Thanks to all for their accounts of the AMS and tour. I've watched the ASM a few times now and I'm excited about what I've seen and read.
Since his first use of it I've been hyper-focused on the "Near Term Commercial Activities and Goals" slide. During his presentation Dr. Lebby inaccurately stated he change it a little. It has changed significantly over the last 12 months. Not in format but in content. It's lighter in substance, easier to read, but has less quantitative information to use as a gauge of progress. I've listed some changes over several iterations below:
- List of corporate symbols removed in latest version. I like the change as it was never clear to me what the list was. Was it companies they were in negotiations with or just examples of the type of companies they thought could be customers.
- Phrase "Typical expected cycle from value proposition to customer is ~18 months" was removed. Not thrilled to see that gone as it was useful for setting expectations. My guess is the pace of negotiations and/or the new focus on Tier 1s pushed them to remove in an effort to manage expectations.
- Value proposition. Dropped all of the push/pull language. Helpful for me as the distinction between two was never clear. I'm sure others feel differently. Simplified or dropped underlying bullets. Much lighter and targeted now. Highlighted the "turbo-boosting". Spelled out Artificial Intelligence. Makes it clear that AI and Silicon Photonics of high importance.
- Prospects: number of prospects went from 12 to 20 to "many". The word "identified" dropped. My optimistic impression: the wording change reflects a shift from LWLG having to connect with and pitch targeted companies to selectively meeting with organizations approaching them post-OFC.
- Leads and Selection: Similar story. Numbers gone.
- Modified "Engagement with Tier 1,2, and 3 companies" to "Engagement with companies". I will speculate that this was done to support their new focus on Tier 1s. Why not say that explicitly? My hope is that they are not walking away from any ongoing negotiations with Tier 2s and 3s and did not want to mislead.
- One thing that has not changed (different slide) is their first goal "Make polymers ubiquitous".
My overall impression is that the enthusiastic response from organizations at OFC forced them to pivot in order to reduce the timeline to ubiquity. They no longer have to try and generate interest across a broad potential customer base but can focus on those that have a real need, real interest and are strategically ideal for reaching ubiquity. There is probably some impact to the near term schedule for commercial agreements as they shift to a tier 1 focus but I don't believe they will jettison all their prior work as there may be tier 1s that were in that mix and tier 2s and 3s that were too far along to walk away from.
