Advano is 10-man startup out of Silicon Valley that does batteries. More specifically, Advano does lithium-ion batteries with new applied technology using surface functionalized silicon nanoparticles. Which, to me, and likely you, is one of those things I hear, have no idea what it means, but it sounds intense. More on this later.
This fall, Advano just finished up being one of the main features in the summer cohort for Silicon Valley-based accelerator, Y Combinator, and are now batting away investors like flies on honey. Soon, Advano will be closing its first venture round.
At first, this sounds like a pretty standard timeline for a startup. Get some seed, get into an accelerator, get intuitional investors scale a bit and then sail away to Aruba. Except, for Advano, this is that moment that has been on the horizon for three years since their birth in 2014.
Up until February 2017, Advano was a one-man team, founder Alex Girau, with no investments and a whole slew of part-time contractors and university undergrads. The only thing harder than the first customer is the first employee and/or co-founder. These were the woes of several years.
(See the original posting on Medium here.)