Iain Percy is the founder of Artemis Technologies and a two-time Olympic Gold Medalist.
In this episode, we talk about:
– How he fell in love with the water
– His work with professional sailing teams around the world
– Building the world’s first electric workboat and electric passenger ferry
– The pros/cons of bringing an Olympic mindset to business
– Limiting time vs limiting the scope of projects
– Why he decided to base the business in Belfast
– The necessity for green technology to make sense financially
– His vision for maritime decarbonisation
– And his dream of opening up a commuter ferry service to Belfast
Check it out.
https://bestofbelfast.org/stories/iain-percy-artemis-technologies
Ian you’ve spent a lot of time in the water over your life well I was sometimes trying to avoid getting actually in the water that was a bad move when you capsize in a race but yeah on the water in the water my whole life really what is it about the water keeps
Pulling you back I think I I first got into sailing introduced to it I was probably six years old and I remember I was just thrown out on a little wooden boat on my own and you know slowly starting to get a handle for it and just
You know real sense of freedom I think when you’re young you you’re used to being told what to do by your mom and dad or by teachers and suddenly you’re on a little boat in the ocean it all feels so big so wide and that and that’s
Kind that it’s that that feeling stayed with me it’s kind of changed and grown over the years for me the water is about is still about that sense of freedom in that you same bit of water connects everywhere and I love that I always love
The fact that you go out on our boat in Belfast Harbor you actually that same bit of water could connect every country of the world and you know that that I real believer in that and how everyone’s the same everyone’s equal and the water for me represents that a little bit yeah
Our local play park where we take our kids they’ve got a we diagram of the water cycle and just you know there’s the river there too and my three-year-old’s like so it’s the same water that just goes round and around I’m like yeah get your head around that
One exactly well we get a lot of it coming from the sky yeah quite a lot of it so you’ve had an amazing career as an Olympian three medals unbelievable we could spend two with you going into that but what was the transition like for you going from
Racing boats to building them um I had a kind a smooth trans well I I did three Olympics and then I did a competition called the America’s Cup which is a sailing competition a little bit like Motorsport Formula 1 it’s smaller scale but but still you know a real technology
Race and so I was running a Swedish team in my last job there up to 2017 and and by then that’s a team of about 150 people it’s very much an engineering challenge manag challenge the sailing bit although I was still involved I realized was not the biggest driver of
How well you did so as the manager there and the team manager was already getting quite involved on those sides of and that always interests me I think even in my Olympic sailing what I enjoyed about the racing is the validation of the decisions and the teamwork it’s not so
Much the you know I’m not one to get on the podium and care about it cheering at the end it’s about you know there’s been a small team of you know how much effort you’ve put in and you feel a sense of pride in those decisions and so for me
That’s no different as I move into um running a business here in Belfast it’s exactly that same feeling I get with the team when we when we have good days when we validate our decisions the IP puts exactly the outputs for me is what proves that you’ve got the process right
But it’s the process I enjoy it’s the working with other people it’s discovering things my most fun days when I was Olympic racing is probably when we were testing a new idea and in the tests well away from the racing you realized it was working and that that was binary
And you could you could set feel that sense of pride in the team that had come up with it yeah and any technical experience alongside your your athletic career well before I got into sailing I did economics and math at University so I not not engineering but mathematical
Modeling a lot um with the economics so I’ve brought a I used quite a lot of that conceptually now that we’re trying to always and probably one of the concepts of racing and and and running the race team and therefore indirectly the engineering team is always trying to model in mathematically what you’re
Trying to achieve first Define what winning is you know it’s not it’s simple at some level get around a course quicker than someone else but then when you’ve got game theory and you’re competing with others so Define what winning is and then try and build models mathematical models that Express that
That’s really what I’ve been doing for the whole part of my career and harps back a little bit yes to my time at Uni mm mhm and if you think about what winning looks like for emus the business what does winning look like for you guys
And how are you going about that well we have two kind of primary things we’re trying to achieve and one leads to the other you know one is to have a successful sustainable business and the second is to decarbonize Maritime and and one thing I learned you know it’s
Obvious but it’s sometimes forgotten you can make a technology that is decarbonizing but if no one buys it because it’s not economically viable right it doesn’t decarbonize in it yeah it’s nice Theory isn’t it yeah and I went to I went to a talk with Tesla when
