SCVC: College dropout to IPO - the journey from cofounder to deeptech investor

Get a rare insight into one entrepreneur's remarkable journey to a $1.5B market cap. 

Discover John Williams's insider strategies and personal challenges as he co-founded and scaled Kudan from startup through to IPO. John's next chapter is building SCVC, a deep tech VC he and partner Harry Destecroix wished they had as founders.

This episode is a must-listen for every entrepreneur and tech enthusiast.

Key Takeaways

- Insider IPO Strategies: from leading Kudan through to a historic IPO, John shares his untold story of the strategic manoeuvres and personal challenges of scaling a company to achieve a billion-dollar-plus valuation. 

- Venture Capital Reimagined: discover SCVC's unique approach as a deep tech VC firm that supports early-stage founders, focused on transforming academic research into commercial spinouts.
 
- Technology product fit, learn how a deep understanding of your technology can guide you to the right product and market.

Investor mindset -  hear how SCVC is helping early-stage founders navigate the complex and long journey from academic research to spinout success. 

Hear how John hopes to leave a legacy and go beyond his massive IPO milestone,  by backing the best technical founders who are creating the fourth industrial revolution.

Have questions about this episode? Ask our hosts, chat now via our website

Transcript

John Williams: 0:08

We actually IPO on the same day as Softbank mobile. And Softbank mobile was either the biggest or the second biggest IPO in Japanese history, it was incredibly hyped. And we got told by our underwriters not to IP on the same day because you will just get battered.

Dr Becky Sage: 0:29

You're listening to founded and grounded with Ollie collard and Dr. Becky sage. The podcast brings you the honest realities of startup life. If you're a founder or aspiring entrepreneur, this is for you. We know running a business can be lonely and tough at times. And we want to help you get ahead with simple tips and sound advice. Every fortnight we hear inspiring stories from an early stage business owner, who's only a couple of steps ahead of you, talking about what they've learned. And as your hosts, we share our insights and experiences as founders. So you can apply this to your own business. Hello, I'm Dr. Becky sage, co host of finding and graded podcasts. And I'm here today with Ali. Hi, Ali, how are you today?

Ollie Collard: 1:21

doing awesome transfer key. It's spring in the Sun Sun around us and the air is slightly warmer, which makes me feel happy.

Dr Becky Sage: 1:29

Me too. I'm a different person in the springtime than I am in the wintertime. I'm a person. I don't even know what I am in the wintertime. But it's not fun. And we're excited for this week's entrepreneur because since slightly different angle this week. So tell us a little bit more about who we're going to be talking to. Yeah,

Ollie Collard: 1:49

we've got quite an eclectic mix of guests on founding and granddad's. We've gone from dance with Barney to dog treats with Connell. And now we're going to deep Tech with John. So John Williams is a partner of se VC, a deep tech VC fund, based here in Bristol. And John is actually an exited founder from his former business codon, which floated on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Dr Becky Sage: 2:15

And Q Dan has been around for quite a long time. And so John has gone on quite a journey with that first business. I'm really interested to find out the lessons that he's learned and the lessons that we can learn from him from that journey he took with his first business. Let's find out more.

Ollie Collard: 2:36

John, good afternoon, how you doing?

Unknown: 2:37

I'm doing great. Thank you. Excellent. Well, thank

Ollie Collard: 2:40

you so much for coming along to our studio this morning to join us on founded and grounded. Now normally, we feature very early stage founders who are a couple of steps ahead. But today, this episode has a big difference with you being an exited founder. So my two aims for this interview really are one to unpick all of your learnings from Q, Dan. And secondly, to understand your mindset as a deep tech investor. So first of all, can you take us back in time, John, how did you meet your co founder Tomo? And why did you start Q down together in 2011.

Unknown: 3:19

So I can take you back a little bit further, which is I was actually a school dropout. I was super interested in computers. And I was really interested in sort of low level stuff that was really nitty and gritty in detail. And in my AAS level computing project, I tried to do something that was too complex for the school to mark, they forced me to make a database using Microsoft Access of all things, which I didn't want to do. And I got a D and I just decided to leave and I decided, okay, I'm just going to self teach myself computers. So I did that my parents allowed me to do it. But I couldn't really find the jobs in Bristol that I wanted to do, I was really interested in this sort of low level optimization and there was only so many jobs and they require a lot of experience. And I bumped into, into into Tommo at a social events. So Tommo is or was at the time a successful entrepreneur. He had started a company in Bristol called Zen united. And it basically took Japanese game IP over to the west and rebuilt it for the Western market. And he had the idea of doing the same thing with augmented reality. So augmented reality, the very primitive early kind had kind of sort of became a thing in Japan on sort of their feature phones, and tamo had the idea of bringing it to do sort of marketing in the West. But there was no technology and I took a look at it and I thought okay, well this is computer vision. This is 3d rendering, and it's in a very hard environment, which is an iPhone 3g and an iphone four at the time. There This is good enough for me. So I offered to build this technology for him and COO Dan, you know, became a thing. And and you know, we were very early in augmented reality. So

Ollie Collard: 5:11

how did it go from doing this favour for Tommo, to actually turning into a commercial business.

Unknown: 5:17

So I wasn't thinking too much about the business side of things that like my motivation at the time was to have a job. This was my very first job. And I was just happy to be making you know, a little bit of money and happy to be doing something that I thought was interesting. Tommo, in the very early stage was was the kind of the visionary that saw that there was an early way to kind of monetize this. And tamo being tamo managed to secure a client before we had any technology to build it. So it was a nice position to kind of be in is that, you know, the company was started, and there was just a client there waiting for us, there was a little bit of pressure to kind of build the technology out in that timeline. But you know, luckily, it worked out. But

Ollie Collard: 6:01

that's the best way of doing it isn't actually not building all the bells and whistles and this fancy, all singing, all dancing version of the technology actually going out there and seeing what the marketplace says, and will people pay for it.

Unknown: 6:14

I mean, that's that, you know, that's the nail on the head, you know, we were making something that we knew at least somebody wanted, I mean, you can't get too carried away. But you know, a lot of startups will go a long way before they even start thinking about product market fit. And we'd kind of built a company around it, you know, from the very beginning.

Ollie Collard: 6:33

So how did the business scale then from that one customer.

Unknown: 6:37

So when I made the technology, I didn't make it specific to what that customer wanted, I decided to build it as a framework. So the kind of the best analogy is kind of like a, like a 3d gaming engine, like Unity or Unreal. But this was an augmented reality engine. So it took the very hard stuff, which was the computer vision and and the rendering at the time, and made it very easy for for kind of newer developers to kind of build something easy without understanding those, those kinds of difficult details. It got to the point where we could create the apps we were making. In a day or so the hardest parts of scale was actually winning the new business, because it's very sort of relationship driven, and lots of face to face. And that would actually take weeks, and then we would just spend a day or two actually building building out the apps. And we couldn't scale the sales side, quickly, you know, enough. And we ultimately to scale, we decided to kind of drop down, you know, to a lower sort of layer and allow other companies to kind of go off and scale, you know, winning customers and building apps using our platform technology. So coo Dan became went from essentially a digital agency to a technology company. And that was what allowed us to scale the AR side of our business. So

Ollie Collard: 8:03

the business model ultimately changed. But can you tell me about another pivotal moment or milestone in the Q Dan journey that proved to be the tipping point? Q

Unknown: 8:14

Dan changed a lot. We spent many years really trying to find our fit, technologically and and in the market. Moving from an agency to a tech company was the first step but it wasn't the critical step. A little bit to the story is that in 2012, we actually pitched the company to Apple, we wanted Apple to acquire the company and enter augmented reality. Apple said augmented reality was not a good idea and would never catch on, which in 2024 is, is especially fun to watch. But I felt that it was inevitable that they would eventually come in. And when they would come in, they could run it as a loss leader at the end of the day, they just need to sell phones, they don't need to sell licences for their software. So all of their software, in terms of SDK is free. And another thing happened, which was that the technology we were developing from our from our research was getting too strong to kind of benefit augmented reality. So we were making the various computer vision we were doing more and more accurate. Augmented reality doesn't need that much accuracy. It has a diminishing return on accuracy. And we were getting really good at what we called sensor fusion, which is combining more different types of sensors with the cameras. So this was like Lidars, Radars, inertial measurement units, and so on and so on. None of these things really help augmented reality. So competitors were kind of starting to develop their own technology and we had nowhere to really go because the ceiling wasn't that high. And the big moment was leaving augmented As reality behind and we chose to leave augmented reality behind before Apple actually got into AR, and we moved into robotics and essentially autonomous vehicles. So that could be cars that could be drones, you know, and and sort of various robots that work in industrial environments. And this was a blue ocean, nobody was building this technology at the time, you might have had sort of, you know, divisions of Google doing it, but they're certainly not going to sell it to lots and lots of different customers. But by moving into that space, we actually were able to leverage all of the benefits of technology that we've developed, that were kind of wasted on augmented reality. And from that step on, everything was easy. Every company wanted to work with us, because there was no alternative.

