really exciting few years ahead.

Chris Whyte (: 48:16

What?

Claire (: 48:39

I'm really excited to get into customers' pockets, which is a better phrase than customers' sewers. But it's going to be a... We've been very introspective as a company, building the tech, talking to customers, understanding their problems. But fundamentally, we spent three years building. a deep tech company. We've got patents now. We've built the hardware. We need to scale it and get out to customers. There's going to be stuff we've forgotten. And that's this year. This year, we're putting 10 to 20 devices out. We're learning what we... or learning things we didn't realise.

Chris Whyte (: 48:43

Hahaha

Claire (: 49:07

And then in 26 will be a big ramp up for us really getting out there and getting market domination because our moat is going to be both in the hardware with the patents, but also in the data. Imagine if we have enough hardware across the UK, you can create a virus map of a whole country where you can watch in real time novel illnesses spread across country. That's really the aim. And once we have the market domination, that data moat will be huge because we'll have the historical data as well.

It's going to be a really exciting few years. I personally have enjoyed the past three as an overall picture and I'm sure that the next three will not be in any way dissimilar in having their lows but having a lot more highs.

Chris Whyte (: 49:50

Yeah, I'm excited just hearing you talk about it and yeah, that's incredible. It's been one hell of a ride on our short kind of journey so far with you, but certainly looking forward to following it. Yeah, really have. And I know, this year is about, like you say, getting into customers' pockets. So briefly, I mean, we may be a bit late to the press with this one, but the business development roles at

Claire (: 50:03

We've achieved a lot since October.

It's just funny.

Chris Whyte (: 50:19

you're looking to fill, you know, anyone, anyone that's listening or anyone that knows anyone that's listening, you know, that's got business development experience.

Claire (: 50:24

Hmm. Experience, infection

prevention, control, experience in sales, preferably doesn't need to be humans can actually either be animals or humans because we're all the same sort of, so experience and infection prevention, control and sales is our aim, but you can't be afraid of lifting up a manhole because this role, like we all have to live up to that. I always spent my weekend playing with animal poo, like genuinely myself. Well, exactly. Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 50:49

Who doesn't?

Claire (: 50:51

No way at all. Because that's part of the job. We are testing our own sewage in our office. Last week we found an illness in our team and that person is not at work this week because we don't want to catch it. Our job involves that. I'm not shying away from the fact that that's real because if you can't do that you shouldn't be here.

Chris Whyte (: 51:09

Well, I think the benefits that come with the technology far outweigh the less glamorous bits, let's say.

Claire (: 51:16

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, again, one of our first use cases was in an office, my dad's office. This is why we really grew like that. What this is one of the anchors that keeps the company going in my head is we were testing my dad's office of 150 people. My dad wasn't very well at the time, yet he still going to work. And we were able to tell him and others that weren't very well, what days they could or couldn't go to work. And

People in the office that were immunocompromised didn't catch a COVID. Now there are people everywhere across the UK that are going to work at risk every single day that are immunocompromised. More of us will be immunocompromised as time goes on, as medication gets better. How awesome would it be to be at work and say, we've got increased risk of neuro, increased risk of spiritual viruses. And you know in yourself that you can wear a mask, you can...

sanitize more, you can be aware of your risk in that environment and reduce your risk. That's the world I want to live in. So when times get tough, it's important to remember that people will have better lives because of our tech.

Chris Whyte (: 52:18

That's incredible. So anyone will share a link to your job posting on there. And you know, if it's, if it's still open by the time this goes live, yeah. I hope, you know, never know. I'm not a, I'm not a sales recruiter, but there'll be some salespeople out there. I'm sure that they don't mind rolling their sleeves up and getting stuck in. But Claire, this has been, this has been awesome. I've really enjoyed our conversation and yeah.

Claire (: 52:24

Yeah, still up there. Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 52:42

I'll share the link to the Just Giving site as well. And if anyone wants to reach out to you to talk about the work you're doing and perhaps I know you like doing talking spots as well. And that's been quite helpful in terms of raising some cash for the cause. So yeah.

Claire (: 52:56

raising cash and also customers how we found most

of our customers today is talking to people who knew

Chris Whyte (: 53:02

Yeah.

So, yeah, if there's anyone listening that would be interested in talking to you about some speaking spots, then please do reach out. I'll put the link in the show notes. But Claire, thank you so much for joining me.

Claire (: 53:15

Bye, Chris

Chris Whyte (: 53:17

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Why Design. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to leave a review wherever you're listening. It really helps others discover the podcast. And while you're at it, why not share it with a friend or colleague who do enjoy it too. If you'd like to stay connected or explore more about the work we're doing at Kodu.

feel free to visit teamkodu.com or connect with me, Chris Whyte on LinkedIn. Thanks again for listening and I'll see you next time.