The Story of Scrona: The Company Building the Future of Micrometer-Scale Manufacturing

The Story of Scrona: The Company Building the Future of Micrometer-Scale Manufacturing

Patrick Heissler walked into a company with extraordinary technology and an impossible problem. In February, over conversations with one of Scrona’s investors, he discovered a high-resolution printing platform that could revolutionize semiconductor manufacturing, display technology, life sciences, and half a dozen other industries. The promise was limitless. The execution was stuck.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Patrick Heissler, now CEO of Scrona, a high-resolution printing platform that’s raised $15.5 million, described what he found: “I was pretty excited about what they can achieve with the printing technology they developed at that stage. So I had a look, we had some conversations, we had some touch points over the next few months and it was very clear that this is a great opportunity we have in our hands here. But we need to get it into an industrial package.”

The technology worked brilliantly in research settings. That was the problem. “Going from more academic, research driven development, scale, feasibility, type of studies and products into an industrial scale product that can really be used by let’s say operators, non PhD operators in a fabric,” Patrick explained. “That was kind of the situation that I found the company in with a technology that had an amazing promise for semiconductor technology, for display technology, for all kinds of manufacturing challenges we’re facing these days in the micrometer range and we need to get that out on the street.”

The Platform Technology Paradox

Scrona had developed something remarkable: a semiconductor-based printhead using MEMS technology that could place materials with precision at the micrometer scale. Unlike competitors who used mechanical glass nozzles with limited accuracy and scalability, Scrona’s platform could put hundreds of nozzles on a single die, making it inherently scalable for high-volume manufacturing.

But platform technologies carry a curse disguised as a blessing. Patrick articulated it clearly: “For a startup to push a technology into a market is pretty difficult, especially if it’s a platform technology, because you can do everything and nothing at the same time.”

The team could pursue semiconductors, displays, life sciences applications, microfluidics, lab-on-chip devices, consumer tech, antenna structures on curved substrates, automotive applications. Every conversation revealed another promising opportunity. Every industry expert confirmed another valuable use case. The possibilities were genuinely endless.

Patrick described the scope: “As a platform technology, we also are looking at life science application, for example, microfluidic applications, lab on a chip applications we’re looking at now consumer tech applications, printing antenna structures, for example. On variables where substrates are getting more complex or more sensitive, where you have topography like curved substrates. So we’re looking at all of these things.”

And then he shared the hard truth that would shape everything that followed: “The major point that we have to tackle now is solve a problem for a customer, create value for a customer, because that will facilitate the adoption of our technology into this supply chain.”

The Joining Path

Patrick didn’t rush in. He joined as a consultant in May, spent time understanding the technology and team dynamics, then accepted the CEO role full-time in June. Weeks later, he became an investor. This staged approach allowed him to validate what he’d sensed from those early conversations: this was a company with breakthrough technology that needed someone who understood how to transform research into industrial products.

His background positioned him perfectly. “I’m in the tech world since many years, bringing innovation to the market in different settings,” Patrick said. But more importantly, he understood the semiconductor ecosystem intimately. The team did too. “We as a team are coming out of this semiconductor ecosystem. So we know these companies, we know these supply chains, we have a lot of contacts,” he explained.

This ecosystem knowledge became foundational to everything that followed.

The First 100 Days: Fixing What Mattered

Patrick’s first move as CEO revealed his priorities. “The first thing we did is we clearly defined a product roadmap,” he said. Not fundraising. Not team restructuring. Not strategy workshops. Product roadmap.

The timeline was aggressive. “We had the rollout of our generation 3 gen 3 8, which we call it, which is an 8 nozzle printhead, an off the shelf version of this product. We had it available in July and we rolled it out at Semicon west in San Francisco with a data sheet with something that people can take, have a look at, see the facts and can start implementing it.”

June to July. That’s the timeline from joining as CEO to product launch at a major industry conference with complete specifications. The speed wasn’t reckless. It was strategic.

