Pod: Phononic Founder Tony Atti: Starting a DeepTech Company During The GCF of 08: Part 1 of 2.
In this episode we hear Tony's journey from Buffalo, NY to the Triangle where he is CEO and founder of rocket ship DeepTech startup Phononic 🚀 This story has a lot of ups and downs, buckle up 🎢
Who is Tony?
Tony Atti, CEO and founder of Phononic, a Triangle-based DeepTech company reinventing cooling and refrigeration using solid-state semiconductor technology.
Tony’s path is anything but linear. Raised in a blue-collar neighborhood in Buffalo, he trained as a chemist, earned his PhD, and worked in applied R&D with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where the bar for quality is literally “does this survive Mars?” From there, he moved into venture capital, learning firsthand how equity alignment, incentives, and execution determine whether breakthrough technology actually becomes a business.
That rare combination, deep technical fluency and investor-level pattern recognition, ultimately set the stage for founding Phononic.
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How I met Tony:
Tony and I have long crossed paths in the Triangle startup ecosystem, where Phononic stands out as one of the region’s most ambitious DeepTech companies revolutionizing refrigeration and cooling. I have been trying to get Tony on Triangle Tweener Talks since the earliest days of the show because Tony’s story is nothing short of amazing. As a software founder, I have deep deep respect for those building in the physical space because it is insanely hard and I wanted everyone to understand what that part of the founder world is like. Thanks to a Holiday travel slow-down, we were finally able to make it happen - thanks Tony!!
Listen/Watch Our Interview:
In this episode (Part 1), we cover the origin story.
Tony walks through the decisions, failures, and inflection points that led to Phononic’s founding: leaving the Northeast for graduate school at USC, working on applied energy systems at JPL during the Mars Rover 🦾 era, and learning painful but important lessons from a university spin-out that didn’t work.
Then comes the moment you can’t script. In the fall of 2008, while the global financial system is actively collapsing, Tony presents a research thesis on why semiconductors transformed everything except cooling. He walks out that same day with a term sheet and a $2M commitment to found Phononic <mic drop>🎤.
Highlights from Part 1
Growing up blue-collar in Buffalo and why that shaped Tony’s leadership style
The career-defining decision to leave the Northeast for USC
What JPL teaches you about rigor, testing, and humility
Why most university spin-outs struggle with equity alignment
How venture capital experience sharpened Tony’s founder instincts
Why cooling is the last unsolved semiconductor frontier
Founding Phononic the day Lehman collapsed
Why the Triangle, and NC State’s Centennial Campus, won as Phononic’s home
How to watch:
Visit Tweener Talks to listen for all audio podcast players
We have a video version on YouTube (make sure to subscribe!)
📌 What’s Next
Part 1 sets the foundation: the conviction, context, and courage it takes to start a DeepTech company when the odds are stacked against you.
In Part 2, Tony goes deeper, into the phases of building Phononic, the expensive mistakes, the product-market lessons, and how focus ultimately unlocked scale.
Subscribe to Triangle Tweener Talks to be notified of part 2, and explore more Triangle founder stories at tweenertalks.com.
Incredibly inspiring story about launching Phononic during the 2008 financial crash. I've always been fascinated by founders who can bridge technical depth and business acumen, and Tony's path from JPL to venture capital to starting a DeepTech company is basically the perfect example of how those worlds can come together in meaningful ways. The timing around Lehman Brothers collapsing while getting a term sheet must have been absolutley wild to expereince in real time.