Ollie Collard: 10:46

Wow. So you were this first to market in terms of the right technology in the right market, and people were essentially lapping you up in terms of wanting to do business with you? Absolutely.

Unknown: 10:57

And it was because we kept it quite general, we didn't make the product, for example, about self driving cars, it was something that could be used in self driving cars, but not exclusively. And, you know, as as I'm sure you're aware, you know, those markets are still maturing, and it's not obvious what the biggest markets going to be. So we essentially hedged our bets by keeping it as generic as possible. And augmented reality was even still a component of that, because fundamentally, it is the same technology. So we were still providing technology to various Augmented Reality Headset providers. So early versions of vision Pro, and it cost us nothing, because it was the same same stuff we were developing for the for the robotic perception. So

Ollie Collard: 11:42

John, can you tell me a bit about the scale of the company at this time, so in terms of employees and revenue,

Unknown: 11:50

so the company has always been quite small. We focus predominantly on engineers, I think around 70% of of the team were engineers, and the majority of them had PhDs. And we ultimately sort of set up a division in Tokyo. Because once we were targeting robotics, that is just a great market to be in. And we essentially had the split where Bristol was our engineering office, and Tokyo was about, you know, essentially admin and bizdev. In the Japanese market. In terms of revenue, it definitely fluctuated in 2012. So one year after the company was founded, we were already profitable, we didn't need to take any funding, and that would, you know, stay with us for the duration of Kadem, we took some select angel investment, because it has more benefits than simply just money. And it also bridge the gap, while we pivoted from augmented reality to artificial perception. But we essentially, were always able to generate lots of revenue through an IRA, non recurring engineering, by working with customers to prototype the various ideas they have in various different industries. And that was really, really important because like with that very first augmented reality customer, it gave us unique insight into all of the different markets that we were trying to capture with a very general platform. And

Ollie Collard: 13:19

how did you build a moat around the business at this stage.

Unknown: 13:23

So we're working in computer vision, and it would ultimately become artificial intelligence. And the reality is, is just the talent pool there is very, very small, especially with what we were doing. And we just made sure that we hired, you know, everybody good, and never stopped the research. It's too tempting to kind of assume that you've built a product that people want, you know, it's product market fit. But the mistake everybody makes about product market fit is that it's a continuous process, you can achieve it, and then you can lose it. And when you lose it, and you haven't got your next thing that adapts you for whatever, wherever the market has moved, then you're just out of the game. So we were very, very heavy on r&d. And that's just because of my background. Love it.

Ollie Collard: 14:12

And so essentially, you're saying that there were two factors there are and are not rest and relaxation, but recruitment and research, were the fundamentals to obviously grow the business, how would you go about attracting the top talent?

Unknown: 14:27

So startup culture is incredibly important. And I think it's one of the things that genuinely gives the us the advantage over Europe is those companies are perceived as very fun to work out and they have very sort of flexible working cultures. And we try to basically make it as fun and experience that and a ride that everybody fills that they're a part of, you know, so people were very, very well compensated with with stock options, which is now a very common practice, but back Then in Europe, it was it wasn't quite as sort of popular, but really just feeling that people could choose what they wanted to work on. So the company valve that makes makes the Steam game platform and used to be a game developer, they have that same sort of work culture, and it tends to attract the most creative problem solvers that want to kind of apply their talent to something that, you know, best fits them.

Ollie Collard: 15:29

And talking about your differing skill sets between yourself and tamo, how did you split responsibilities between running the business,

Unknown: 15:38

so Tarmo was always the CEO and I was the CTO as a tech company, a CTO obviously can't really not be aware of the wider business. But tamo essentially led, you know, the kind of the company's big strategy with a lot of feedback from me, and I just focused on building out the tech and trying to understand the market. The best thing about Tommo is that he is an outside of the box thinker. So there was a lot of cases where what we did was considered unorthodox, and naturally, being able to sort of see him doing his thing that's rubbed off into my sort of way of thinking. And naturally, we started to think, you know, in the same way, tamo, from a business background, he was originally a management consultant before before being involved in various startups. But he made a big effort to try and understand the technology. And I think that's a real problem in business today is that division can't be, you know, clear cut. And I think, you know, if the business side really understands the tech and the tech really understands the business, you've got a really good synergy. That just means everybody can kind of operate at full capacity. So

Ollie Collard: 16:56

John, the company was in two different locations. And I know you had lots of global customers. So what were some of the challenges that running an international business presented itself

Unknown: 17:07

timezones at the end of the day, you really want all of the teams clearly working together, and we were spread across the US, Europe and Japan. So we perfectly covered all of the time zones and trying to coordinate, you know, meetings between different divisions was was especially difficult. This was compounded in by, by the way we structured, what was going on in different countries. So the UK and eventually Europe, where the engineering hubs, Japan was very much about admin and bizdev. And the US was purely bizdev. You don't want bizdev and admin to be completely out of touch with what's going on with engineering. So synchronising, everybody is kind of really important. And, you know, this was obviously pre COVID. But there's a big benefit to having, you know, people in the in the same place, because a lot of business and ideas flow through, you know, silly little coffees and lunches and stuff that surrounds meetings. You know, I'm a big believer that meetings don't really work. And the real creativity comes on the peripheral. And that just becomes more and more difficult when you're, you're scattered around the globe. So

Ollie Collard: 18:22

how did you build that culture then in different locations? What did you do to foster those relationships and those water cooler moments?

Unknown: 18:30

So we tried to make Bristol, the mothership. The way we saw it is it was a tech company and Bristol was was was driving that. So we really tried to get everybody from Japan and America to continuously come out and spend time with the engineers in Bristol. And we would run deliberately sort of a range like social events and activities and stuff to try and build that, that those relationships. But other than that, we were partially saved by the fact that it was, you know, structured such that engineering was in one place and admin was in one place. So they needed to synchronise, but it wasn't necessarily a daily thing.

Ollie Collard: 19:14

And tell me about some of the cultural differences particularly between Japanese and British people, and obviously the US as well.

Unknown: 19:24

So Japanese business culture is very formal. There's a lot of suit wearing, and there's a lot of not really speaking up when you know something is wrong. The other extreme is America, where they will speak up continuously and Britain tends to be somewhere in between. And in terms of managing that we tried to make sure the Japanese side of the business was not run like a typical Japanese company. So startups in Japan are somewhat frowned at Han, Japan is not a great place for startups to the point that becoming an entrepreneur is not respected in any capacity there. But we made sure that we tried to build out that office that it was built by people that think outside the box. So as I mentioned, Tommo was obviously leading that, and we appointed a CFO to run the Japanese office, and that person was also very outside of the box. So the culture tended to trickle down. And we tried to capture that sort of European business culture and, and make sure that was represented in Japan as well.