Patrick understood that industrial customers didn’t need another promising technology demonstration. They needed specifications, integration requirements, and scaling timelines. “Have a roadmap towards higher nozzle counts, have a roadmap towards an integration pack that people can directly take and integrate into a bigger tool to use our printheads,” he explained. “So just defining this kind of product roadmap and timelines that help our customers really making use of the product.”

The Strategy of Selective Focus

With the product roadmap established, Patrick implemented something counterintuitive: he actively limited customer engagement. “With a very small team like ours, a marketing strategy like a full blown up marketing strategy with multiplatform advertisement of your product doesn’t necessarily make sense,” he said.

The reasoning cut against typical startup advice: “I don’t necessarily need a huge project pipeline. Like it’s great if I have a lot of interest, it’s great if I have a lot of people coming in. But I want to be very selective on what we’re working on to have the highest impact on a company.”

This discipline required saying no to interested customers. It required confidence that the right opportunities would emerge. It required clear criteria for identifying what Patrick called “value inflection points or value inflecting projects that bring us forward.”

For opportunities that didn’t meet these criteria, Patrick built an ecosystem solution. “What is important for me is also to use that and build up an ecosystem,” he explained. The partnership with Notion Systems became the mechanism for capturing market interest without draining engineering resources: “We have a strong partner with notion system that enables like smaller scale systems directly for customers that might not require this kind of immense R and D work. So I’m freeing up time at my team to really focus on value creation for our company and at the same time enable an ecosystem partner to also generate growth and value on their side.”

Market Selection Through Unfair Advantage

Patrick’s approach to market selection started with honest assessment rather than aspirational analysis. “For us, it was quite clear that this technology enables a lot of value for customers in the semiconductor space, also in the display space, which are maybe the two markets and industries that we’re closest to, because we are coming out of this kind of semiconductor, like we as a team are coming out of this semiconductor ecosystem.”

The logic was pragmatic: “So we know these companies, we know these supply chains, we have a lot of contacts, and this makes it quite easy for us to Attract it.”

This wasn’t about finding the biggest addressable market. It was about starting where the team had unfair advantages that would dramatically reduce customer acquisition costs and time to first revenue.

The Vision: From Qualification to Platform

As 2024 drew to a close, Patrick outlined objectives that revealed sophisticated sequencing. For 2025: “We will have the Generation 3 platform with a hundred plus nozzles out there in Q1 of 2025. That’s our goal right now, to have that out there, including an integration pack which you can easily take and put it into a machine and directly start printing.”

Moving from 8 nozzles to 100+ wasn’t just scaling. It represented the transition “from R and D and prototyping work into really volume manufacturing capable technology.”

Patrick also shared the timeline reality that shapes everything: “With the typical qualification timelines in the semiconductor industry, we’re looking at two year qualification timelines. That means starting late 2026, early 2027, we will see mass adoption of that technology in various applications in various production lines.”

Beyond 2027, the vision expands. “So this will help us to actually internationalize the company and also help us to diversify into new fields,” Patrick said. “As I said at the beginning, we’re not stopping at semiconductor or display industry. We’re looking at life science applications and many more applications, automotive, consumer electronics.”

The sequencing matters: prove the technology in core markets, achieve mass adoption, then leverage that credibility to internationalize and expand into adjacent industries. Patrick’s closing vision captured the ambition: “And that’s just starting right now. And we will see that three to five years from now, we will see a much larger platform company, a real platform company. On the way up still.”

From academic research stuck in feasibility studies to industrial platform company serving multiple manufacturing sectors, Scrona’s transformation under Patrick’s leadership demonstrates that commercializing breakthrough technology isn’t primarily about having the best innovation. It’s about having the discipline to package what exists, the courage to say no to most opportunities, the wisdom to start where you have unfair advantages, and the patience to respect industry qualification timelines that determine when promise becomes adoption at scale.