I was back in sanran and they it was exactly the same point being made there I mean it’s it you know they claim a similar thing that they’re trying to decarbonized Automotive or they were when they started well they still are but you know what I mean that was their
Motivation but again if no one buys your cars you don’t decarbonize anything so I think for us that’s where that’s what winning is it’s seeing a lot of our vessels on wind farm arms or gas platforms fairies around the world and knowing that that represents both we made the correct decisions for our
Customers but we also are decarbonizing in the in in the same way yeah it’s uh we we talked to a lot of creatives and musicians and things like that on the show and there’s always that delicate dance between creation and profit or passion and profit I suppose you could
Say and it’s interesting how the same framework is app play here in a way yeah it is and you you got to be you’ve got to be careful both ways you know cuz if you’re too idealistic about things you’ll never achieve commercial success and then you you need Commercial Success
To be able to change the dial and do anything so if you don’t have commercial success but equally if you throw away and just look for commercial success and forget what the original motivation was you know you can make a lot of money in other industries that are prettyy
Polluting yeah well that’s the thing it’s yeah if you’re if you’re optimizing for money there’s probably better ways to do and easier ways to do but it doesn’t actually make an impact in the world that you’re trying to make yeah and I guess one of the reasons I spend a
Fair bit of the time in polic policy or trying to talk with people around policy because it’s trying to be very transparent with policy makers to say this is where we’re at economically this is where we’re at environmentally economically is either less money or and therefore can we can
Benefit an industry or we’re about the same or in some cases slightly more then say well you made the decision because at the moment you you can nudge without having an envir a you can have an environmental positive impact without having a kind of hit on standard of
Living here or you can just trying to be as open as possible about that we we always tried to be in a place where there was a genuine win-win M and because of that sadly in Green Technology you have to get you get slightly Niche because one of the things
I’m always at pains to point out is the energy transition is not full of win-wins it has to have hits in the short term hopefully only on standard of living but I don’t particularly believe and and I think in business we see this that the movement of other businesses
Because we’re B2B will have to is driven by the finances and therefore we need policy change as well um fortunately in a lot of our markets where the a ferry does 200 miles a day we save so much energy we also can make it more cost effective but that’s not always the case
Sometimes us as Society will have to pay yeah and so you guys created the world’s first electric workboat the world’s first passenger Ferry how did you guys end up in those to markets again it’s driven by the economics it is um fundamentally why we can be a viable kind of range with
Battery electric is because we by flying we reduce by coming out the water on these Wings underwater we reduce the drag significantly but there’s a lot of stuff there there’s a bit of cost involved in all that stuff to make that technology happen and so the way that
Cost is Justified is by the savings so the and it’s pretty linear the more miles you do the more savings you make so so the industries that work for us are the maritime industries that are where they’re used a lot so that first of all pretty much R role rules out
Recreational people because people see a Bo you know have a boat they go I’m not electrifying my Canal Bo anytime you go out once a weekend uh one weekend a year you you know you’re never paying back that initial cost but if you’re a ferry going every day 200 miles a day or
You’re a pilot boat or you’re an offshore wind vessel you commercially that you’re being used every day and so your savings justify the initial cost in fact over a very short period of time you’re ahead and when you can show those sums up front and even take the risk out
Of it for customers it’s much much easier to make the decision yeah no I like that being driven by the market while also trying to lead change on a on a more macro level as well how’ you end up in Belfast it’s a funny it’s a funny one
People often ask that and the genuine reason which is quite nice why it is it’s because of the people here and and and not in a woly way I’ll give you exactly why because we were looking for a place so we needed a deep Port so was
Kind of a fundamental that we needed because we needed to be putting our vessels into the water so we needed to be by the coast and literally the reason we’re here is when I came here I met with Joe Neil from Belfast Harbor met with the university and you know being
Frank they met with me and they were very they were very welcoming they introduced us to more people they said that they would be part of a Consortium and get behind it and it grew other places around the UK didn’t grasp it in that way very polite
Of course but it was yeah yeah yeah yeah we’ll get back to you and I think I often wonder why that was and I think I think here I think there’s a couple of things I think one that has been industry leading from Belfast over the centuries from Northern Ireland and so
