I love Zoom, but I am tired of it. As I step back into the world, spending time with people over food and taking walks, I am watching big things start to move again. These projects are emerging in ways that did not happen on the Brady Bunch screen I…

Who did you take some hope from today? We’re all talking about the market downturn and adjusting our plans to operate in the new context. Hope is a casualty. And without hope, startup founders struggle. Hope, belief, conviction, mission, confidence… these are currencies that don’t need to parallel the financial…

As deep tech investors, we often see incredible ideas that aren’t ready for an investment. This is much more the norm in deep tech than in other areas of venture capital investing. We regularly meet science teams with no company or commercial ‘packaging’. Equally, we meet commercial teams who lack…

Investing in something early is investing in a whisp of smoke. The patterns are hard to see and constantly moving. How can it be possible to read a description of that smoke on paper and then decide to take a risk on an investment? I’ve been on many investment committees…

We can’t play the infinite game with a legion of gatekeepers standing along the road ahead. Most of the funding sources for research commercialisation are grants administered by gatekeepers. These processes have thorough governance processes, and the gatekeepers (I have been one) can defend any decision if challenged. It just…

What do startup accelerators need to accelerate? We’ve become jaded by some of the cut and paste programs, and I wanted to flush that out in my essay, Do we still need startup accelerators? The generated threads included valuable insights that I encourage you to read on Twitter and LinkedIn. What does an accelerator today need to deliver? …

Do we still need startup accelerators? Were they for a point in time that has now passed? I have been designing and running accelerator programs since 2010 and believe they have been a significant contribution to the innovation system we have today. Ten years ago, few people aspired to start…

A common job for us at Main Sequence is finding leaders for the deep tech companies that we are founding or helping spin out of research organisations. These people need to be impossibly experienced — probably as a business leader in a sector (such as the food industry or energy)…

You have just heard the first pitch from a founder. Or perhaps you are coming to the end of an interview with a candidate for a role in your company. It’s feeling like a ‘No’. Look at your notes? What is your private, uncomfortable feedback? I didn’t understand a word…