if you break the laws of God you go to hell if you break the laws of people you go to prison if you break the law of physics you go to Sweden and they give you a Nobel Prize you don't see many deep Tech pure scientists become entrepreneurs surprisingly enough only
one out of five VCS who do deep Tech have some kind of scientific expertise fake it till you make it doesn't work in deep te I triy to tell my fathers that you cannot growth hack your way against LW of physics the way we have built our
strategy is we bring scientific expertise to the world of venture capital many scientists prefer to just stay with the problem and are a bit naive about all of the other things that go into doing that to have to build Partnerships you need to understand how
you're going to Market that and the brain of the scientist is not tailored to deal with this especially very soft skills things like very human things they would rather spend more time on technology and push this problem of
marketing and strategy to some order of their mind until it really blows in their face what we're looking for ideally is a Duo of an entrepreneur and a scientist well hello everyone it's Jim o shasy with yet another infinite Loops
today I am super excited because I have our Katie Kulik with me who is the founder of RPV a deep Tech Venture Capital fund that is looking at the furthest reaches of science arcadey welcome hi Jim hi everybody and thank you for having me happy to talk about
deep Tech and all things science today so I love that you're doing this first off because you know so many people say they're looking for the kind of zero to ones in the world or and you have a very different take uh which I find fascinating which is essentially that
you know zero to three that's probably grants it's probably um you know government involvement in somehow funding it and and then you say that later you know in the kind of I think it was 7 to 10 or six to9 phase that's regular Venture
capitalists kind of like me but there's that that there's that sweet spot in the middle so tell us about that if you would we have to the scale that we use is technology Readiness level it was invented by NASA to gauge the
technologies that were mostly created within NASA and 0o to3 is theoretical phases and when a scientist or researcher has a hypothesis he thinks about it he poses some experiments around it to prove it or disprove it that's mostly universities mostly grants
those are the sources of capital there phases 4 to 7 so four five six and seven are phases one we are talking about validation and prototyping and building up the system so it starts with a with an experimental proof then small prototypes in the lab and larger
prototypes in the lab than prototypes in the environment and after that comes commercialization where the technology is figured out engineering is figured out science is figured out and all it's left to do is to Market it which is not
an easy feat I'm not saying it is I'm just saying that it's a realm of marketing in business and sales rather than science and technology so yes for us the sweetest spot is exactly this prototype and validation phase I think it's a little too early to be investing
in a company what's at a theoretical stage at least for a venture capital firm but the way we have built our strategy is we bring scientific expertise to the world of venture capital surprisingly to me there are not that many teams or
firms who buildt anything around scientific expertise that's how we get investments into companies that later P out to be a fraud paranos would be a very proverbial example A lot of people who understand biology would have told everybody that
well it's not real it's never going to work as they expect it to work simply because there is no blood that that should be for this analysis in your finger so I thought that the Venture Capital industry should have learned it
Lesson by this moment and surpris surprisingly enough still now only one out of five VCS who do deep Tech have some kind of scientific expertise at BCG has done this report and that's where we start happy to dig deeper if you have
any questions around it and to show you some examples of how we do it if it's interesting for you it's going to be very interesting for me uh because I I too find that a real head scratcher in terms of uh a lot of these famous blow-ups Thanos being one of the better
known uh I found myself asking exactly the same questions like why weren't they having it this kind of peer review through their own networks and and you yourself even though you you made quite a a bit of money in the several companies you found it in it you you're
switched to deep science uh uh and and the like probably obviously reflecting your master and physics but you also have more than 250 experts how did you how did you put this network together that's all mostly the not mostly that's
99.9% the result of the work of my co-founder Tas he is a Quantum physicist with affiliation at CERN he has forged in the lives between certain in his University of Georgia he's I believe in top 5% Quantum physicist on the Globe
right now and your professor at the age of 34 that's his Network Bly he's been doing physics and theoretical physics since since we've met in the University back 19 years ago and he's been at it and he I think knows even more people
than that 250 is just his immediate circle that he can reach and get a response within one day that's that's how we leverage our scientific Network to understand the the SES underneath a given company is for real and if it is is it really the best approach of all
the options that we have so that's the must that's all him and how do you compensate these experts it depends on their level of Engagement but if we're talking about people who are just giving us the opinion on a given company we pay
them lumps depending on how quickly they respond to us so if it's a response within three days that's that's a pretty hefty amount of money if it's a response within two weeks that's uh more of a token of appreciation than anything
material interesting and you have uh at least that that I've read you have 12 deal breakers yes and one of them is uh the opinion of what really kind of amounts to a p review uh through your panel of experts I I can't imagine that they're
always in full agreement about almost anything so so how would you adjudicate um if you let's say got back a dozen responses from highly credential and highly thought of experts in the field but they were very much at odds with one or another we never do 12
experts that would be hellscape for us to to do for anyone that just doesn't make any sense either because if you really understand the specific field you want to go to two maybe three people in this area who understand it it's not
battery tag it's specific kind of lithium ion batteries once you narrow it down you maybe have three four people on the globe that you really want to talk to everybody else can give you some general opinion but I mean toas is a PhD
in physics I've got Masters in physics we can give you General opinion we need experts we need people who spent 12 years figuring out cathodes in lithium ion batteries those are the people that we want to talk to and you we usually have two to three
opinion for each of the questions that we ask and we do not try to reconcile this opinions we take them we take an average score that they give us for a specific line item and we incorporate it into our scorecards it's the same for
our investment process if tamas sees something as very good and I see something is kind of really bad we don't Target we just plug in one and five into our scorecard and get an average out of that and move on with our lives that's actually a good sign if we