They don’t think of it as a pipe dream in the way maybe other parts of the UK do you know and um yeah you could say finan in London is strong but you know not many places have lead Industries like they have ship building or or maching particularly boats and so it’s
Not a get out of here you dream to such an extent and and then I think I think if I’m being an outsider looking in there’s that there’s been that starving of opportunity because of years of division that people are are Keen to embrace behind they are so much the
Irony of the level of collaboration I see between businesses and individuals here is really really strong and I think there’s that kind of we just want to get on with the having success and enjoying working together and so that’s the genuine reason it was that the people
Here that I spoke to about this project took it seriously didn’t tell me to get out the room and got behind it and and and you know collectively the Belfast Maritime Consortium that we became have made a success of it so you know they were right yeah there’s a hunger to
Belfast that I really appreciate and I laugh when I was 18 I was in the States for three years when I came back I loved that energy like there was a desire and you could say as a post Good Friday agreement where there’s kind of all this pent up entrepreneurial energy just like
Starting to punch through but I wanted to be a part of it and that’s why why I love working here and why I love being based in the city as well because you you get to tap into that no I very much felt the same and and I I yeah I think
It is it’s a hunger is the right way to describe it a hunger and a willingness and uh an openness to things you know that comes from as I say maybe that hisory maybe that history of success and that starvation of opportunity that there was for a period means it’s let’s
Let’s go for it and that’s what you feel and you get that we get that from our team too yeah that that desire to go for it yeah what’s been the pros and cons of bringing an Olympian mindset to business uh probably probably asking the wrong person you should ask the people
Who I work with but um look in all the race teams I was involved in the there was a Clarity around timing particularly um because races started when the races started and we and I got used to very much changing the output to do the best
You can in the time you have and in business I would say it’s more a case of following a process to do what you set out to do and so for me I bring a a kind of inherent desire to do things when you have to slip time scope
Or money to um slip money and scope and keep to time because that’s what I’ve always done and that isn’t necessarily how normal business runs or necessarily should run um and so there’s that clashing at times of that but you know that that that that’s inherent in me from my racing and I
Think um I hope that is positive but you know obviously when you push really hard on things and you’ve got to understand the need for work life balance and and in areas of sport that probably isn’t there as much people are they they kind of given up on the work life balance in
Sport and I I long since had to give up on the world life balance so um but look I I think I’m lucky I think it works I think the fact that we do have a a a core from the old racing world that’s there that that is a positive and I
Think it runs through and and there’s I think the world the other thing that we bring from racing that’s are positive is that is that idea of really being a team mhm and the friendship uh inside and outside work the informal communication the desire to have a mission and I think
That’s something that’s I hope that people enjoy within emus yeah there’s uh I was talking to a programmer the other day and there’s a kind of new programming workflow called Shape Up and the idea is that you have fixed time but the scope is variable yeah that’s the
First time I was introduced to that idea and I understand where in in your industry and where you’re at that there’s there’s tension there I I personally I like fix time here’s the deadline we’re going to ship a podcast we’re going to ship a new process we’re
Going to ship a new product at this time kind of no matter what and we’ll figure out what that looks like in terms of quality levels etc etc yeah I know I agree and I I’ve seen so much achieved in the last period of racing Cycles when um there’s an element that everyone’s
Showing their hands you learn fast through that but it’s I I think I I think my feeling would be the same as you that you tend to um not have to slip the scope as much as you like as you think if you and actually sometimes being forced to make decisions is the
Best thing to do yeah yeah action you learn a lot through re action has that tension increased the bigger the business has got CU I imagine in the early stages that propensity that action is extremely useful yeah no I think that’s fair I mean as you get they always talk about
Businesses as they get above 120 150 people get much harder to to run in the same informal ways in the same and you guys are at the 150 more we’re about yeah more 180 190 and I think um so processes do need to come in processes
Are so much more set around um fixed scope fixed work packages fixed period of time and they’re much harder to move a larger organization or larger projects to change scope because that’s a lot of communication whereas um sticking to scope and the time being more of an
