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High Power, High Performance Semiconductor Lasers

A discussion with Dr. Wei Gao, President and CEO of Axcel Photonics, Inc.

Interviewed by Global Executive Forum (GEF)

Guest: Dr. Wei Gao, President and CEO of Axcel Photonics

Dr. Wei Gao has more than 16 years of broad hands-on experience and extensive knowledge on epitaxial crystal growth, device design/fabrication, testing and reliability, in depth knowledge on components, packaging, and fiber optical systems. He is the holder of 2 granted U.S. patents, 1 pending US application, and has authored more than 20 journal and conference publications.

Dr. Gao is currently the president and CEO of Axcel Photonics (Axcel), a high power semiconductor laser manufacturing company, including products for medial, printing, and sensing applications, as well as next generation fiber-optic networks.

Before founding Axcel, Dr. Gao worked for Nortel Networks in Optoelectronics Sales and Marketing group reporting directly, while situated in Boston, to the Optoelectronics headquarter in Paignton, UK. During that time, he worked not only for the US Sales and Marketing group, but also supported to Asian Pacific Sales and Marketing group.

Prior to Nortel, Dr. Gao was an early employee of Multiplex in New Jersey. From 1995 to 1998, Dr. Gao was employed at Lasertron, worked on 980 pump laser technology transfer, product development, and manufacturing. Before his industry career, Dr. Gao was a faculty member of Physics Department at Peking University.

GEF: Dr. Gao, Happy New Year to you. Please tell me a little bit about Axcel.

Gao: Happy New Year to you, too. Axcel was initially formed to design and manufacture the next generation of high-power, low-cost, 980 pump lasers for Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier (EDFA) in fiber optic communication system and networks. Later we expanded to 14XX nm lasers for Raman applications also. The company has successfully developed and shipped high-performance products and has received positive feedback from its customers. Since last year, production lines have been further extended to non-telecom areas such as, medical, sensing, industrial, military, and printing applications.

GEF: What made you start Axcel?

Gao: Axcel is one of the Millennium start-ups, though in 2000 not many start ups intended to build up for long-term run and many of them were the "concept" companies. I was in sales and market then and saw too many of them.
I was an engineer before with both physics and engineering degrees. I like to do hand-on work. I enjoy turning an idea into a real product. Axcel was started to focus on nothing but products. I believe that a company can only be successful by making good products that customers are willing to pay for. Based on that concept, Axcel was built for manufacturing. Facility set up and fabrication processes are all tuned for volume manufacturing. The key to make a product is repeatability and reproducibility. We do not intend to use any process that is not reproducible. 

GEF: That was different in 2000. What make you think Axcel can be successful?

Gao: I like challenges and enjoy working together with people, especially good talented people. Axcel is my first start up. Many people told me that it is not easy. I never think it is easy. I spent about 6 months to write up the business plan. Meanwhile I also took the Dale Carnegie classes to sharp my pensile for running a business. I believe in teamwork. My thinking was if I could create a place for people to enjoy working together, we would have people's great potential of creativity and productivity turn into a reality. That is what I have been working on. I believe that will make Axcel a success.!

GEF: It is very thoughtful. I would be very happy to see Axcel to be successful. You have a strong professional background and work experience in engineering, manufacturing, start-up, and sales marketing. That sounds like a well-planned career to start a company.

Gao: I guess I am lucky and Axcel is lucky. Chinese has a saying: "Well planted flowers don't grow well, unintentionally planted trees turn into woods." I didn't plan to start up my own company. I just didn't like to waste my time. I always work hard and never hesitate to do any hand-on work. While I was in Lasertron, I redeveloped 980 pump laser process to get it ready for manufacturing. I also followed it to manufacturing. In manufacturing you are facing crisis and fire fight every day. You need to keep the same process every run to run. It needs a lot of disciplines. As a Ph.D., I didn't appreciate any of the manufacturing rules in the beginning, but after some time I was supporting two shift manufacturing all by myself. I learned a lot of skills in a hard way. After I left Multiplex, I was lucky that I had a chance to work in the Sales and Marketing group in Nortel. I truly enjoyed working over there. We had a great team. It is one of the companies I enjoyed working for. It is all these companies that I have worked for and all the talented people that supported and worked together with me that have helped me build up my experience for Axcel.

GEF: What make Axcel's products special?

