In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, heightened awareness of pathogens has become the new norm. Sanitizers and disinfectants are now ubiquitous, yet the chemical onslaught has led to both literal and metaphorical fatigue. The constant use of harsh chemicals, irritants, and carcinogens all around us has taken a mental toll, contributing to a collective sense of exhaustion. But now, companies like Trinion Labs have stepped up to provide cutting edge patented disinfection tech, inspired by nature, that is easy to use.
“We saw firsthand how healthcare facilities struggled during and after the pandemic with personal protective equipment in short supply, putting more lives at risk. We felt a moral obligation to help.” says Amir Khazaieli, the company’s founder and CEO.
Khazaieli graduated from UC Santa Barbara with degrees in electrical engineering and business technology management. He spent the next three years driving innovation in the consumer hardware space, including launching Revolux, a crypto-focused computer brand, and Alphamine, a consultancy focused on deploying and operating megawatt-scale GPU data centers. Khazaieli played a pivotal role in architecting the disinfector’s “smart” software and firmware built on the super lightweight ESP32 embedded platform, which is gaining popularity as a go-to solution for bleeding-edge IoT devices. He launched the first iteration of Trinion Labs under the name Fathhome Inc. in 2015.
Khazaieli would meet his future co-founder through an early angel investor and advisor Kumar Thangudu. With more than 15 years of experience in product development, Reggie Jean-Brice is a Rochester Institute of Technology graduate and an entrepreneurial leader in the manufacturing and hardware design spaces. Previously, he spearheaded technology brands such as Doorport and Product Design Labs. But for Trinion Labs’s co-founder, the potential impact of his company’s technology hits close to home.
“It’s ironic that we pivoted down the medical track because a majority of my family is in the healthcare field. My uncles and aunts are all nurses. My sister is a nurse. I have a cousin training to be a dentist,” points out Jean-Brice. “And when I met Amir, they were all in the thick of dealing with the pandemic. It’s what helped rope me into the business and gave us that experience to stay passionately obsessed with helping the medical market.”
The co-founders blend years of entrepreneurial experience with their own trademark skills. “He’s one of the most talented product designers I’ve ever met. He is very complementary to my own skill set,” says Khazaieli. “Even though I’m an electrical engineer by training, I had spent all of my time nerding out on customer development and customer discovery.”
While they jokingly refer to themselves as a mad scientist team, Trinion’s co-founders bring a new wave of innovation. Combining more than a decade of experience, Khazaieli and Jean-Brice are confident in their ability to solve any hardware challenge, marshaling the necessary resources to produce and scale their invention. The pair point to their previously co-owned Product Design Labs, which has driven more than $100 million in revenue for its product design clients.
But perhaps the most essential part of Trinion’s team is the disinfection technology itself. The system generates its own sanitizing-gas at point of use and then filters everything away through a patented process. The end result: viruses and bacteria removed from almost any item in only 15 minutes. Current prototypes are about the size of a mini-fridge and plug into any standard electrical outlet. They connect to a user-friendly app and guide you through the entire sanitizing process. The founders envision scaling this technology to one day tackle a wide array of verticals such as food processing & transport, controlled environment agriculture (CEA), disaster preparedness, and national security.
For now, however, Trinion is laser focused on Dentistry. The team was initially working with surgical centers, clinics, and first responders to beta-test its disinfecting technology in real-world situations. Early testing highlighted a unique pivot towards use within dental offices. A local dentist, Dr. Eric Zaremski came to Trinion Labs in search of a way to elevate dental standard of care while using less carcinogenic disinfectors. To him, the solution was obvious.
According to Dr. Zaremski, today’s standard of care in the dental industry often results in water-lines full of bacteria being used to clean patients’ mouths, among other things. To top it off, most existing dental sanitizers and disinfecting techniques are toxic to some degree. These dental industry standard “cold sterilizing” techniques are time-consuming, cumbersome, and highly toxic. These concerns represented a niche in which Trinion’s disinfector could become the new standard. The brand is working with dentists who have already adopted water-based ozone technology to beta-test the world’s first gaseous ozone disinfector explicitly built for dental practices.
The team also leverages a stacked advisory board, including dental and medical professionals, to bring industry-leading sights and front-line experience to its technology. Learn more about Trinions’s innovative approach to battling bacteria and viruses at Trinionlabs.com.