see something very in a very opposite light yeah I'm huge fan of process given my my former life as a Quant uh Equity manager uh and it can be incredibly helpful take us through your evaluation process if you don't mind and and maybe
touch on some of the the deal breakers uh that I mentioned absolutely do you want me to share the screen because we have this new be great so let's start with the process first and then I will show you the scorecards as well and we
can talk about the deal breakers for us I think that would be very useful for the future portfolio companies that would like to understand how we do things so we start at the first glance of course we have a look at the deck and
either tamas and myself decide if this is worthy of scientific opinion that's a process when Tomas usually him or our neuroscientists look at the deck of the company not not deeper than that and give an initial opinion which is basically three four sentences and a
couple of scores unlike is it even worth to take this company further we have not yet talked to the company until that point so if this scientific opinion is positive we take the first meeting with the team and after that first meeting
with the team we go through the set of deal breakers which I'm going to share in a second with you so 80% of the companies that we look at look at never make it past that stage so majority of them do not survive through this initial filtering process I would say that
roughly half don't even make it a scientific opinion not even here wow the the whole process is tailored to help us filter out companies that are not a great fit for us they might be fantastic businesses don't get me wrong
they might be printing money but if they don't have scientific expertise if they don't have scientific breakthrough if it's yet another software kind of company that's just not for us that's for somebody else to take care of the deal breakers that we have here
as a sample scorecard are grouped into several small groups so first is technology and IP if there is no breakthrough technology we just don't don't take take it into account if it's a 5% increase in energy capacity of a
battery or a 3% increase in well-being of a patient not not interesting really not going to split hairs here if they cannot protect intellectual property then it kind of means they're not really deep tag because one of the staple features of De deep tag is
ability to protect yourself from competition for at least couple of years farmer would be a great example and medical devices would be a great example you can do the same with materials you can do the same with energy and so on and so
forth the difficulties in obtaining license or approvals I think nuclear here mostly is something that's very murky unclear and we see a lot of really really good breakthrough companies in small modular nuclear reactors which were struggling to obtain any licens or
approvals for decades so that's an issue there very rare deal breaker by the way we don't see that often too small of a market or too small of an exit potential are more of a commercial deal breakers for us so it signifies lack of belief
for the market or lack of belief uh into the company itself then of course Founders if there is po reputation or this these people are has questionable background we probably would not take this company into consideration when there is no expertise
or experience of the team unfortunately it's often the case when we see two two scientists that team up and want to build a venture because it's cool and fashionable to be an entrepreneur and they don't want to learn they don't want
to hear anyone's opinion they just want to keep on doing what they've been doing and they hope that this will build the business it won't so this is a pretty often thing po te motivation incentives is something like a a guy who's working on a Consulting
gig and in the university and he also tries to build another company on top of that for people who have already sold 70% of their shares before the preed you know you've seen cases like that yourself conflicts of interest which are
clearly defined here Affiliates uh some things that will deteriorate the chance of the company to succeed because the founder wants another company to get cash flows for example um no investors participating in the round is a sign that something is going wrong if they
raised before weird Cup tables usually it would be a family office that owns 51% in some Enterprise and they don't want to get diluted and some rare and specific risks which we might as well called other and um this could be something
like Russia specific for example so those are the deal breakers any questions so far Jim um yeah in the first one where you said that half of the companies don't even get to the first stage right here yeah the scientific opinion is is that
primarily due to just a bunch of pseudo scientific type things that people are trying to uh Hawk to an not supect BC base what what what do you could you give me a little Clarity around that absolutely so there is several things there are
several factors that play into into this particular fiure here first of all lots of people are happy to send us different things and we're diligent we take everything in the pipeline and look at that and we often get companies that really
don't have any kind of breakthrough the product level for them and uh that's just a function of sourcing sometimes we just get companies that should have never got into our pipeline in the first place if it is a company that we think
is real and could be interesting for us there could be there could be cases when the founders are honestly just not aware that this not a breakthrough they think that they have achieved something but it's a never going to work B not really
interesting or C like I I saw a company yesterday literally who said we're the first company to provide the EEG through the fat phones I mean like I've talk to five of them three years ago I'm like seriously and they they have it on the
second slide we're the first in the world to do that in the heades I'm like no no you're not there so people who haven't done their homework obviously scam artists and folks like that uh there was a fantastic company that uh
says we're going to build the First World Private uh jet that's electric and we're going to be in the market in three years I'm like you have no idea how FAA works three years with a brand new plane and get license in the US I mean if you
can do it you should probably launch a Consulting agency and just get players licensed all day every day don't build your own stuff you're going to be millionaires in no time maybe billionaires so when people don't know what they're doing that's the case when
people are trying to be scam artist that's the case and sometimes they do have uh breakthrough is just small some of them would actually have created a new material for uh some kind of specific satellite operations functions whether it's
radiation shielding or thermal protection on the B entry it is really good but it's not a breakthrough it's like 20% increase 30% increase to us breakthrough is anything that's 3x and about so they just then don't don't go through our own internal filter and
that's uh where we are not looking into them so mostly those three factors okay that that's very helpful um and it would be my guess uh and please correct me if I'm wrong but that the majority that fail under this particular
hurdle are probably people who think they have a breakthrough but in fact you know because of your network and because of your own experience you know that that they don't I mean I'm not saying that speaks highly of them but the fact that uh they they are in in