Ollie Collard: 20:35

Yeah, that was been very tricky. I'm just thinking about, you know, the Japanese, obviously, very heavily respect values come through, but also like saving faces a big thing. So how did you get people to kind of speak out and speak their mind, showing

Unknown: 20:50

them that it is a safe space to do so. So that there is no consequence, and there are no bad ideas, and we just wanted to allow that creativity to flow? You know, a lot of ideas would come from me, because you know, my finger is on the, you know, the heartbeat of, of what's going on in the company, but I can't, you know, I can't think in certain different ways. And we always wanted to sort of allow that feedback to kind of propagate through to the to the senior management no matter where it came from.

Ollie Collard: 21:21

And sticking with Japan, so Kudan, actually IPO on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, back in December 2018. And the stock shot up six fold. I want to know, how did you prepare for an IPO? And talk to me about all of your range of different emotions of publicly listing your company? How do you prepare

Unknown: 21:42

for an IPO? So we didn't simply prepare for an IPO, we had two routes we could have gone, which was an m&a or the IPO, the m&a was very likely to be a large American semiconductor company, what they had done is they built various acceleration processes for computer vision, but had made that you know, the cardinal sin of not building software for it. So amongst their competitors, they all had very similar properties. And we essentially pitched ourselves as the software that adds value, and is the killer app for their product that then allows them to sell more than the competitors. So we did did a little bit of a tour of America, and we had a lot of interest from from from the big names. But we had simultaneously been preparing for an IPO. And when we sort of looked at how an m&a might might play out and IPO did sound like it would be a more attractive offer. And from a purely selfish point of view, I didn't want to sort of have golden handcuffs and have to go and work in some American corporation for five years or something. So an IPO was particularly attractive, because we could continue to run the company the way we wanted to. In terms of the prep, it's lots and lots of communicating your strategy and the vision of the company. But it has to be backed by solid sort of data in terms of financials. So in the lead up to the IPO, we were making sure that, you know, we were very much on the path to profitability and like revenue was growing and all of that kind of key stuff that ultimately is gonna get assessed by by bankers. But ultimately, it's about story. And, you know, if you look at the the Tokyo Stock Exchange, much like the London Stock Exchange, there's not many pure technology companies, and there certainly weren't pure artificial intelligence companies. I think at the time, we got told that there was no way you can invest on public markets that were a pure AI play, you would have Google and whoever, very big on AI, but they're also advertising businesses, and it's hard to pick apart. So we did something that was what retail investors actually wanted. And that story was really important. We're also very keen to kind of not be lumped in with like other AI startups, because, you know, AI is very poorly defined. And it's getting worse nowadays, with with like, large language models and stuff. But essentially, we built out what we called artificial perception, because it was more than simple, like pattern matching, it was actually giving eyes to machines. And we essentially tied it to, you know, the evolution of like, hundreds of millions of years ago, which is that when life started to get eyes, that's when you know, evolution exploded and you started to get like survive. What the fittest and so on and so on. And we said, it's essentially the same thing for, for computers, if they can perceive the world around them, the possibilities are endless. So that was very much our strategy going into it.

Ollie Collard: 25:12

And just talking of story, then can you give me the 32nd, elevator pitch off cooldown,

Unknown: 25:18

who down is is to all of the machines. So we're not picking a particular vertical, but we're essentially telling a computer where it is in the world and what that world around it looks like. So this is very useful for autonomous robots. This is very useful, autonomous cars and drones. It's very useful for augmented reality, and it's very useful for IoT devices. At the end of the day, cameras are becoming more and more commonplace. And a camera is all you need to run CUDA and software. And what you do with it, you can build on top of it, because it's an entire engine that hasn't been optimised, optimised for particular vertical. Love

Ollie Collard: 25:58

that, John, and you talked about, obviously, the run up there to the preparing for the IPO. Talk to me about the day you actually went live on the stock exchange.

Unknown: 26:08

So as that was actually my first time in Japan, I went to Japan for the first time for the IPO. I was very lucky that Tommo handled the Japanese side of the business prior to that. And we actually IPO on the same day as Softbank mobile. And Softbank mobile was either the biggest or the second biggest IPO in Japanese history, it was incredibly hyped. And we got told by our underwriters not to IPO on the same day, because you will just get battered while everybody focuses on on SoftBank. But we said we're not scared of SoftBank, and we're going to do it anyway. And we did and on the market open, soft bank dropped 15% on open, which is a disaster for such an established company. And we didn't get a price. And we were like what, why? Why have we not got a price. And it was because everybody was bidding higher and higher and higher. And nobody was willing to sell their shares. And this continued throughout the day, you know, throughout our bell ringing ceremony, which was, which was a lot of fun. But we actually made it to the end of the day without a share being traded. And at this point, the bid price had had gone up three fold. And in the process, we'd smashed a bunch of records, because we hit all of the mechanisms built into the stock exchange to kind of prevent things from going too high too quickly. So there's, there's a limit of how much the bid price can increase every 15 minutes, and we hit it every 15 minutes for for eight hours or whatever it was. And that was surreal. Because, you know, I think we knew what we had was incredibly unique, you know, being a pure AI company that is now available to retail investors, and then in Japan of all places. But we didn't expect it to go like that. And we would go through half of the next day before we got our first prize, which was around four, four times, like the opening price that the underwriters had set. And, you know, my my memory of those days is it was just a blur.

Ollie Collard: 28:19

And how did you ultimately exit the company.

Unknown: 28:23

So following the IPO, you know, we had grown it organically. I we only took angel investment as I mentioned. And after the IPO, we wanted to actually do something in organic for a change, like everybody else gets to do spend some money. And we decided to set up a corporate venture capital fund, which I was basically looking for various companies to had synergy with queued and that we could then invest and then add value on top of the investment. But in the process, I found a company called Arthur cents, which was a spin out of TQM in Munich, which is a big AI University, and they were doing something similar in our space, and they were trying to raise a Series A and I suggested, well maybe, you know, maybe we can actually just acquire that because we're going to have more synergy if we acquire them than if we are simply an investor. So we went through this big m&a process. And we finally closed the deal with them. And this was late February 2020. March 2020 was not a good time to be doing high growth, ambitious stuff in startups. And that very much complicated, you know, the process and you know, in terms of sort of integrating the company trying to do everything remotely. We've We've locked Downs was was was very difficult. And at this point I had been in Sudan for for around 10 years. And I just decided, you know, now it's time and Tommy has stepped down as a CEO and we appointed our CEO to the to position and a guy called Daiyu, he's great. But without tahmo, I didn't really have that that partnership feeling that I had for the first 10 years. And I just decided it was it was time to kind of step aside. So I, you know, I stepped down from like the senior leadership position, but very much stayed on as an advisor. But as the company, you know, grew and grew and grew, my advice is, is less and less relevant from somebody that is living and breathing this stuff like I was for 10 years. And it was just a natural sort of transition to kind of moving on to onto new new things.

Ollie Collard: 30:38

So John, you went from a school dropout, to having an IPO with CUDA? What advice would you give to somebody listening about following your passions?

Unknown: 30:51

I would say, don't think too much about the business. If you're if you're working on something you're passionate about, and you're working with great people, the business can sort itself out around that, and you will be in a much stronger position to navigate it than if you try and force your way into a particular business. John,

Ollie Collard: 31:11

sometimes we can be a bit British about talking about money. And I just want to kind of understand the scale of queue down by what what was the IPO worth? So,

Unknown: 31:25

Sudan's market cap peaked at around one and a half billion dollars. Wow.

Ollie Collard: 31:31

And what's an average IPO here in the UK?

Unknown: 31:35

Depending on on where they list it can it can be several orders of magnitude smaller. So at that it was an outsized IPO.

Ollie Collard: 31:47

How does that make you feel?

Unknown: 31:48

Really proud. But at the same time, I felt that that was the peak of my life. And I you know, in trying to do new things that will always be the benchmark of my accomplishments. Well, a word about our sponsors.