Output is much much easier to manage in a bigger setup and um and I think it as you get larger you can make you can make planning and organizations more process and program driven when you need to make quick decisions you need to have projects run much more by kind of
Complete the main experts M um and that doesn’t work as you grow so I I think we we are inevitably in a bit of a process of change and I’m probably the ly holding it back still wanting to just snap decisions and get stuff done what’s
It been like for you personally as a leader to start to let go of things as you know everything gets bigger um yeah I think I missed bits of it for sure I was much more involved technically in the race team than I am now um
Ultimately a a race team is the same as a producing a commercial product without the need to sell it or Finance the business so now I’ve got to worry about selling it and financing the business that ends up taking a lot of my time and so I miss being as involved on the
Technical I enjoy that exactly what we’ve just been talking about the need to make a decision in the hole in the round considering time scope cost but also customer product what are you trying to achieve and making those trade-off decisions I used to enjoy doing that in the racing world and I’m
Not as involved we’re lucky to have great people in our team that do that I’m sure a lot better than I could but um so so I miss it personally I think I think you know it’s an inevitability about it I have a responsibility to make
Sure the business is funded and we can keep doing the things that we say we’re setting out to do so that’s got to be priority number one so I end up focusing my time there maybe more than I used to sure so you you do have the racing side
To the business like how important is that performance element and how does that kind of shape the rest of the business if that makes sense yeah we started out as a Consulting business in 2017 I mean we were essentially the design race design team and myself and
Um so we were doing design projects for other race teams sometimes running race teams as a whole for for sponsors and owners and and so and that bid still exists that’s called timus Supply Technologies and and that that was actually where we started um we were always looking to to decarbonize and
Find a product that could hit this kind of economically and environmentally sustainable um so I think so that continues that business grows and it’s going well and people are going to see some cool boats coming here over the next um few months as well sailing around on the lock but
Um I think it works really well because on a technical level it works really well because working with race um Sailors in this case often they’re very very sensitive to the accuracy of our physics modeling um and so they’re very picky I mean if it doesn’t feel right
They’re you about it and that feeds back directly into our modeling of autonomous fairies because one of the amazing things about autonomous kind of oxy autonomous things is you don’t get feedback very you get feedback for data but you don’t get feedback in such a kind of instant human that doesn’t feel
Right way so you can end up going down with assumptions that are wrong so that’s a real positive feedback I think the other aspect is it’s enjoyed by the team I think us being involved in racing um it’s fun to be part of you know vents of fun to watch knowing that
You’ve been part of that success and watching it on the TV so I think that’s I think that’s this also so I think it’s kind of Staff engagement and just this feedback of right physics model validation yeah so it’s almost like you you get a lot of innovation learnings
From the the RAC side that you can then Ru out across the your entire portfolio for lack of a better term some of its ideas I would say mainly it’s validation of physics-based simulation models so it’s validation of how say foils are treating waves and how um the motion of
Boats is in waves it’s more at a fundamental level of validation there’s an element of ideas um but it’s more it’s more validation I would say it’s the strongest link between our racing world and our and our commercial vessel design yeah I was on a call the other
Day with a guy in where was he he’s a VC guy in Singapore and uh he was talking about Artemis and I was like okay Artemis is it’s definitely spreading out across this little planet of ours what are you guys doing around the world um I didn’t know about the VC guy
Um yeah very very I think we will all end up being 95% an export business so our customers are worldwide so our activity is and I are just love you right now I guess I do no we have a good relationship with them but I think
Things like yeah so as I said our customers are driven by their use case more than anything else if you have a a vessel that is used every single day and needs to go fast it’s another critical element to our technology so generally people being transported then we’re
Probably the only people in the world that take that box and um so we offer this thing that’s cheaper and environmentally friendly so to the right it is Niche but to that Niche we’re kind of gold dust so going around to where that where that activity is and fast
Fairies are pretty evenly spread between Europe us and austr Asia um and wind is quite focused North Sea actually at the moment but growing rapidly around the world pilot boats is everywhere ports all around the world depends a lot so the criteria for our approach to customers worldwide is