my old line of work we used to call it uh uh honest minded uh data mining in other words people when they do back tests on investment strategies they didn't intentionally data mined it but they they did it without knowing it is
am I correct or not yes yes that that would be probably the majority of people and um some of them are honestly they just don't know what's going on around them and uh they think that they have a breakthrough some of them are lying to themselves a bit as well
and they hope that something will pan out but we know it's never going to P pan out and uh they're like I love Fusion don't get me wrong Fusion is going to change the civilization is going to be great yes 100% is it still 20 years away maybe 15
but the old joke about Fusion is that it's always 20 years away it was 20 years away back in the 60s and still 20 years away so yeah we've talked to 30 plus Fusion companies and we have not founded a single one a lot of the founders are like either they say yeah
we have a breakthrough I'm like how do you how do you deal with freeing neutrons they're like we got to figure it out at some point it's an engineering is I'm like yeah it's not and you're not going to figure it out some other folks
would be would not have a free flying neutrons problem but they will have some other issues and I'm like how are you going to build laser that's that's the 50 times more powerful than anything else in the existence today they like somebody's going to build it and we're
going to use it I'm like well yeah it's going to cost you a couple of billions of dollars and nobody's going to give it to you just for experiments so people you know fake it till you make it doesn't work in deep Tech and that's
one of the things that I personally emotionally love about deep Tech deep Tech I try to tell my fathers that you cannot growth hack your way against loss of physics you it's just not going to work so um that's sometimes those people are
really delusional sometimes those people really want to build something interesting they're just not aware that it's not going to work but but also I I think immediately of David Deutsch uh who I love his writings and and recommend his book The
Beginning of infinity to many non-science friends and by the way I'm simply a Layman here um so let's be fully uh cognizant of that but you know he quipped one time that anything that doesn't violate the rules of physics is
true um and and I I he may have been joking um but how how do you is it relatively easy to dig down on somebody's domain knowledge uh and and by that I mean I I'm sure that there are a lot of people who have just enough scientific deep
Tech education to be really really dangerous H how do you how do you uh try to sus that out that happens later so once the the initial scorecard is pass and once the deal breakers are done we move into the second meeting with the team that's where Tomas meets them as
well well that's where we start doing deeper understanding of their science if there are no more questions or if we get the answers that are satisfying to us we do the internal scientific review so that's toas and his assistant both human
beings and AIS going through all the different articles in in the in this domain and the adjacent domains as well mapping out what is the really the best approach we've talked about cathod for lithium iron batteries there could
be cathod that are that don't need lithium at all in B in batteries and you can build batteries in a new way another great example would be photonics versus organoid intelligence versus reversible Computing versus and that there is a
whole list of other Technologies they all promise a huge gain up to THX in Energy Efficiency of our Computing machines whether it's data centers or your cell phone but how do you distinguish which approach is really the one that works so that's that's the goal
of internal scientific review and once it's done for example for phonics we can rely on that and build up on that if we do it say in May and we just add a couple of more articles that have been published since May and we keep on
understanding and increasing our base after these two steps the second meeting at internal scientific review less than 5% make it to Scientific due diligence of all the companies that that we ever look at less than 5% actually make it here so if um
you're a portfolio company you're listening to this podcast and you're you will be talking to me next year if you made it to Scientific due diligence who knows great job guys that's very rare So when the scientific D just happens that's exactly when we start
answering your questions so if everything checked out they do have a breakthrough it does seem to be the best approach of all the different approaches on the market then at that point we engage in proper peer review process so
our team would create the template with all this the description with all the links to the external articles with all the materials we'll prepare the folder where we put all these materials external scientists that are not the members of our team but that
then they are not in any way motivated by our by our Fund in the long run and that's by Design external scientists provide their opinion they answer all of the questions they get access to all of the data of course everybody's under
strict ndas they go and look at that and they provide their opinion both qualitative in terms of they answer every single question as as detailed as they can and quantitative they score different features of the company according to our questions and this
scores will later be incorporated into our scorecard and if you are thinking about the profiles of scientists that I've mentioned before the ones who really understand that specific field or maybe subfield over subfield they've been
doing it for 10 years plus very hard to to this guys excuse me for this is a swearing uh podcast so you can say you can say whatever you like it's it's impossible to mess with their heads they will call out lies immediately and uh we're very clear with
our Founders about that like please don't lie if you don't know something tell us if you have questions about something tell us if you lie to us you have exactly one chance to lie to us if you catch you on that we're done don't call us
again which makes Incredible sense do do you have a system whereby that 95% that doesn't make it past uh due or or that doesn't make it uh after due diligence do do you provide them feedback on let's say yeah okay so it's a legitimate
company yes it made it through the process but there are all these things you do share that with the with absolutely okay depending on the stage so if I never talk to them I probably will not provide any opinion whatsoever sure my opinion is workless at that
point if I talk to them at least once then I will send them an email it's not going to be a long one it's going to be a pretty short one and I'll probably say something along the lines it's not a about fit for our strategy maybe I'll
mention something like your it is not protectable or your technology is not a breakthrough according to our opinion something like that if we had more detailed meetings with these guys if we actually did the scientific due diligence I will come back to them with
a proper email like couple of paragraphs of text explaining what is the reasoning and the week points that we see we have actually seen companies who have pivoted after our feedback one of them is very successful right now working with the
Department of Defense and um they were doing a specific they were trying to build a brain computer interface to play video games now they're building brain computer interface to predict fatigue in uh military and in medicine workers and