Dr Becky Sage: 32:10

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Ollie Collard: 34:06

having this epic benchmark in your life? How would the rest of your life compare to this? Like, I imagine it's a bit of a sense of pressure in a way. But it's about I guess, how do you turn that pressure into excitement? And that excitement, you know, for the future and what the potential holds for the future for you? And I think that's certainly something that John is focused on. I think that that gives him renewed motivation to go again. Yeah,

Dr Becky Sage: 34:33

and I think it's partly about getting this balance right as well and not not attaching your identity to your achievements to and like so you as a person are so much more than those business achievements. But of course, it's got to be highly motivating, but also very, like you said, a lot of pressure to be like, I've been there, done that before. Now, how do I top that and yeah, it's a bit of a balance to walk.

Ollie Collard: 34:59

Yeah, so really interest same point back here. And I think in the next part, we're here about what sacrifices John made along the way.

Dr Becky Sage: 35:05

Yeah, absolutely. One of the lessons I learned from listening to this was the role of pivoting and the benefit of looking back and being able to see those pivots. And what was a useful pivots? We know that that all businesses need to do this. But how can a business when you're actually in the moment figure out like, is this the right time to pivot? Or is this you know, what, what should you be doing? And how do you navigate that in real time?

Ollie Collard: 35:34

Great question. I mean, firstly, the pivot, paid off big time REITs, they've gone from this design agency model into a pure tech play. And that has paid big, big, big dividends. But you know, it's a scary thing to do, Mike, the market, consumer and business confidence, economic circumstances will all change over time. And you need to stay ahead of that curve and make brave decisions, you know, when your KPIs are under threat, or you're not fulfilling your true market potential. So they've gone we can be more than what we're doing now. And they've made that bold decision to change strategy and tactics and pivot into the tech play. But it's definitely not an easy thing to do, I think my advice would be if you're considering a pivot would be to make micro experiments and small bets before trying to pull off a large scale strategic decision, because ultimately, you'll get some feedback from those small experiments. And that will inform whether it is the right time to pivot because, you know, we know that inaction can be absolutely deadly, you can't rest on your laurels in business, just look at the lights of blockbuster.

Dr Becky Sage: 36:47

For the first day, that shining example, we talk a lot about having perspective and not getting stuck in the weeds of the business. And I think this is a perfect example of why having some perspective, and then being strategic and mindful about how you approach it is going to help you make the right decisions. But being courageous as well, right? When you're in that moment, it's a, it's quite a big risk to perhaps pivot away from something that is kind of going okay to having that bigger ambition and wanting to do something that's going to have a revolutionary impact. Basically,

Ollie Collard: 37:22

John probably had a lot of reassurance and confidence in Thomas decision making on this. And that's why they probably trusted to actually listen to their gut feeling, look at the market and go all in on this new strategy. And I think that it's really interesting this story, because John's story is really inspiring, because you know, he was a college he was studying as computing. And he was doing this project, and they've gone to him, we can't actually mark your project, because we don't understand where it's going. And he was just a pure different level. And he's obviously dropped out of studying and knows his passion and found an opportunity. And I think this relationship with his co founder tomo has been a match made in heaven, obviously, Tommy having a bit more business experience and being successful founder prior to Q Dan, and having but also having John's knowledge, energy cutting edge of his field drive to succeed. And actually, in John's own words, he said, he didn't see this as a business opportunity. In the beginning, it was just something that he was passionate about and being paid for what he was doing was just a bonus. Yeah,

Dr Becky Sage: 38:36

I'd love to delve even deeper into that co founder relationship, because like you said, I think they got something very right in that. And they were able to build this great business, giant business that had a big impact and financially did extremely well, as well. The other thing he said related to this, which I thought was incredibly important for people to remember is that you can lose product market fit. And I think that again, you've got to stay ahead, you've always got to be thinking, it's not just a case of like, Oh, you've done this job. Now we've figured out who our market is we figured out who's going to buy or we figured out where we're going to apply this technology. You've got to keep your eye on the ball. And if and you may need to pivot again. And so you have to be mindful of that. And you have to actually have the reserves in order to fund that pivot because a pivot is expensive is essentially really launching the business in some ways. 100%

Ollie Collard: 39:35

and I think they had both their eyes on the prize, and also the computer vision eyes on the prize as well. If you want long term success, you've got to constantly evaluate your business and continually improve it and it probably goes back to that kind of Japanese philosophy that was embedded within the business of Kaiser and of constantly improving. Another

Dr Becky Sage: 39:56

thing that came across as a core value embedded in this bill. Isn't it was creativity. This was something that John was really pressing a lot like, how do we create a culture of creativity, and identifying that as something that is really important for them in the business? He talked about it happening in the peripheral, which I thought was really interesting, and especially when they've got these big these offices that are all over the world thinking about how can we physically get people into spaces where they can actually be creative together. But how do we also do that culturally, because we've got so a lot of very different coaches going on here and being able to kind of mould those different cultures together. Or rather, being mindful they they kind of chose what they wanted the business culture to be. And therefore they nurtured that culture within the business.

Ollie Collard: 40:48

It's incredibly hard to do build culture, I think the first thing is obviously identifying your values. And obviously, creativity was all of those values. But that is the kind of starts at 101, that I think actually building culture. But also embedding those values, fostering the conditions to thrive is where the real magic happens. And obviously, this is something they did incredibly well, you got to remember, they've got split locations between the UK, Japan, the US with different business cultures and ways of interacting with one another, which makes it incredibly hard to do. I think the first thing that they did very well was attracting and retaining the top talent in the market. And that's something that they did incredibly well to grow their business. But then it's about how do you foster those water cooler moments, build that psychological safety. And ultimately, that comes down to the leadership in obviously, John and tamo, and also employing the right pupil and fostering that culture. So it's not something that happened overnight. And it probably took lots and lots of years to get it right.

Dr Becky Sage: 41:57

Something I think many founders get wrong when we talk about this as they think it's to do with kind of big investments in certain kind of interventions that are going to suddenly change your culture. But that's not what culture is a tool culture is in all the micro interactions in all the small moments, it's the way you engage with somebody. And like you said, it has to come from leadership, it has to be role modelled. And that gives permission to other people in the company to be able to kind of have that same approach and those same small moments, which then build this culture of belonging, which you absolutely need. If you're going to expect people from different cultures to come in and be creative with one another, and engage with one another and feel safe to share ideas with one another.

Ollie Collard: 42:42

Yeah, culture definitely is not a fringe benefits. It's not a poster on the bloody ball with your values is not a team away day, every quarter is so much more than that. Oh, yeah, we're

Dr Becky Sage: 42:53

singing from the same hymn sheet. Sure, Raleigh. Completely agree and, and I hope that more people realise this, it's definitely something that you that comes from you and actually is another reason why you as a founder, as that original entrepreneur, why you have to keep yourself healthy. And you can't be in a position where you're just stressed all the time. Because if you are, you're not going to be modelling those kinds of behaviours that you're expecting to see everywhere else. John, and tamo, did not get everything perfect straightaway. You don't you don't build a business over this amount of time and an end up doing an IPO or the gate ultimately gives you a market cap of 1.5 billion without having a few challenges along the way. So let's listen in to what John might consider to be failures or challenges that he's had in terms of growing the business.

