Microemulsion electrolyte is a new type of electrolyte that serves as a 'platform chemistry' rather than a single product. Thomas Nann and Allegro Energy discovered it.

For the rest of us: most batteries are defined by their chemistry (lithium, vanadium, etc.). Allegro's tech is a new approach to how electrolytes work altogether and it can be used across different types of storage devices.

How do you bring something with a name like that to market?

They first applied it to supercapacitors (another energy storage device), which didn't pan out commercially in Australia due to the market geography problem described in the episode.

After, they pivoted to using it in flow batteries. These are large-scale, grid-connected storage systems where liquid electrolytes are pumped through the system in a continuous loop (hence "flow").

The key reasons for this direction:

  • It's not flammable
  • It enables long-duration energy storage at grid scale
  • It's a platform, meaning the same electrolyte innovation can power multiple product types

Heard Around The Grove

Blake Newcomer • June 8, 2026

That milestone took four years from incorporation and about a decade of foundational research before that. Here's what we can take from the conversation.

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In this week's issue

  • From Lab to Grid
  • Reading the Room
  • The Hardware Scaling Trap

From Lab to Grid

Perfectionism

In Thomas' words, academics make the worst founders. This is until they can unlearn the thing academia rewards most. Perfectionism.

In research, you don't ship until the paper is ready. In a startup, that instinct becomes a trap. "It is actually never good enough. You just have to do it at some point."

When it came to Allegro's first pass at market entry, things were as far from perfect at you can get.

The problem with the supercapacitor direction was geography. The products that use supercapacitors, like light rail systems, aren't manufactured in Australia. Even when a tram rolling through Newcastle ran on the exact category of technology Allegro was building, the company that built that tram was Spanish and would never consider sourcing components from an Australian startup.

Light rail system in New Castle AU

It took a year for them to learn and accept this.

The pivot solidified when Origin (larget Utility in Australia) reached out asking about flow batteries. Allegro was reluctant at first. Pivoting to an entirely new product class when you're already early-stage is scary and admission to failure.

Eventually they concluded this: the flow battery market in Australia was real, Origin was willing to invest, and the underlying electrolyte platform could support large scale deployment.

Sometimes you only strike out because you were swinging at the wrong pitches.

PSA for all Academics-turned-entreprenuers

  1. Thomas speaks of the hammer and nail problem. Someone discovers something remarkable and then goes around asking people to find a use for it. "I've got this great hammer. Find me a nail." It rarely works. His advice is to start with the problem. When you walk into a room leading with a problem, you're having a different conversation than when you walk in leading with a technology.
  2. Calibrate how much to explain. His instinct from teaching is to go deeeeeep. His rule now: ask early whether the person has heard of a flow battery. One question tells him where to start. Read the room and react.
  3. Hardware always costs more and takes longer than you plan for. The typical startup playbook of iterate small, give things away, get traction is basically impossible. He's watched two hardware companies in adjacent spaces die from the incremental approach. They built smaller versions to build toward the market, burned cash at each step, and ran out before they reached the scale where the economics worked. Allegro's answer was to skip the incremental path entirely. They decided early that they wouldn't build anything smaller than a megawatt. It's a hard line that limits their customer set, but it's also what keeps them alive.

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