# Adam Steege, Founder & CEO of Trio Labs: The Startup Failure That Became a Med-Tech Manufacturer Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/nc-tweener-talks-7053588/adam-steege-founder-ceo-of-trio-labs-the-startup-failure-that-became-a-med-tech-manufacturer Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/nc-tweener-talks-7053588/adam-steege-founder-ceo-of-trio-labs-the-startup-failure-that-became-a-med-tech-manufacturer.md Podcast: [NC Tweener Talks](https://stenobird.com/podcast/nc-tweener-talks-7053588) Published: 2026-08-20T06:00:00+00:00 Episode link: https://share.transistor.fm/s/e9315d8f Audio file: https://media.transistor.fm/e9315d8f/0cb15721.mp3 Processing state: not_requested JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/nc-tweener-talks-7053588/episodes/adam-steege-founder-ceo-of-trio-labs-the-startup-failure-that-became-a-med-tech-manufacturer Duration seconds: 2483 ## Resource 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. Timestamps 00:00 Cold open & sponsor thanks 01:15 Welcome to NC Tweener Talks 01:35 Scot's intro: Adam Steege & Trio Labs 02:25 Interview begins 02:50 Guest welcome 02:55 NC Tweener Fund's investment history with Trio Labs 03:30 Adam's origin story begins 04:00 Growing up in NC, Carleton & Columbia 04:55 Why med tech pulled him in 05:40 The genesis of the Trio Labs idea 06:10 Technical founder staying on as CEO 08:10 What happened to the first company 09:05 The "stakeholder visibility mismatch" 11:20 From the first company's ashes to Trio Labs 13:15 Trio Labs' basic pitch 13:50 Why minimally invasive devices keep getting smaller 16:10 The manufacturing gap Trio Labs fills 18:05 Founding timeline: 2015… ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/nc-tweener-talks-7053588/episodes/adam-steege-founder-ceo-of-trio-labs-the-startup-failure-that-became-a-med-tech-manufacturer/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/nc-tweener-talks-7053588/adam-steege-founder-ceo-of-trio-labs-the-startup-failure-that-became-a-med-tech-manufacturer.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.