Unknown: 43:49

I wouldn't say there was any sort of large failure. along our journey, we were very lucky that we were able to kind of navigate everything. I think towards the end, we we should have put more and more into r&d, it was becoming more and more obvious that AI was the next big thing. And we were super early in it. And that was why Quran was able to generate so much value, but then a lot of big resources were pumped in from various other companies to try and accomplish similar things. And I think that, you know, we we could have done more and more. The temptation, unfortunately, once you're a public company is to worry about your quarter to quarter performance, rather than than what you might be doing five years out. And that's just something that every company loses once they go from private company to public. Building

Ollie Collard: 44:49

a business can be all consuming. What's one sacrifice that you've made along your journey? I

Unknown: 44:56

sacrificed my personal life so I had no personal Life until quite recently. And it was because I was so passionate about what we were building that I could let live and breathe this stuff and didn't feel that it was a sacrifice in the moment. But there's a certain point where you realise you're in your mid 30s. And you haven't experienced most things that other people in your peer group have. And once I started to step aside from Sudan, I had to play catch up really, really quickly. So I did all the hobbies, all the experiences, and so on and so forth. But doing them when you're in your mid 30s versus early 20s is just not the same. I'm

Ollie Collard: 45:45

intrigued to know more about your support network, who keeps John firing on all cylinders. So

Unknown: 45:52

during the cooldown years, it was Tombo, Tombo. Tomoe is my best friend. And that came that grew out of working together on CUDA and it wasn't two friends that started a business, it was something that, that matured, and I've learned everything I know about business until recently from Tommo. And he's just been a great role model to me. You know, he's, he's older than me, and he's sort of much more experienced, and having someone like that to look up to has just been fantastic. Nowadays, as I am now in venture capital, and I have a new partner Harry desta Chua, who is one of Britain's most successful, deep tech founders, and has just done wondrous things for deep tech in the UK. You know, I'm learning things from him that I don't think I could have ever learned from from anyone else. And you know, as I go on this venture capital journey, my girlfriend sky, she is a professor at Princeton University, researching entrepreneurship and innovation. So she has someone to, she has a constant sound box for me to talk at and get her her perspective on all things related to entrepreneurship. So, you know, without her, I don't think I could I could do the venture capital,

Ollie Collard: 47:12

I love that. And you might be you must be like, a living case study for her then in terms of entrepreneurship,

Unknown: 47:17

um, in many ways, yes. In many ways, because I've, I've come from the Tommo school of thought, being quite outside of the box, not a lot of, of what I say is representative of academic literature or, or books on startups. But to her that is, at the very least, hopefully, interesting. John,

Ollie Collard: 47:38

I want to dig in a bit to the concept of having this massive, massive peak in your life and being ultimately a benchmark throughout the rest of your life as well.

Unknown: 47:48

When you build a company, and that company has value, sometimes you have to wonder, well, is that company still, you know, doing what it set out to do? You know, 50 years later? I think, you know, we talk a lot nowadays about impact, you know, a lot of startups are trying to generate impact. And I think that I want to kind of leave my mark on on the world in in a way that, you know, I feel that the world might be a little bit better, because I've done something, something in it. cou Dan can very much contribute to that, because it's solving lots of challenging automation problems. But I think, you know, the world has bigger problems. And I would like to sort of nibble away at some of those. And I feel that, you know, I mentioned that, you know, queued uns IPO was my big moment. Hopefully, I can have a bigger moment that is not so focused around me, but you know, the bigger picture,

Ollie Collard: 48:47

you're definitely hungry to leave a legacy then John? Oh, absolutely.

Unknown: 48:51

And, you know, I feel really honoured that I've been able to team up with Harry, who, you know, is very much, you know, walked a similar path to me. And, you know, what, what we're doing with science creates now is very much about trying to, you know, improve, you know, the UK improve the outcome of, of deep tech spinouts. And, you know, just improve the lives of everyone for what those companies might be able to contribute to the world.

Dr Becky Sage: 49:22

I love how, through his own experience, John's now looking to leave a wider legacy. And he's focusing on helping other entrepreneurs who were in a similar situation is quite a niche group of entrepreneurs when we think about that kind of deep tech entrepreneur, but it is a niche that can make a massive impact. I mean, we really are talking revolution when we when we talk about deep tech, and that becoming embodied universally. So I found it really fascinating that as you're talking about kind of challenges in the business, actually, John has this mindset that really just shifted here. him towards opportunity. So he was really just talking about this hunger to leave a legacy. So he has this kind of a lot of hunger inside. And I think that the lesson here is that just because your startup does everything you want it to do all those things you think like when it gets there on a hit my goals, and that idea of like going to IPO reaching over a billion market cap, but like so many entrepreneurs would be like, if I do that, then life is done. But actually, it that doesn't satisfy you, I think, and especially if you've got that drive within you that that engine is gonna keep going. And it's like, okay, where next, it doesn't satisfy the hunger to hit those goals,

Ollie Collard: 50:45

I think it probably makes it worse, if you're a purpose driven founder in particular, fulfilling goals, and achievement is very addictive, like you want to keep going. So and John clearly isn't driven by wealth, he wants to create something a lot larger and leave this legacy. So I think what John has done really well, and I would recommend this to other founders is making sure you define success on your own terms. So you know, once you get there that you've arrived, otherwise, you're going to continually keep going, keep going, keep going. Absolutely,

Dr Becky Sage: 51:21

I hear so many entrepreneurs kind of say, when I get here, I'll be satisfied, or then I'll slow down or then I'll do the other things I want to do. And you kind of have to save them no, like you have to define your success right now. If if you kind of if you're going by success parameters that aren't actually aligned to what works for you, or, or what you want to ultimately do, then you're chasing the wrong thing, and your life is gonna be over before you know it. And meanwhile, you've been kind of chasing all of these other forms of success. So I think it's really important that you're clear with yourself about what success means to you. But the other thing I was thinking here is just like being really clear. And I guess, unapologetic is what I was hearing from John around, just enjoying the chase, basically, like enjoying the process of trying to make those things happen. And I can definitely relate to that, too. I'm kind of my highs happen when I'm like, really in something and I know what I'm like after and I know what that goal is. And you just feel like you're really kind of driven and you've got that energy internally. Yeah,

Ollie Collard: 52:27

I think what if you're hyper focused on a goal or achievement and you're in that zone and you're doing everything is aligned to that one goal, then it is addictive, it's a great environment to be in because you know exactly what you're supposed to be doing. And no doubt that John is going to achieve what he wants to achieve. But for people listening, I would just say, just be aware of what your definition of success is, as we said, and when is enough enough, because otherwise, you're going to constantly keep going and that is potentially dangerous and harmful to you. So I would have good people around you. Like we talked about peer networks, coaches, mentors, etc. To help you to find success. And

Dr Becky Sage: 53:09

as you said, I think it is addictive. Like when I talk about that when I say like my highest word like these things. I also know in those moments, I was like going fast towards burnout. Sometimes it worked out, sometimes it really didn't. And it leaves you burnt out and without achieving those goals. And then what you know, and it takes a lot to build back up from those places. And like you said, You've got to have that right support system around you. So it's easy to kind of look on and be like, Well, I just want to be driven and all I have to do is being driven and I'm gonna get you're gonna go to IPO I'm gonna get this billion dollar market cap. But actually, you know that that doesn't happen in most situations, actually. So we started to touch on scbc and the work that John's doing there, shall we go and find out some more about what they're working on.

Unknown: 54:00

So, the two partners at the fund and myself and Harry destacar and Harry, as I mentioned is one of the most successful deep tech entrepreneurs in the UK, and he has become an expert in spinouts. His company Xylo is a spin out of Bristol University. And since Xylo, sold to Novo Nordisk he has he has gone on to help many, many other spinouts through building an entire ecosystem. The thesis we have is the scientists can make great entrepreneurs and the UK is in a wonderful position in terms of its science output. It actually is number one in the world in terms of, of impact from scientific research, but we are some of the worst in the world at commercialising that research and we want to invest as early as possible and you know, technical founder to technical founder you know myself Harry has very much walk that path. And others want to walk that path we work very closely with, with those early technical founders to build the company and get it on to the absolute right track from the very beginning, before they start to accumulate too much baggage, or go too far down the wrong path. Specific to the types of technologies we invest in. We believe that industrial revolutions are historically driven by not just one big technology, but multiple big technologies that are combined together. So the first industrial revolution was very much about, you know, textiles and steam and machinery, and it just created so much growth for the era. We're in a time where, you know, the, you know, the state of semiconductors and artificial intelligence and engineering, biology and quantum, they're all thriving at the same time. And we fundamentally believe that if you take different technologies and combine them, they're greater than the sum of the parts, they can actually compound off one another. And we think that, you know, the fourth industrial revolution is on the way I mean, if it's not soon, as a result of recent breakthroughs, then when when could it possibly be because progress has just been absolutely enormous in the last decade?