Really their transfer time if if you’re in a really Port that you drop off your pilots on their ships one mile away there not the customers for us but the ones like Belfast Harbor that are 15 odd miles away we’ll be saving them quarter of a million quid fuel every year when
When they’re using our pilot boat here they’ll be happy about that so you guys have have fallen into don’t mean that flippantly you’ve you’ve arrived at a very very very hyp specific Niche that in a local market business would would tank but you’ve been able to take that
Hyper Niche reach a global market and now you’ve got incredible business I like that idea I love niches I love the fact that you can take it anywhere it’s a niche where it’s a very strong value proposition with a lot of I a lot of barriers to entrance complexity IP
Investment and so and it’s in a market where people appreciate it they they want these Solutions but it’s physically very very hard to do so not many people do it so if you’re talking to an oil and gas transfer you know they’re they’re really Keen for lots of reasons to
Decarbonize their activities because they’re pulling carbon out the ground so if you can offer them opportunities to transfer their crew out to Rigs and Islands um in a zero emissions manner you know really giving them something that that’s priceless to them well I would say pricess they don’t
Seem to think quite Priceless there is a price there seems unfortunately be a price robing up in if you kind of think about your your big picture Vision here what does that look like and what’s the next few steps to get there um well we need a way to scale globally I think
That’s the interesting stuff for us and the process we’re going through now that Belfast is our Hub is always going to be our Hub we’re always going to keep the key complex manufacturing and Engineering here in Belfast we’re determined to do that we built a team
We’re kind of we we anchored by our talent as well and by our team um but we to deliver around the world we need to have boat building hubs where our customers are so we we build Motors and batteries and hydro foils and systems effectively here um and around the world
We need to have a supplier of boats in the US and Asia so building scale out to have a global footb on the boat bit whilst maintaining this and keeping the IP tight here in Belfast is for the next three years for us and that that’s a huge challenge I mean opening up
Factories around the world and also growing here probably three or four times to then feed the boat building facilities worldwide that’s it you know funny with businesses as they grow they they it’s a sales Challenge and real quickly it flips and it’s an operational challenge interesting so I mean you
Mentioned earli that you know the hospitality of Belfast has been I’ll say helpful in your journey uh there’s lots of people that listen to the show and lots of different niches and industries and parts of the world some people listen to the show because it’s like tto
Crisps for their ears it’s how to stay connected at home how can we help so if you’re talking to you know anyone listening what do you need and how can we help you well I mean I we have been really helped I would say I think I
Think you know for for us I think the the skills that we have here are 80% met by the people which is fantastic and then there’s always 20% that doesn’t happen to be served because there isn’t a much of a of a history and I think that the really powerful message things
Like this does is telling the world what I know which is not only is a great place to work it’s a great place to live you know and and it’s not known that um and so for us attracting the 20% of people who aren’t naturally um fed by
The universities or colleges here which is ironically actually about some things a bit more like Naval architect where although it was a massive industry has dropped off whereas when you talk about mechanical engineers there nowhere like you know the students that are coming out the university here just fantastic
Skill set um so I think just for us spreading the word about as we all do about what a great place this is to work and live really helps Industries like us um and then I guess as as consumers here you know we will have we’re really Keen
To launch this demonst ation service here I mean one of the main things is we want the first place that has a zero missions High speeded foiling ferry to be here in Belfast where he came from and I think there is some natural roots for it here and just you know getting on
Your bike and getting on the ferry and and realizing that there’s another way you know having a beer while you wait to jump on the ferry back at the end of the day so uh you know don’t you know Embrace that it’s a world of way of life
That I’ve seen in s Fran and other parts of the world that um can really add to people’s day so jump on that furry when it runs love it man favorite place to get in the water in Northern Ireland real quick yeah get out well get on the water
In general too here it’s a cool place to be saing where’s your favorite place in North nland to get in the water uh strf for lot probably I live down and like just it’s I mean it’s unbelievable it’s like swallows and Amazons all the little
Islands and and pubs I mean if if that was anywhere else you wouldn’t get a wouldn’t get a 25 20 deep at the bar but you can go and sit in these cool little spots and and just enjoy the surroundings it’s uh you’re very very lucky here and thanks for your time
Really appreciate it cheers
1 Comment
Very interesting and personal episode . Thanks !