in my opinion that's a fantastic P much better than what they were trying to achieve before so yes we do give feedback to our Founders I think that's we we owe them that they spend some time with us we owe them a proper feedback for sure so that's a uh virtuous uh
flywheels that because even if they don't get the investment uh if they've made it that far they potentially get uh things that allow them as as you given in the example the ability to Pivot and and do something that's going to actually work
better for them they're raising at the valuation that is four times higher than the than what we've been talking to them so they they're doing pretty well these guys and uh one last thing about this part and I think um there is nothing
else interesting here just more due diligence and scorecards but coming back to the scientific due diligence if it is positive we provide these materials to the founders even before the deal at zero expense and if it's a positive one
then they can get it and share it with any other VCS any other investors that they talk to as an external proof of their technology and that's very helpful with they around because all other VCS now can look at that and say hey these
guys at RPV did their due diligence if we want to understand it deeper we can always go and talk to these guys at RPV and we're happy to take this call so it is a part of I I think we should invest in educating this Market more and more in
this industry in general so if I can be I cannot educate other VCS but I can at least provide a real serious due diligence so other VCS can rely on that well that's my free gift to the industry I'm I'm giving it to fs and VCS alike
for free we do not do this as Consulting we never charge any money we also only take things that we like in scientific due diligence so there is no way somebody can come to us and ask to do the due diligence for them if we're not interested in the company but the
results are free wow that's very impressive and I think uh a great way to add value to the entire industry as a whole as well as promoting interest in and investment in these deep Tech uh ideas let let me ask you uh which is a a bit more theoretical
but I've been reading a lot recently about self-censorship among serious serious scientists not not uh I I mean people are dealing in the very fields in which you are are playing what what are your thoughts about that
and is is is the commentary that I'm reading a bit overblown is it an actual problem and if so what are your thoughts I don't know exactly what commentary you're reading so I cannot comment on that specifically what I can say is what
looks like self-censorship can just be the translational error so a scientist when he is telling you a negative response would be telling you something along the ways I'm not 100% convinced that there is some that there is enough scientific rigor in that
approach which can sound like well yeah you're not 100% conv probably 90 if you're talking about that well if you translated to a normal English that means this is horrible don't touch it with the 10 foot pole so the the self censorship or the translational error
I'm not sure scientists are very nice in all of their communication they try to be very polite and very very cultured so it's not always clear when they say no so I think that might have been the case for the author of this comment and
that's what he sees as self-censorship I cannot come in Beyond than that because I don't know what was the argument that the author was thinking yeah maybe you can share some more yeah uh they they were essentially sharing uh a piece talking and it was
specifically looking at Medical Science and it was a controversial REM removal of uh any uh analysis of subgroups by ethn ethnicity um and it had to do and it had to do with the incidence and likelihood of cardiac events happening uh in in
various stages of life and um several groups have dropped the the sub uh digging in uh to uh various ethnicities and are just looking at the entire sample rather than the the subcohorts that make up the entire sample well that's definitely the case
of self-censor 100% this is has nothing to do with their politeness um I have a strong opinion about that and I think that it's one thing not to be racist and it's one thing not to give job to people because of their
color of the skin or their gender and that's definitely not the right way to do things however if you want to understand how people of different ethnicity different cultural background different location where they live different
climate like why why for example is it not okay to distinguish between black population white population but it is it would be okay to distinguish between people who live in Chicago and people who live in Texas climate is different heart condition would be different by
the end of their life people who live here in Pacific Northwest I know a lot of people who moved here because climate is better for respiratory health and your heart health so it's okay to to kind of cut the population by geography
but it's not okay to cut by ethnicity okay what about culture if I'm a white dude who who was brought up in LA in um some of the the blackest ghettos what would be my culture how would that affect my health mental health physical health
um I don't think that this is where political correctness should should hinder science development that's not that's not genetic experiments that came to Jan in the 40s or 30s of the last century I think this is not really a smart thing to do just ignoring these
factors could could jeopardize the whole research I agree and uh I I was quite shocked when I was reading this piece because I thought we uh that sounds very much to me like ideology uh trumping uh you know the scientific method which
seems to me to be insane I agree I fully agree the ideology should not be traing scient scientific method if anything scientific method was designed to help us away from dogmas so we stop thinking in freaking boxes but no we're getting back to that
now not because of religion but because of ideology well uh that's to B I'll give you a personal example I would love to learn why French people don't get fat after all of their cross son and the gats it's like if this is my diet I get
like I I become a blob in less than a month like a big me me too me too now what do they have in France that that allows them to stay lean like that it's definitely not wine I've tried it I've tried cross and wine doesn't work either
they don't cancel each other out so I I would love to learn more about how different even cultural background um I mean behavior in family and of how they eat how they how they spend free time I would love to learn research on that I don't think we should ad these
things we we are very sympatico on that I I've never understood um anyone's urge to uh try to convince me that it would not be in my best interest to learn something about other cultures other ways of doing things that seems so idiotic to me that
it's just beyond even consideration from my point of view yeah I agree the um yes well we we are we are very sympatico there let me ask you as I was listening uh and you mentioned that most scientists tend to be polite um it it do
you think that might be one of the reasons why um and maybe I'm extrapolating poorly here but you don't see many uh deep Tech pure scientists become entrepreneurs um it it do you think why do you think that is I think that has to deal with
the value systems that people have when they decide to go for science or for commercial entreprise and I'll get back to the composition the ideal composition of the founding team in a minute U the the underlying reason if you ask me why scientists do not become great