Ollie Collard: 56:23

Tell me a bit about the world of academia then and the lack sometimes of commercialization skills for potentially technical founders, what are we missing here in the UK. So

Unknown: 56:37

academia is the place for Reshet research to thrive, there's not going to be anywhere better for something to kind of be able to, you know, solve a problem without being pressured into commercialising it than academia. But that same advantage causes problems when it is time to commercialise it. And I think it's because the successful sort of spinning out of the company, it has to cross various different hurdles. So the first thing it has to cross is the tech transfer office, it's actually up to the university wherever they allow you to take the IP and go off and do a company with it. And they have sometimes a one dimensional view of how that might be done. So you say I've created this, this fantastic next generation technology. And then somebody asks you, okay, who's, who's the customer going to be? Like? Well, I haven't really thought about that. Yeah. So you got off, and you speak to someone, and you speak to someone, that particular industry and they go, okay, that could actually be used here. And you're like, oh, that sounds good. So now you, you go back to the tech transfer office, and you say, ah, Boeing might want this, this could be useful to make, you know, an aeroplane wing pass or something like that. And you spin out your company. And you appoint some people in the company that, you know, X aerospace people, and so on, and you build out your company, and you make this product, and you go to, to Boeing, and Boeing says, We didn't really want that. And now you're an aeroplane, part manufacturer with no customer. And I think what we've done a sec is we focused on technology product that everybody has heard is a product of product market fit. That's the ultimate goal of any startup. But that usually comes quite late in the process. And the advice is coming from Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz. And it's usually applied to general tech. And in general tech, when we talk about websites and apps, technology is sometimes a variable that can change to make your product what it needs to be, it's just a tool. But when you've spun off a technology from a university, and it's off the back of 10, or 20 years of research, it is what it is, you better be sure that the product you build around it is a good fit. Because if it isn't, you can't really do a lot about it when you when you realise you don't have product market fit. But then there's certain advantages, which is that if you've actually got the best product for the technology, and it manages to use all of the strengths of the technology and not leave them on the table, and it solves, you solve a problem that only you can solve. With that technology, you can then create your own market and you can then dominate that market, it's incredibly attractive. But the process of spinning out and how venture tends to act in the UK, is they need to see some kind of commercial proof or traction before you've had a chance to explore that. So what we try and do is invest off the back of a really, really strong technology, something that is category defining, but they haven't thought about how it might be a business yet, we don't really want to see a business plan. But we just need to assess that the technology is fantastic and we will help them figure out where it's fitters. So the precede investment stage should be about finding what is the best product that you want to do. And then when you go into seed, and later, then you actually worry about the product and the market. And it's just a problem with the with the landscape. I'll tell you a kind of a depressing statistic about venture capital in the UK, which is shown As a percent of VCs in the UK have ever worked in a startup, and working in a startup, it's not a particularly high bar. And it's just too tempting to go very Dragon's Den and start asking about profit and stuff when they're in there asking you for money. So I think we've just tried to really capture what we needed as founders. Because, you know, Xylo, didn't raise venture capital, who Dan didn't raise venture capital, I don't think venture capital would have got what either of us were trying to do. And we're just trying to be that technical founder, empathetic VC. And it's just because, you know, we've walked that path. So

Ollie Collard: 1:00:38

John, you're building the VC firm you wished you had as founders? Both you and Harry? What do you mean by this?

Unknown: 1:00:46

So, VCs are very driven by their investment cycles. So when they give you money, they expect you to kind of spend the next 18 or 24 months and hit a tonne of milestones that have made you grow. And then you can raise more money, and then rinse and repeat. And I think the early stage of a startup is the most critical, and it's about finding that startups place in the world. I talked about technology, product fit, and then ultimately, product market fit. It's not something you can necessarily force. And I think that, too, Dan exemplifies this, because ultimately, augmented reality was not our technology product that I mentioned earlier that we were getting diminishing returns from advancements on the technology when it was applied to, to augmented reality. But once we moved to artificial perception, suddenly, you know, everything was useful. If we were a venture backed startup, we would not have been able to make that pivot. Because that pivot was basically actually stopping the AR side and business, which was making money at the time for the big picture. And if you try and persuade a VC that that's what you're going to do, they will block it at board level. So like one of the best things about coo Dan was that we didn't have that external influence on our board of directors, which meant that we could make those bold choices. What

Ollie Collard: 1:02:20

is one other thing that's broken with the VC model,

Unknown: 1:02:23

VCs need outsized returns on a few companies, and then we'll just assume the rest of the portfolio will probably be a failure. And that means that the moment they get a whiff, that your company isn't going to be one of those unicorns, suddenly, they are a little bit disinterested. And, you know, to the to the point that they might write you off Sequoia Capital, wrote off their investment in graph Corp. Last year, is graph Corp, a failure, of course, it's not, but I think it's become apparent that it's not going to become a DECA corn or, or something like was speculated at the point of investment. But this gets worse because the return of venture fund needs on a particular company's exit gets larger and larger with the size of their fund. So as VCs raise more money, they need bigger and bigger exits. and bigger and bigger exits will always be statistically less and less likely. So suddenly, when they invest in your company, they now need you to go huge or don't even try. And unfortunately, there are a lot of cases where great companies could have actually, you know, become successful and built a great business that is, you know, profitable and valuable. But it's just not a unicorn, but that's not a problem. But I think that's that's just the mentality of venture at the moment.

Ollie Collard: 1:03:54

It is a real problem, isn't it? Because you as the founder of that business that isn't going to potentially turn into a unicorn and provide those outsized returns, you might quit that business, but you might go on then to build a unicorn afterwards. And if you've been shown a lot of disinterest by this VC company, are you going to be approaching them again from money? So

Unknown: 1:04:14

the reality is, is that supply and demand and the funding landscape will always be tied to like the macro environment. So you know, when inflation is high, and base rates are high, suddenly the high growth of venture can be less attractive than it was in say 2019. And that means that venture funds start to get careful with their money. So at the moment, if you are trying to raise a Series A, which is a pretty big round, you have about a 5% chance of succeeding, and your company could be really, really good. You could not done anything wrong, but only the best companies at the moment are raising Series A. So unfortunately, the moment a founder wants VC money, they kind of have to do it on the terms of the VC. And unless you've come up with something incredible, you're you know, and your deal was oversubscribed, then often founders have to settle for the for the kind of the VCs that don't, they don't really like or don't get them or will cause trouble at board level. But it that's perhaps a better outcome than no company.

Ollie Collard: 1:05:24

And let's talk a bit about diversity in the world of VC, a lot of founders face significant barriers to raising capital, just simply because who they are. What are se VC doing about this?

Unknown: 1:05:39

So another sad statistic about UK venture capital is that 70% of UK VCs are from affluent backgrounds, you know, parents went to university, they've gone to private schools. I was a school dropout, you know, Harry almost didn't get into university. And neither of us raised venture capital. And I don't think either of us could have raised venture capital. So we're very, like, sympathetic to, you know, if you are the, you know, the best founder for, you know, for a company, you should have every chance, you know, available. And one thing we've done through through science creates, there is a charity called science creates outreach. And it's about inspiring the next generation of deep tech entrepreneurs. So you know, school kids from from, from impoverished areas, we'll come in and get to do some science, we've got a dedicated lab for it in one of our incubators. But then they get to go off and do some real science with real startups that are funded and doing solving real problems. And hopefully, it's that NASA moment of inspiring them to go and, you know, try and pursue a scientific thing or try and do a startup. So we really believe that that opportunity should be available to anyone, and not just, you know, certain exclusive networks, which historically, venture capital has kind of protected so well.