Gao: Yield and performance. Axcel has a broad range of products. Many of our products perform better than the existing products on the market. For example, we are the first one in the world demonstrated 1000 mW output power from a 980 nm single-mode semiconductor laser. Our lasers not only have higher output power, but also much better reliability. More importantly our yield is about five times higher than that of our establish competitors. For manufacturing, yield is the key. Higher yield means we have lower cost. We don't need to crack too many wafers; so, we don't need many operators. We produce some extreme high power laser diodes. Our 100 um emitter 650 nm multi-mode lasers output over 6 W powers. No other companies can offer this kind of high-powered lasers. This gives us a great advantage, because producing a high power laser diode costs the same as producing a low power laser diode. With the low cost and high performance we can offer our customers a much better value.

GEF: I saw your news release on your 980 Telco qualifications. Congratulations to you. Anything you want to add for that?

Gao: Telco qualification is definitely a big step for Axcel, which means that we are in an exclusive group of companies that has Telcordia qualification of its products. 980 nm pump laser is one of the products that have highest entry level. When I started Axcel there were three suppliers of 980 pump lasers chip in the world. Two and half years later, we are still facing the three competitors, though there are currently more than 15 start-ups in pump laser area. This qualification validates our advanced technology.
Tang: How do you handle the "Telecom Winter"?

Gao: We are experiencing a very tough time like any other telecom product providers. I don't need add any word to emphasize that. I think we are the lucky ones. As you can see on our website, from the beginning of 2001, we decided to expand our products from single-mode lasers to multimode lasers. The applications are also expanded from highly focused telecom market to medical, sensing, printing, and industrial applications. Our revenue grew very rapidly in the non-telecom area. Our non-telecom business alone would bring us to a success. Our current products wavelength range from 700 nm to 1600 nm. Emitter size varies from single-mode 5 um to multimode, 33 um, 50 um, 100 um, 200 um, 460 um. We also made some special lasers based on customer's specific needs. They like us a lot. 
We also enjoy very much the business in these applications. For example, in the future, if one is having a heart surgery, he or she may benefit from one of our high power lasers.

GEF: A very smart move. That is good for you. Axcel is catching the public attention; I saw the cover page story on Boston Globe on November 27, 2002. It also mentioned your recent product strategic changes. Could you share more with us?

Gao: Yes. The Boston Globe reporter interviewed us. They also sent a photographer to take some pictures inside of our clean room. The newspaper didn't show any photos though. Chris called me a few times by phone and sent emails. I was busy that day. He interviewed our Vice President, Aland Chin. The article covered a lengthy conversation he had with Aland. We are very happy that we have the exposure on the newspaper. 

GEF: That is excellent. How does the market respond to your innovative products?

Gao: Very positively. Our products demonstrated the million-hour operation reliability. Many of these non-telecom applications only need the thousand-hour lifetime. They are very happy to see us as a new supplier in this field. We offer much better performance and reliability. The design in cycle is also much shorter than the telecom applications, which also help us generate the revenue quickly. 
We are also very lucky to have Dr. Aland Chin in our team. He has more than 15 years of experience in the high power broad area lasers. He is a key contributor for our success in the new business. 
Tang: I saw the announcement from Strategies Unlimited that you are invited to give a talk at the up coming Strategies in Optical Amplifiers in San Mateo, California, February 6-7, 2003. Could you tell us more about it? 

Gao: I'm glad that I was invited to give a talk about pump lasers. This is a very important marketing analysis event for amplifiers and pump lasers. My partner attended the conference last year. I'm glad that we have the chance to talk about our perspective for the market this year. My topic is Pump Lasers for Amplifier and Beyond. The detailed information can be found at: 
http://www.strategies-u.com/ConferenceProgram.asp?Conference=2

GEF: Let me change the topic a little bit. You raised $10M on series A. Are you looking for additional finance?

Gao: If we can get investment from a good investor who is interested in our products, we would be happy to accept additional funding to expand our production lines. We would be able to break even in Q2 this year and our current investor is fully committed to support Axcel to success.

GEF: Many companies in the active component field spent more than $20-30M, some of them even over $100M. How could you build a company from the concept to first revenue with only $10M?

Gao: Efficiency. I moved into our current location in September 2000. It was an empty building then. There was not even a chair to sit on. We didn't spend money on those automated robot systems, which most big companies did in 2000. We worked efficiently and didn't start with hiring too many people. We did a few smart things. We clearly have the highest capital efficiency among the VC-founded companies.

GEF: Your product performance and the capital efficiency you build the company with are very impressive. Axcel Photonics is getting into the leading position for high power laser diodes. When people need high-performance and low-cost semiconductor lasers, they will definitely take a look at your products first. Thank you very much for sharing your insights with us.

Gao: It is my pleasure. Thank you very much.

Related Links
www.axcelphotonics.com
www.globalexecutiveforum.net