entrepreneurs or why not many scientists become great entrepreneurs because we've seen examples when it actually does happen is mostly driven by the by the desire of scientists to build up their technology and Tech and Science and their whatever
the product that they will end up creating this consumes them wholeheartedly this becomes the only reason for existence this becomes the only reason for creation of the company itself however I'm not sure that this is really the best way to build a business
because you need to think about marketing you need to think about teach team need to think about networking you need to think about Partnerships and you need ad I've got 21 advisor in my firm and uh you have to build advisors you
have to build partnership suit you have to keep on building Community around whatever you're doing and that's one part of that you need to understand how you're going to Market that you need to understand your strategy you need to understand
your long-term Vision there are lots of lots of very difficult and complex things and the brain of the scientist is not tailored to to deal with this this specific especially very soft skills things like very human things they would
rather spend more time on technology they would rather spend more time on dealing with that and uh ignore and push these problems of marketing and strategy to some corner of their mind until it really blows in their face so I'm going to give you a joke it's a
very Russian joke but um here here's how it goes a drunk man is is completely drunk almost bling out drunk is standing under the the Street Lamp searching for something in the Street Lamp person sees him he understands that the guy is in
trouble State he's like what happened he's like I lost my keys I lost my keys to my house he's like so yeah where did you lose him he's like in that alley over there he like so why are you searching it here on the Street Lamp
he's like because it's light here so same stuff these guys don't want to go into this dark alley they they don't want to figure out the problems they don't know how to answer they want to keep on doing the same stuff just
looking at the spot that had light on them and not answering the questions they need to answer I think that's what happens on the technical level the reason why it happens is could also be driven not always but could also be driven because through the
value system of these guys because they think that when you deal with money when you deal with this pesky material items it's like it's beyond them in in a sense I've seen people like that they that's I'll hire somebody to deal with my
operations I'll hire somebody to deal with sales I'll hire somebody to deal with humans I I'll hire somebody like how are you going to hire somebody if you don't want to deal with humans okay you how somehow you hire somebody how are you going to manage
them if you don't want to deal with humans like you want to be sitting there in your lap and you still want to be a CEO like seriously so uh yeah we see that that that that happens quite some time um not going give you any names or any company
name names that does happen of of course not and and I love that joke about the lampost uh there are many versions of that what we used to use uh in in Quant Equity was um he he used uh the he used uh statistics like a drunk used a lamp
post for support not for illumination yeah that's also a good one yeah so so my guess is though that you have a solution to that um and so talk a little bit about the the next stage of uh so you're interested you think that the company or the rather the Deep Tech
itself is viable and real uh but then you also are cognizant of what you just outlined to me that many scientists prefer to just stay with the problem and are a bit naive about all of the other things that go in to to doing that by
the way uh just as an aside very strong correlations with Asset Management there there is a group especially in Quant that they they think that because they're really good at building models to fix stocks they're going to be really great company Founders
and short answer no no no no you're not but you have a solution so so tell me how how you how you do that the solution comes in several phases I would say number one you've seen in the deal breakers that if there is a poor expertise or experience of the
the founding team members then we are not going to do the deal so a lot of those teams who are just build out of two or three scientists and have no entrepreneurs in the founding team or have no scientist who can be a good
entrepreneurial material later on we just we just pass we we don't even engage we're not in the business of teaching people how to run their business we're not interested in building an accelerator so that's for somebody else to figure out there are
plenty of venture Builders and accelerators in deep Tech of questionable quality yet but there will be better companies uh as as this industry matures what we're looking for ideally is a Duo of an entrepreneur and a scientist that would be perfect
composition especially if an entrepreneur is a serial entrepreneur and done at least two companies before that works that works really well the second best case is when we have a single founder who is either entrepreneur or or or scientist who
already has the first hire who is also a strong scientist or an entrepreneur respectively that also works and uh what we dig in that case is how many sh how much shares what what size of the company will this new hire have how is
the best thing done and what is the motivation of the second person there is a third option when we have two scientists but one of them want to be an entrepreneur he really shows that he is teachable he's coachable he is looking
for advice actively he's not just taking some advice that we or somebody else give him or her they're looking for specific advice they're trying to get better at this game they actually see the business as the technology they they want to Tinker with they see the whole
business of the thing they want to improve on a daily basis if today they need to do sales or customer development they're going to do it if tomorrow they need to do hiring they're going to do it they do not focus exclusively on their
technology and that's it those are the only three compositions of the funding teams that would work in deep Tech in general and if it comes to the third composition one is just to scientist before we do the deal we're going to bring one of our Venture partners and
that would be the person who will CA the founders through the next couple of years of their life and um special shout out to Paul Kevin aite he was my professor at inad who wrote a fantastic book survive and thrive he is the one
who helps me a lot with entrepreneurs who with Scientists who want to be entrepreneurs he's in almost every deal that has that funding team composition very very cool and elegant uh solution I think uh Arc you've also said that
um a couple of things that really did strike me the first was deep Tech scientific discoveries they they really aren't going to be as valuable unless you figure out a way to commercialize them and let regular people use them um which
obviously sounds pretty obvious when you think about it but then you also think about like I know that you're not saying that you're opposed to theoretical research um yeah yeah but um the the H how do you as you look at the life cycle of an idea or
a discovery where where in the curve do they does it cross over to oh okay this now is at a point where we think we can actually commercialize it and are you ever too early or too late I think we will be too early I think we will be too late and I don't