Ollie Collard: 1:07:04

And just coming back to SCV, see, what stages you get involved with, and what size checks do you typically write.

Unknown: 1:07:11

So we're predominantly a pre seed and seed investor, we really want to get involved at precede because, as I mentioned, you know, the technology has typically spun out of university. So there's a lot of work that's already gone into that. But we want to work with the founders to make sure the company is set up on good terms. And it's not just a drag on the company for the for the rest of time, we then will follow into intercede. And because our second fund is much larger, it's$100 million fund, we can still follow into a large series A but it's that continuity, that is really important. If we invest in precede, and we follow intercede. And then we follow into a series A that is one consistent investor that is committed to their strategy. And it's not going to you know, involve somebody coming into the ball at a later stage that then wants the company to go in a slightly different direction, direction. So again, it's about that empathy to founders of, you know, letting them build the company out, you know, and commit to a long term vision.

Ollie Collard: 1:08:19

John, what are your three predictions for the deep tech sector?

Unknown: 1:08:24

Wow, three. So I think AI is, I don't consider AI a deep technology anymore, I think it's become a mainstream technology, I see AI as an enhancer of every other technology, I see it as unlocking the potential that is kind of previously uncaptured. If you consider you know, things like quantum and various forms of like sensing, at the end of the day, they're producing lots and lots of data. And this isn't dissimilar to camera data and computer vision and CUDA. And ultimately, AI was the thing that really unlocked the potential cameras were not a novel invention, understanding how to work with that data was was really critical. But you're also seeing AI becoming like really critical in like materials, design and biotech. And again, it's unlocking things that previously weren't possible, you know, we're getting to the point where, like protein sequencing, you know, is a thing. And, you know, the kind of biological data is the biggest untapped source of data in the world. And you look at things like open AI, where they've largely just crawled the internet for tax, you know, tax does nothing, nothing special and look what they've been able to do with, with like, their large language models, and then the image generation and so on and so on. But that's data that is readily available, but we're just at the beginning of, of kind of what we can sense about the world. biological data is just, you know, largely unknown, but also quantum is in quantum sensing. often sort of overshadowed by quantum computing, but quantum sensing is a thing right now. And quantum is allowing us to measure things that we previously didn't think we could measure. And again, it's giving us different types of data that only AI can unlock. John,

Ollie Collard: 1:10:16

I'm gonna put you on the spot here. If you had to distil down just one piece of advice for an early stage founder, what would that be?

Unknown: 1:10:24

Be flexible. You will never ever, ever be able to predict how the company's trajectory will unfold. You know, everything is a variable markets move competitors move, you might not find that your technology is to solve this particular problem. You need to be able to pivot and you need to make sure there's not much resistance to pivoting. The big mistake is that you bake things into your company that can't be undone. If you hire certain people, and they come from a certain industry, their solution to every problem will be used that industry, people are not as two or three dimensional as you'd like them to be. And sort of setting the executive team and building out the team, the company at an early stage very much commits you to a particular path that you as a founder that tends to embrace, you know, flexibility and creativity might not be able to get your team to kind of follow suit.

Ollie Collard: 1:11:25

Where can people find out a bit more about you personally, and their CVC?

Unknown: 1:11:31

Word, we're kind of hidden away. To tell you the truth. Come and talk to us. You know, we flew STbc. And science creates, we have lots of programmes. So we obviously have the incubators, we've just had our third incubator confirmed that will be built at the end of this year, that takes our lab space up to 75,000 square foot. But we've also just just wrapping up our first national engineering biology accelerator that's funded by by Ukri. So this takes very early stage ideas, and sort of tells them how to set up their company and how to build a pitch deck view of the basics and so on and so on. We want to scale this to cover various other different areas like semiconductors, quantum and even AI and stuff like that. But definitely, if that, you know, sort of suits what you're doing Carmen, come and come and apply and talk to us. And yeah,

Ollie Collard: 1:12:36

and you're based here in Bristol is John just for the listeners. So

Unknown: 1:12:39

science creates is based in Bristol, the three incubators are all here. SC VC invests UK wide. And you know, our plans are very much to take the incubator and accelerator model and go UK wide with that, as well.

Ollie Collard: 1:12:57

And, John, I know you had a question for our listeners, it's

Unknown: 1:13:01

becoming more and more apparent that AI is touching more and more industries than ever before. And many of those industries are not ones you would necessarily associate with technology. Do you personally feel the AI opportunity in your industries is exciting or threatening to your way of working and doing business? A great

Ollie Collard: 1:13:23

question there, John, and hot on the lips of lots of founders. So yeah, can't wait to see the results on that one. John, listen, thank you so much for your time and insights this afternoon has been an absolute pleasure having you on the show.

Unknown: 1:13:35

Thanks so much for having me.

Dr Becky Sage: 1:13:39

What an interesting question. I guess it's one that that we've asked a little bit before on this podcast, and one that I'm sure many of you think about, which is about how AI touches your business and whether it's exciting or threatening to you, or maybe both. We'd love to hear you talk some more about this. So we'll post that question over on the socials and do come and answer that question because we do love to understand your point of view. Going back to some of the other things that that John was talking about, I've actually been quite closely. I'm not not involved with this business. But about 12 years ago, in the same part of the world in Bristol, I was working for a startup that was highly reliant on lab space. And actually, it was one of the biggest challenges that there was just no lab space in the area. And now I've kind of worked with several companies who are part of the science creates ecosystem. So I've got kind of some familiarity with what they're doing. But I think it's great that, you know, they started to address this lab space problem, because that was a challenge that Harry was having a silo, but then it's built something that's gone so far beyond that. And it's really great to see such focus on solving some specific and high impact challenges through the SC VC ecosystem. And it was just really good Wait for me to get to learn more about it through listening to John talking about it. One thing I wanted to touch on, you talked about diversity briefly. And of course, you know, if you've listened to our other episodes, certainly go back to a couple of episodes talking to Barney and the episode before that we talked a lot about diversity in the investment ecosystem. And I've, I found it interesting that the way that they're currently tackling diversity is to do schools outreach. Now, of course, the the adage of kind of you need to see it to be it, and you need to kind of be inspired at a young age, it's definitely part of the challenge. And I know, you know, I've been involved in this kind of thing for many, many years. But it's not going to be enough to go into schools, if you really wants to have diversity within the Investment ecosystem, you've got to look at every single part of the pipeline. And you've got to look at where those blockers are. Because in this particular case, when we're talking deep tech, it's really about those environments, where you are going to be nurtured and learn that deep tech now, of course, but some people that might happen at school, and then it can get nurtured. But actually, for many of the companies that go through this ecosystem, they're coming through universities, they're going through that kind of PhD research process. And just a couple of weeks ago, on International Women's Day, I was up at the university, and It shocks me, the conversations, we're still having, particularly around gender. But of course, I mean, racial and ethnic diversity is terrible in these spaces as well. And so you've just got to think about like the accessibility to even be able to get to the point of spinning out a business from a university.

Ollie Collard: 1:16:49

It's incredibly hard topic. And you know, it's not going to be solved overnight, that's for sure. I think what people want is to see people that look like them, that talk like them that think like them. And unfortunately, you know, if your family hasn't gone to university, you don't know people in your network, they've gone to university, you're probably not going to go to university, particularly with the fees and debt that you know, come out with as well, which is another barrier to entry. So I think social mobility and access is so vitally important. They've already made a starting point in terms of encouraging schools to go in engage with it, which is, which is great. And this will probably evolve over time and be a bit more all encompassing. But I think, yeah, diversity, inclusion, access, equality. You know, we're not just talking about deep tech here, but across the board is a big issue. And

Dr Becky Sage: 1:17:45

when we do look at Deep tech, it is so vitally important that there is diversity in the voices of deep tech, like we said before, they're creating revolutions with this. And so voices from across the whole spectrum of society have to be part of creating the technology that drives these revolutions. Yeah,

Ollie Collard: 1:18:03

the fourth industrial revolution is here. And so there is a responsibility on the shoulders to ensure that it's done in the right way. And, you know, they're part of the ecosystem. So it's about also collaboration in the space as well.

