This presentation will tell the story of how a curiosity-driven, ferroelectric materials research topic developed into a $2 million p.a. business, manufacturing industrial ultrasound transducers for use under extreme conditions. On that journey we discovered some interesting materials science, we learnt how to process materials on the edge of instability, we overcame our academic sensitivities in order to finance a spin-out a company and followed some unexpected paths to gain moderate commercial success. The talk aims to provide a contemporary and perhaps idiosyncratic view of both the science and business of piezoelectric materials.