think that anyone on the planet actually has a good answer to this question and anybody who will tell you oh I know that I know let me tell you those guys are full of it they they don't understand what they're talking about different
technologies will take different amount of time to mature and some technology that you pick up at TRL 4 when it's prototype and it's you think it's ready to go it'll take them 10 years to actually get to commercialization some companies you will pick up at exactly
the same stage and in two years they on the shelves of every shop outside um on the street the technology is not a linear thing every single individual technology is not a linear function every single linear every single technology is codependent on
other Technologies think about AI to empower new molecule Discovery or photonics to empower AI or and and then you go into Optical filters still power photonics and then you go into lasers and you go into this Rabbit Hole of all
this cross depend Tendencies there was this fantastic book recommended to me by one of my dear advisers and it's called the nature of Technology ref the nature of Technology I'll send you the link U by Brian Arthur that's the name of the guy anybody who's
watching that can pause it and you can see usually I have maybe three or four sticky notes in this book and you can see how many I have in this wow that's awesome yes he's talking about techn ology in the same way that Darwin was
talking about Evolution he's trying to to build flaws of how technology emerges so we are on the constant Lookout that's the reason for the scientific review in our process we want to understand which technologist are right there at the cusp
of actually becoming a material one actually becoming a real thing and real product because yes I do love theoretical physics and math I can appreciate the beauty of formulas I can talk to my wife about how f was the smartest guy with all the diagrams that
he created and she's looking at me like a crazy person at the same time I think the idea of science is to create something that everybody can benefit from that is the ultimate goal of science to me I sometimes translate RPV as research
product value which signifies the whole value value chain of creation of something for the benefit of everybody else so to me the end result of science is a discarded packaging in the tra back and the person who was happy because
they used their product that's the end game I and I I agree completely I was just reading I love history too and I'd kind of forgotten that whole Battle of uh Aging for or uh where Henry V went against the French and the technology of
the English longbo was the decisive Factor there and it got me thinking along those lines of things that we don't necess necessarily in in our modern parlot think of as technology are absolutely technology and they are absolutely technology that changes the
game the world game in the case here uh you know the English Longbow whoops the French weren't anticipating that yeah it's the end of the nigh Hood as as it was before the long bow right because there was nothing that could pierce the
the Knight and nothing that could kill the Knight and now with long bows any any peasant can just shoot well you need to be very strong to use long bow but a strong peasant can kill a knight and it's like destroying this uh the modern
fighter jet with the cheap drones that that's the kind of comparison yeah yeah I agree and and I sometimes think that it's useful to think along those lines because as you were just saying it gets nested in other and and commingles with
other decisions so for example ex Le those heavy Knights where they can now die because the Longbow can Pierce their armor their advantage is gone but then you also come up with the point that oh they also don't maneuver well at all in all of that gear I wonder if we had
lightly uh uh armored people going against them with daggers instead of broadswords I wonder how that might turn out and I think that battle ALS o featured those tactics as well I'm not sure uh but it made me start thinking down that chain of events and that's all
technology we live in the world where we take so much of what exists for granted clean water electricity electricity like it is today did not exist 100 years ago like how many house I don't know the statistics I don't know the number but
how many households in the US had electricity in 192 23 half less than a half I don't know less than I would guess less than half less than half that would be my guess as well the running water clean running water that if you drink you don't get
some kind of horrible disease that's also a miracle we've been talking to one of my friends both you and I live better than majority of the kings that lived in the 16s or 1th Century we can get mangoes and strawberries at any time of
the year and that would would be a luxury to them we could we could get anywhere on the globe within what 10 hours 12 hours on a plane that would be inaccessible to them in their life uh in general and so on and so forth but yet
people get used to this stuff so quickly and they get um they start taking it for granted they they they complain that Wi-Fi is too slow on the plane actually Lou Lou CK did a great joke about that where where he says he first time time he was there he was
marveling marveling at being 30,000 feet in the air and being able to surf the Internet and then when it went off his immediate reaction was what the how dare you de prayed me wiet exactly yes we get used to good stuff very quickly and so we do not
appreciate how much effort went into creating all of this marvelous machines in the end of the day the the reason we can talk to freely and record all that and publish all that is just melt down sand and electricity and that that
that's essentially is it and all of that works because of Genius of people who have created that so yeah Technologies is a Giants standing on shoulders of giants at infinum to the bottom and to the top that's that's how it works yeah
I completely agree and I I got in the habit um it's funny about habits because you you forget that you intended to get in that habit but I the The Habit was every time I get into a hot shower I say thank you to the universe I mean and to
the to the creators the human beings who who made that possible for I'm gonna take this habit from you if you don't mind I'm not steal it I'm gonna copy it from you that's really please do because it really it it helps you keep the
aperture of your mind open because honestly as you were just pointing out people today I honestly think the majority don't understand that we are living at the best point in human history despite all of the problems that we face um you know you there's a great
book by Bill Bryson called America One Summer and it's about 1921 I think and and and he brings up the fact that the president's son died because he got a sliver from from a wood tennis racket playing tennis on the White House lawn
and he got sepsis and he died yep insane right 100 years ago 100 years ago now now we have now we have baderan areas who are much better at healing dogs than they were than doctors were at healing people 100 years ago so yes um it's funny right human nature is is a funny
thing we get used to good stuff so quickly and we get so emotional about bad stuff so easily it's uh it's fantastic and we always find new problems to be pissed off about and to be triggered by it's it's it's hilarious to to me it's a little bit sad but it's
also quite funny yeah yeah it's boat and uh I another solution that helped me a lot was I I there's plenty of things to root against and so I don't I I always try to look for things to root for yes because there are so few it's a much