Dr Becky Sage: 1:18:16

Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, it doesn't fall on one set of shoulders to make these changes, of course, I'd love to see more work done on the leaky pipeline as well, because what we see a lot of in deep tech, in scientific circles, is a lot of people falling out of the pipeline, people who are incredibly talented, but are facing other barriers, and are essentially kind of pushed out because of their identity. So for example, when I was recently at the university, I was so shocked to hear how many women had sexual assault and safety issues in terms of when they're doing their research. And it's, I knew it had been a problem, like I knew, you know, obviously, myself and my peer group, like we went through certain things, but that was 20 years ago. And I'm still hearing it. And so to be in to hear those things happening, which means that you can't just show up at work and do your job and do it safely. You have so much else to think about. If you aren't too traumatised to kind of ever go back in and pursue a career in these areas.

Ollie Collard: 1:19:29

It sounds like a systemic issue, which obviously needs addressing, and I guess this probably could be in a whole other podcast and itself. But um, yeah, it's good to get to raise it on the podcast.

Dr Becky Sage: 1:19:40

Yeah. And I just felt like it needed to be brought up in this context, because of course, until all of those things are done, and I'm not suggesting that, like you said, it's a systemic problem. This has to be dealt with, kind of at the source and throughout the whole system and throughout the whole pipeline. Let's turn to some More, more enlightened to things, shall we say? I was so fascinated here, right? This idea of technology product fit. As somebody with my first business, we spent so long on this, like, product market fit, why are we struggling with product market fit, but you know, like there was all of this. And actually, if I didn't have the voice of John, in my head at that point, that was like, let's think more about technology product fit, I think we could have really pushed the technology further, and really been more open minded actually, about how it could have been applied where it could have been applied, and, and actually have created something that was far, far greater and bigger. And that's not to say that I don't think that we did a job in my first business, I think we did. But I think that that was such a perpetual challenge for us. And like, and finding markets where you're like, well, commercially, this just isn't viable at this point. So I guess we just won't, you know, we can't pursue it, because we couldn't get funding for it at the time. And I don't know, if we'd have been a good fit for a CVC. Maybe we would, maybe we wouldn't, but you know, it was it was so enlightening to hear that different perspective and to recognise that for certain businesses, being able to be that patient, deep tech investor that allows your founders to really go there with the tech, without maybe being able to articulate like, exactly which market, it's gonna be applicable to, allows things to be driven further. Yeah.

Ollie Collard: 1:21:31

And what I really love is that they will help you figure that out with you, alongside you, which I think is really encouraging to hear. I love the fact that they're building this VC firm that they wish they had its technical founders, you know, some people call this being founder friendly, I would completely disagree, it's so much more than that. I think we've both Harry and John, going through their own journeys of exiting their businesses, respectively, their experience, and expertise, the founders is so much more than the money. It's that relationship that they understand on a deep level, and they're gonna be help founders to navigate the very deep waters of going to market.

Dr Becky Sage: 1:22:13

Yeah, and it's a long journey, they understand that they understand they'll need to have follow on funds with them, I loved that he was talking about wanting it to be consistent. So they're kind of they want to get in there from the beginning, because this is gonna give them and the founders the best opportunities to just learn straight away, and actually probably be quicker to get into some of those places of reaching this kind of technology product. But as they talk about it,

Ollie Collard: 1:22:37

yeah, I mean, if as lead investors, they're following on in the rounds, that gives confidence that other investors as well, that, therefore the long term and the long term success of the business,

Dr Becky Sage: 1:22:47

I think it's all about building this more nuanced ecosystem. We've we've heard about it in several, several of our podcasts that there's lots of aspects of the ecosystem that that doesn't work. And we've got to recognise that, like scbc isn't for all founders by any means, or all founders who want to raise money, it's not going to be a good fit for the majority, actually, of those who we talk to, or you know, a lot that I work with, I'm in the tech sector, but I'm not in, most of them probably aren't deep tech. So it's not a good fit for everyone. But it's really looking at this piece of the puzzle around the ecosystem. And I really like that, but they're looking at how do we kind of optimise this particular piece of the puzzle? And if everybody can do that on their on the pieces of the puzzle that they know the most about, then perhaps we can start to change that overall picture of the ecosystem? Yeah,

Ollie Collard: 1:23:38

I mean, if it's a jigsaw that is well coordinated, and everybody is clear on exactly what they're doing and where they can add expertise and what is their niche, then it's a wonderful picture of the future, isn't it? But often, it isn't so clear cut as that? Absolutely.

Dr Becky Sage: 1:23:54

I think there's definitely I like the vision. There's probably certainly that piece about being connected and different people within the ecosystem kind of understanding and accepting that like different different initiatives are playing different roles. I think that that's the thing that needs to be understood and liked, had more connectivity, and more of like people really understanding their own niches and being happy to stick to that bit but to collaborate with others as well. I'll be fascinated to see how this plays out over the next few years, I think we kind of know that the investment ecosystem isn't necessarily getting the returns that he's looking for, which is then meaning that kind of new versions of success need to be looked at and new versions and kind of what is it we're trying to achieve with the money and heard by that distant day from the deep tech side and again, thinking about deep tech revolution, but we heard about it with Mr. Bug last week and thinking about, you know, net zero and more of a move towards that and kind of food security within this country. And so those bigger picture and those additional success criteria that go along with kind of building us up stainable business which of course, it's something that we talk about a lot, and almost all the times we talk to, can relate to this. So hopefully the ecosystem is moving more towards that way. So I'd love to see how that plays out.

Ollie Collard: 1:25:11

Yeah, I think just to add as well, the stat that John mentioned, which was only 8% of VCs have actually worked in a startup is absolutely shocking and glad to see obviously, both Harry and John are coming from a startup perspective and, and can show that relationship and empathy. So

Dr Becky Sage: 1:25:30

if you're interested in knowing more about John and sc, VC, do go to science creates.co.uk. And you can find out more about the whole science creative ecosystem, and you'll find the SDBC tablet there as well. Don't forget, we already shared the questions, so don't forget to go and check that out on socials too. Ali, what are people saying about the last episode from Connell, Mr. Berg.

Ollie Collard: 1:25:54

We have a very relevant question from Connell for Mr. Bulk. He wants to know gramme three gramme, how much more environmental impact does traditional livestock farming, cause compared to insect protein, he gave four options to choose from, the first one was five times as much second was 10 times as much third option was 20 times as much, or the fourth option was no extra impact at all. The results are fairly split, but we had a clear winner in the poll, most people went for 20 times the impact, and that was 76% of people. 6% of people 45 times 6% of people for whatever it was 10 times. And 12% of people did actually think it caused no extra impact at all, which I'm a bit baffled by. But there we go. So we'll get those results back to Colorado. And I know you did actually say that you're doing a lot of research at the moment into different feeds and rearing optimization that will actually make your insect protein farming even more efficient, resulting in less environmental impact. So we look forward to keeping abreast of those changes and understanding what the sustainability concerns are with Mr. Buck plan to confirm the correct answer. It has 10 times more environmental impact.

Dr Becky Sage: 1:27:23

And can you tell us about our next guest,

Ollie Collard: 1:27:25

we've got the incredible Kim Palmer who is founder of a business called Clementine, she is enabling a movement for women across the globe, ensuring that they can go from i can't to I can.

Dr Becky Sage: 1:27:39

Well, we really do have an amazing range of founders on these podcasts. Don't really, I try my best. Thank you everyone for listening. And if you like what you've heard, please leave a review on Apple podcasts. And don't forget there's a big selection of previous episodes. Just search painted and grinded on your favourite podcast player. Thank you for listening to find it in grounded with Ollie collard and Dr. Becky sage. Don't forget to press that follow button to help us to grow the show.