Adam Steege, Founder & CEO of Trio Labs: The Startup Failure That Became a Med-Tech Manufacturer

Adam Steege, founder and CEO of Trio Labs, joins me to talk about building a company that 3D prints tiny, complex metal parts for medical devices out of Morrisville, North Carolina. The conversation covers Adam's path from a failed first startup in laparoscopic surgical devices to founding Trio Labs in 2015, the five years it took to reach bench-scale proof of concept, and the road from Series A funding in 2021 to commercial launch in 2023. Adam explains why his first company stalled, the manufacturing gap between traditional machining and semiconductor-style nanofabrication that Trio Labs fills, and why the company chose to sell finished parts rather than printing equipment. What makes this episode distinctive is how directly Adam connects his first company's failure to the thesis behind his second, along with a clear, first-principles explanation of why metal 3D printing at this precision is so difficult that Trio Labs describes itself as half ASML, half TSMC. It's a grounded look at what it actually takes to build a hardware company over more than a decade. Timestamps00:00 Cold open & sponsor thanks01:15 Welcome to NC Tweener Talks01:35 Scot's intro: Adam Steege & Trio Labs02:25 Interview begins02:50 Guest welcome02:55 NC Tweener Fund's investment history with Trio Labs03:30 Adam's origin story begins04:00 Growing up in NC, Carleton & Columbia04:55 Why med tech pulled him in05:40 The genesis of the Trio Labs idea06:10 Technical founder staying on as CEO08:10 What happened to the first company09:05 The "stakeholder visibility mismatch"11:20 From the first company's ashes to Trio Labs13:15 Trio Labs' basic pitch13:50 Why minimally invasive devices keep getting smaller16:10 The manufacturing gap Trio Labs fills18:05 Founding timeline: 2015 to Series A to commercial launch20:00 Gen 1 to gen 3: iterating the printer22:05 The "third dimension is nonlinear" analogy24:00 "Half ASML, half TSMC"25:05 Why metal instead of plastic28:50 Facility tour: the machines, wafer fab in a box30:05 The parts Trio Labs makes: robotics & endovascular31:40 Where Trio Labs is in its scaling journey34:50 Staying focused on med tech37:35 Why they don't sell machines40:05 Where to find Trio Labs40:35 Wrap and credits-----Where to Find Adam Steege:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-t-c-steege-814b6821/Trio Labs: https://triolabs.com Where to Find Scot Wingo: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/ X: https://x.com/scotwingo--- This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/