Silicon Oasis? How a northern English tech startup went global
- Founder Mark Klarzynski discusses the unique challenges of running a cutting-edge tech startup out of Manchester, England.
- PEAK:AIO’s clients include Los Alamos National Laboratory and the British government.
- “Our leadership philosophy reflects the fact we are in a pioneering industry,” says Klarzynski.
Mark Klarzynski is the Chief Strategy Officer, CTO, and founder of PEAK:AIO, a data storage company “designed from the ground up” for the age of AI. His global client list includes Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the Zoological Society of London, the British government, and a host of prestigious universities.
Remarkably, Klarzynski is not a resident of San Francisco. He’s not even based in the US. PEAK:AIO is headquartered in a city better known for internecine soccer rivalries and rock ‘n’ roll siblings Noel and Liam Gallagher: Manchester in the north-west of England. This proto-Silicon Oasis is a long way from Silicon Valley, but business is looking good. Following a recent chunk of $6.8 million in seed funding Klarzynski is preparing scale up internationally.
“Most AI is run not by IT specialists, but by people who are focused on innovation. So everything we have is designed to be plugged in and forgotten,” says Klarzynski. Unlike many legacy solutions the PEAK:AIO storage system has been built to work quickly and reliably with large language models, with an emphasis on simplicity, power, and performance.
Big Think spoke to Klarzynski about how PEAK:AIO is thriving in a fast-growing international market, why he’s more inspired by Springsteen and Dylan than business leaders, and what drove him to build a data storage empire in the city that gave the world “Wonderwall.”
Big Think: How did you go about attracting such a impressive roster of clients?
Mark Klarzynski: I would love to say it was an amazing strategy. It certainly wasn’t because of marketing. We have kept a lot of our technology secret and will be announcing it soon.
It was by being successful within one organization, which led to success in another organization. Our first American customer is Los Alamos National Labs. They approached us because they’d seen somebody who published some results with our products, and they were impressed.
They wanted a demo, they loved it, and they’ve started buying it. Now we’ve got some more money, we can do some marketing and go out and sell. But we really didn’t have sales people until now, so it was organic, it was just by doing a good job.
Big Think: You’re the founder of the company, but you’ve employed a CEO to lead it while you focus on technology and strategy. Why was that?
Mark Klarzynski: I was the CEO at first, but the reality is, my leadership is probably very good for a pioneering, innovating, new company. When you’re looking for international growth, that’s a different skill set. So we brought Roger Cummings on specifically for that, and he’s very well qualified for the task.
Our leadership philosophy reflects the fact we are in a pioneering industry. We can make good assessments of what’s happening tomorrow or next year, but we don’t know for certain. So we have to allow people to have some flexibility in their roadmap, in their perception, in their thoughts, and their visions.
It’s about empowering people to be able to be more innovative to match a market that is purely innovative.
Big Think: What’s the hardest thing about running a startup? How do you approach those tough challenges?
Mark Klarzynski: The hardest thing in this startup is the fact that you really don’t have a definable challenge and outcome, because you’re in a market that’s just moving so fast.
In a normal startup, you have an idea to fix a problem, and you fix it. In AI, what we found is as soon as we had done that, there was another problem, and then that became half of another problem. So the biggest challenge was understanding what a user really needed and what they didn’t need.
The second challenge for every new startup is always going to be funding. You’re going to need top-end skills that are amazingly costly. In our case, we chose to self-fund because we wanted to prove the product.
How do you innovate if all you think about is sales? You’ve got to think about “why do I sell?”
Those first few years of self-funding are hard. You’ve got to be as nimble and dynamic a force as you can, and gain the maximum out of that with everybody being on board and believing in what you’re doing.
So it’s a cultural challenge as well. It isn’t a CEO barking at people. It’s about a group of people with a common goal and laser-focused vision and adaptability. In AI, adaptability is probably the biggest challenge. We’ve had to pivot countless times, but every one of those pivots has made us better.
Big Think: Do you have any heroes in business who inspire you?
Mark Klarzynski: No. I purposely don’t really watch the podcasts, I don’t read the books. I don’t listen to the debates, and I don’t read the articles, even about myself, because I don’t want to be influenced by somebody. I like us to develop our own ideas, rather than somebody telling us the efficient way of doing something.
There are, without a doubt, some amazing leaders, but I’m not sure how you measure that. Do you measure the money they’ve made or the invention they created? I don’t really spend time thinking about that. I focus on where I go; I don’t have heroes. Bruce Springsteen inspires me, Bob Dylan inspires me, but I don’t find inspiration in business people.
Business is too focused on money. That’s a necessary part of business, but if your goal is money, then how do you innovate if all you think about is sales? You’ve got to think about “why do I sell?” And so I try to stay away from being inspired by those who have been very successful.
Big Think: What are your thoughts on AI’s potential?
Mark Klarzynski: I was at a meeting with the president of a large company the other day, and he was talking about how he felt regulation of AI was important. And there is some merit in that.
Some people say using ChatGPT is cheating, but it’s no more cheating than using a calculator in an exam when I was young. There was a big debate about that then, and maybe we don’t know how to do arithmetic as much as we did 50 years ago, but we know how to do calculus, or how to implement mathematics, because the calculator lets us be more efficient.
AI today allows every one of us to be more efficient and productive, whether or not that’s in industry, or whether it’s letting ChatGPT rephrase an article you’re writing. It has some amazing potential healthcare, like reviewing MRI scans to assess if you need to go for surgery. It catches the obvious cases, and the rest still go to a radiographer. It’s not taking a job away, it’s just speeding up a queue. There are real positives that you could adapt to every market.
What’s changed in the last ten years is that a Manchester company now can go to Silicon Valley.
The areas that I do think we possibly have to monitor is where AI is refining itself and learning. How much control do we want on that?
We have some highly skilled programmers who now use AI to do 80% of the work that they would have done. That’s great, because they can get on with other things. But what about those programmers that were going to do the 80% of the work in the first place, who are still learning to program? AI is better than them. So there are some moral and ethical decisions to be made. I’m glad I’m not making them.
There are some negatives with AI that I think justify discussions. But I don’t think we can stop it, and I think we need to embrace it, and we just need to gear it towards having the best impact.
Big Think: PEAK:AIO is based in Manchester in the north-west of England, which isn’t the first city many people in the US would consider as a good base for an international business. Is the HQ location of an international business that important anymore?
Mark Klarzynski: Location is less important now in terms of getting yourself going, developing, and proving your product. Over the last 10 years Manchester has grown as a tech city. I’ve seen so many new startups appear here. That’s great to see. All of my businesses have been based in Manchester and it was never like this before. I don’t want us to be the second to London. In honesty, I believe that we have more to offer AI than London.
Once you get to a certain point, the reality is that, from a growth perspective, a lot of the potential is in America. And so I am on a plane over there presenting a lot. The people who still dominate tech are in that area.
What’s changed in the last ten years is that a Manchester company now can go to Silicon Valley. I was in Santa Clara recently, presenting on par with three global vendors. That was never an option in the past. None of my previous companies were ever going to be able to be invited into a Silicon Valley company to present.
