Gecko Materials wants to sell you the next Velcro

It looks fake or at least like a good illusion: there is Gecko materials Capella founder Kerst holds a full bottle of wine on her little finger. The only thing keeping her from breaking into pieces is the super-strong dry glue her startup brought to market.

But this is not a trick. This is the result of years of academic research in which Kerst developed a method for mass production of glue. Inspired by the way the feet of real-life geckos grip surfaces, you can think of it like new Velcro—except it only needs one side, leaves no marks, and can come off as quickly as it attaches. It can do this at least 120,000 times and, as Kerst noted in a recent TechCrunch interview, can stay connected for seconds, minutes, or even years.

Kerst has spent the last few years delivering this magic trick style demo anywhere and everywhere: at VC happy hours, during pitch meetings, and on TikTok and Instagram Reels. And it works. Not just mechanically, but as a method of quickly attracting investors and clients. In 2021, Gecko raised a $2 million seed round in less than 36 hours and boasts Ford, Pacific Gas & Electric, and even NASA as its first clients.

Yes, before Kerst performs on the Startup Battlefield stage at TechCrunch 2024 BreachGecko Materials glue has already been in space.

The glue is incredibly strong. One square inch tile of it can support 15 pounds vertically, and six of them are enough to pull a car. This works by using van der Waals forceswhich involves interactions at the intermolecular level.

This can be difficult to understand, which is why Kerst prefers to rely on Gecko material. No.

“It’s not suction, it’s not release, it’s not tape, it’s not glue, it’s not microhooks,” Kerst explained. It does not require any electrical charge. “It’s also not suction-based, as some other companies that promise a gecko-like adhesive tend to use,” Kerst noted wryly. Suction-based methods create a concentration of force, which means force is applied unevenly, which can lead to fractures or leaving debris, she said.

In fact, she said, the Gecko material is more like microhair, which is 1/100 the size of a hair on a human head. When applied to a smooth or semi-smooth surface, they pull down and “shear”, creating an “extremely strong force”. Pull in the opposite direction at an angle greater than 20 degrees relative to the plane of that shear and it will come loose in milliseconds.

This makes it possible to apply force evenly and, just as importantly, evenly switch off strength, which means it can be used on very delicate objects such as quartz wafers, glass, solar panels or even food items such as eggs and rotten tomatoes.

So far, this has meant that it’s a great material for robots or drones that do a lot of assembly and placement, and that’s one of the reasons why Gecko found early success with manufacturers.

“We are eliminating the traditional disadvantages of adhesives,” Kerst said.

The wine bottle display is symbolic of how Kerst wants to approach mass production of Gecko glue. It’s simple but effective. The demo is “getting ideas flowing out of people,” Kerst told TechCrunch. “We’re a public benefit corporation, so we’re for-profit, but I want to help people save energy and time and money and just bring innovation back to the hardware space.”

It’s such a tempting product that in a recent interview with YouTube show The Pitch, she talked about a potential investor willing to shell out $1,200 on the spot to take a piece home. (Partly, oddly enough, so the investor could show it to his wizard friends.)

Kerst admits that reducing those costs is a goal as Gecko scales production. The current cost is approximately 10 times higher than other common adhesive options such as Command tapes from 3M. But Gecko already has software-like gross margins on this material of over 80%, and Kerst is quick to point out that 3M command strips can only really be used once.

Gecko has already generated more than $700,000 in revenue in 2023, and Kerst said the company has a “clear path” with its current paying customers to generate $75 million in annual recurring revenue in five years. It is also in the process of raising another round of funding to scale operations.

“I’m really excited about the opportunity to make local production more sustainable and spread it around the world,” said Kerst. She also doesn’t shy away from comparisons to Velcro. “I see a path where Gecko Materials will become a household name, a global name. Obviously, our name is already known throughout the cosmos,” she smiled.