less crowded over there it also the thing is we are all if we talk can can we spend a minute on philosophy and value systems here if we talk about human nature in general I think majority of people have motivations there are two types of
motivation in general if we talk about directional it's something that pushes us so we're running away from it and it's something that pulls us or we're running towards it majority of people leave in the motor operandi that they're running away from something they don't
want to get uh they don't want to lose their house they don't want to die because of hunger they don't want to lose their job like they don't want to lose something or they don't they want to get out from some conditions that make their life miserable and it is
granted in many cases when you're leaving a country that is Waging War or when you are doing something or leaving some slums in Bangladesh it makes sense but then a lot of people who live in the very affl societies are still in the
same mentality they're not trying to achieve anything they're not trying to build anything they're not trying to contribute to anyone's life beyond their own they're just trying to get away from all the negative distractions and if
they can they will just lay flat on their sofa drink wine and watch stupid TV shows and I'm like guys you're living in The Marvelous World in the best ERA of humanity ever ever ever ever you can do whatever you want you can be a pilot
you can hike Everest you can you can get anything you want and you can go and do molecular signs uh but instead of that you launch only fans account okay um sure we are so aligned it's funny because it's just that that baffles me as well it's just like oh my god there
are all of these things that to use your uh braid you should be running toward towards as fast as you can and it's never been easier to run towards those things exactly internet you think about think about 50 years ago to get any kind
of knowledge you need to go to a library you need to go and enroll in some courses you need to you need to spend an enormous amount of time and effort to get some knowledge today you just Google it and people even stopped Googling that
they just now it's a meal and they regate the same rumors without ever trying to check if it's true or not it's insane to me people are very lazy in general yes I love Humanity I love humanity and I think that loving somebody is being also cognizant of its
flaws so um we should not be as lazy we should put a little bit more effort in the things that matter amen uh I I I want to get into the stuff that I just find fascinating uh and and you are really great source and you've written and said
that deep Tech is really at a Tipping Point and that we find ourselves very much in a world like the world where it found itself in the early 1980s um and and the some of the specifics that you mentioned um are Neuroscience uh Quantum
Computing Advanced Materials new anergy it it if you and I mean the permutations are deep brain s uh uh stimulation stretchable Electronics photonics I mean I I love love love this stuff so so share with us what you're finding the absolutely most exciting
right now different things from different angles so from the net benefit to humanity I'll start there I think Neuroscience is the most interesting area the we we're dealing with the following if we put all the people at the serious of
their age there is aging population that has to deal with all the neurod degenerative stuff Alzheimer's Parkinson and things like that we do not know how to treat them well Through Chemistry through peels through shots and the
brain is really well protected from any external chemical agents intricate so neurom modulation brain stimulation brain Imaging and understanding in general how brain works we really Advance this field and will make us reasonably viable to live until 120
115 years old I'm I'm a big opponent of an idea to live forever I think it it really messes with everyone's had an incentive systems and it's just it's unnatural in my opinion but going until 120 150 could be a really nice age because um if in our
80s we would be like people who are now in their 30s or 40s that's great we still have a lot on hour we can bring so much because of this mix of experience and energy so that's one part of it on another side of the same series we have
young Generations j z and j Alpha who are by all means and by all measures either the most cognizant of their mental health or who have the biggest problems with their mental health of all the generations that ever lived and anxiety disorder depression
you can kind of understand why I was born into the world of millennial is I'm a millennial like classic ones like right in this generation the New Millennium is coming internet is booming you know the Soviet Union has crushed the end of History all
of this stuff it was all very positive like there is only good things in front of us and they're born into the world that went through 2001 through these attacks 2008 one of this huge financial prises then 14 and 15 and pandemics now
all these wars in Israel and Ukraine and Russia and like and climate change they're well aware of this thing and it's real we can see signs of it all all over the place so these Generations are really anxious and depressed the neuromodulation and brain
stimulation can also address these kind of diseases and neuromodulation and brain stimulation do not have any side effects especially if it's not invasive it has minimum to side effects and it by design has zero toxicity so I think neurom modulation
brain stimulation neurot teack in general could be one of the biggest tools to benefit Humanity to make our all of us healthier to make us all of us better I use brain computer interface daily um that's the thing the band that
I use for meditation called Muse it's a well-known band so I here you go I use it on a daily basis it's a very early neurot Tech very very early one of the first ones but it will get more and more sophisticated over time I'm very excited about Neuroscience
I think it has enormous potential enormous in terms of making money uh that's a little bit of a different question because I think Neuroscience is s to 10 years away before it actually becomes really viable way to make a lot
of cash ponics is is an exciting field for all of us in our fund and by photonics we mean specifically photonic computer chips whether it's memory CPUs or whatever it is it has a promise of decreasing the energy consumption by THX so what
100,000% and if you think about how much we spend on the data centers let alone crypto Mining and all of these things if you see how compute demanding AI is according to my friends from Google one query part is roughly a thousand times
more compute demanding than one Google query it's all wish Wasing queries can be large size and small size but in any case roughly that so fonics holds a lot of Promise in decreasing the the envir environmental impact of all the compute
that we're doing and also enabling AI to the new heights I would highlight those two directions neuroscience and PHS they're both incredibly exciting and I agree with you I'm I also am absolutely taken by the idea of quantum Computing and a Quantum Internet uh if
you don't mind give me your view on on on both Quantum Computing and and what that implies for the Quantum Internet I'm less of a fan of quantum Computing than majority of people in our industry I think that Quantum Computing
has very clear use cases and in one of those problems that that utilize the the superposition of States really well you know all the all the traditional NP problems all the logistics problems that that kind of stuff that's why it's so useful for
molecule design and new materials design it will be an incredible tool I think it will be again I would be super happy if I'm wrong I'm very skeptical here and I think it's going to be something like matlb you probably heard about that have
you used it maybe you have used it but majority of people have not ever touched ma laab they know that that thing exists but they never operated in it so I think Quantum Computing would most likely be very useful for specific sectors which
is destroy any other means of doing the computer in these sectors I do not see why or how Quantum Computing would be a thing that that is used in our cell phones or that is used in our daily lives uh in our consumer devices it could it could power some of the AI
applications sure I don't think it's going to be I don't think it's going to completely replace the traditional Computing at all the uh I suspect that and this is again just a Layman's view but I would suspect that it might have implications
on much faster Communication in terms of like our cell phones and or whatever succeeds you mean quot agement yes well classical physics will tell you that it still happens at the speed of light the classical physics will tell
you that a you cannot transfer information through quantum entanglement it's the best example that I've ever heard is uh if you have two socks and you don't know which one is left and which one is right the moment you put one on your right leg right foot
the second becomes the left one so that's that's the best explanation of quantum entanglement I've ever heard it's not that it's not that you got any new information out of that you decided to put it in your right foot so this one
is now a left sock so you really you really cannot transfer information through entanglement and all the attempts that have been there are not they nobody was able to prove that they can actually transfer the information let alone at the speed that
is FAS faster than light this is um this is probably at least physical but this is a time for another joke um if you break the laws of God you got hell if you break the laws of people you go to prison if you break the law of
physics you go to Sweden and they give you a Nobel Prize so so maybe I'm very hopeful maybe we just don't get it we're not there yet don't have an understanding of the universe that we should have and at some point we will create the faster than
light communication I would be the first one to use it I don't think it's visible not yet yeah well you got to get in line behind me because if I'm still around living to 180 or50 okay I I you I I'll I'll hand it to you wait what what what what do you
think um right now unlike in tanglement and the the various factors of quantum what do you think right now is working and is actually getting commercialized and pushed into uh being used by broader segments of society that will have the greatest
impact in Quantum or in general in general it but in deep Tech pleas there are so many different fields that could have a big impact and it's very hard to compare it's not even apples to oranges it's like dogs to tree leaves to clouds they're they're not
really comparable I think the small modular nuclear reactors could be a very big thing especially once it's fully licensed the way they're created they they by Design cannot blow up they by Design cannot contaminate anything they
will work for 30 to 50 years depending on design and it essentially is some body comes to your um small City CU one one block like what one reactor like that can power up to th houses for 50 years or 30 years non-stop you really solve a lot of energy issues
with this design and I think this is really smart so small modu nuclear reactors they're they're they're built right now we're all just waiting on licensing I think this is this is close this will be a big one photonics will be a big change in
our devices it'll be a silent Revolution Ain to how LED lamps replace all the incandescent lamps you will not even know that like there are neuromorphic chips in iPhones you know that I guess but majority of people don't know that
there is a specific neuromorph chip in your iPhone that runs in your iPhone and remembers how you type and all of your own stuff and when you replace the device you need to kind and teach it again it it's not stored in the cloud it's stored in your device there will be
fonic chips there this is going to be a silent Revolution but it's going to be very important uh because of all the energy consumption that I've mentioned before I think these two technologies are interesting and very
close I am not an expert to say how far this technology is out yet what we'll be able to finally really I I think many companies already are doing that but when it becomes the go-to method of creating new drugs and new materials this whole Quantum
simulation of these materials and new molecules could be really a thing that will change the way we heal ourselves the way we build things self-healing materials can be modeled through that so it can all build the resilience of human
beings and our items around us as well so this is one of the C Evolutions as well but this is going to be something like electricity and water that we talked about every was like would be like yeah of course I have this one peel whenever
I I cough or whenever I feel whatever a belly pain I just just pop that peel it's my personal peel with my initials on it and it heals everything in my body and they'll be like they didn't have it in 2023 Savages but that would be the emotion
so very for private and personalized medicine in general yeah I I'm incredibly bullish on that um and uh I think that you're right that a lot of that is closer and when I say closer I I'm talking like a a decade uh five to 10 years yeah that that's what I mean by
close um but that's why I'm trying to keep good care of myself because I'm 63 and I don't want to be the last of the generations that dies at you know 85 this is this is the right point to do a shout out to silver stain though our
main neuroscientist he's 78 years old and he runs 5 kilom at least three times a week one take God bless indeed I wish I could run them at least once a year it do few times in week I love it take good care good care of your health we are the generations that could
actually leave to 120 150 diet Sports and sleep that's all you need yep I agree those are the three biggies well arcadey this has been absolutely fascinating I knew that I was going to have a blast talking to you um at at the
end of all of our podcasts uh we we uh play a game that's kind of fun and that is we we are gonna make you the emperor of the world but just just for a day and and you you can't kill anyone and you can't put anyone in a re-education camp
but what you can do what you can do is we're going to hand you a magical microphone and you can speak two things into it that will incept all eight billion people on the planet whenever they wake up whatever their tomorrow is
the two things that you and whispered into that microphone they're G to think they came up with it and they're going to say you know what I'm G to start acting on both of these today what are you going to incept love each other and be the best version of
yourself can ever be wow those are great that would uh I think maybe do more to uh solve a lot of the human OS problems that we are facing in the world uh if people could get incepted to do both of those well this has been absolutely fascinating we'll have to
have you on again because I was looking at my notes and I and I didn't even get the stuff that I wanted to ask you about so so this was really fun thank you so much for joining us and until next time thanks a lot Jim talk to you soon okay have fun