Singapore is one of the most resourceful and forward-looking economies in the world, and its constraints have helped make it so. It imports more than 90% of its food, draws 95% of its electricity from natural gas and has limited land, so it has built its strategy around partnerships that reach well beyond its borders, from a goal of importing low-carbon electricity to meet around a third of its energy demand by 2035 to a leading position in deep tech that includes more than 10% of the world’s semiconductor output.

Australia is the natural complement to that ambition. We have world-class science, along with the land, sun and minerals that Singapore lacks, and we are exceptionally good at turning deep science out of our labs and into real companies, which is the hardest part of the zero-to-one journey. I have been travelling to Singapore for almost twenty years, long before Main Sequence existed, and I have never been more optimistic about what the two countries can build together.

The natural next step for those companies is to prove their technology at industrial scale, which takes pilot plants, first customers, supportive regulators and capital that moves at the speed of technology. This is a question of design rather than size, since Singapore is smaller than Australia by every measure and chose, over thirty years, to concentrate that capability in one place. Australia is building its own capacity too, with the National Reconstruction Fund helping to fill the gap at home, and partnering with Singapore lets our companies move faster while that capacity grows.

That place is Jurong Island, Singapore’s energy and chemicals hub — a reclaimed 3,000-hectare complex home to more than 100 global companies including ExxonMobil, BASF and Evonik. The energy and chemicals sector accounts for around 3% of Singapore’s GDP and roughly a quarter of its manufacturing output, making it the ninth-largest chemicals exporter in the world. With so much industrial activity concentrated in a single connected ecosystem, it is also where new decarbonisation technologies can be tested, scaled and deployed at the greatest speed and impact.

Singapore is backing that opportunity with real ambition, and its new SGD$800 million Decarbonisation Grand Challenge (DGC) supports carbon capture, carbon utilisation, low-carbon hydrogen and other novel technologies. A new co-funding scheme under the DGC, Decarbonisation Research for Industry, Ventures, and Enterprise, also called DRIVE, allows startups and technology providers to design research projects together with Singapore’s public research institutions.

The opportunity is a natural exchange in which Australia brings companies that have proven something in the lab and Singapore brings the runway to prove it at scale, through pilots, potential first customers, access to shared industrial infrastructure and utilities, programs and an R&D ecosystem built to move technology from bench to plant. Singapore gains technologies that help it meet its targets, and our deep tech startups gain an industrial-scale testbed and a launch pad into South-East Asia, projected to be the world’s fourth-largest economy by 2040, where a strong imperative for sustainable development fuels unparalleled green growth opportunities.

That is why Main Sequence has formalised an MOU with Singapore’s Economic Development Board (EDB) and the Advanced Energy and Decarbonisation Office (AEDO), which focus on sharing perspectives on emerging technologies and industry needs and helping promising companies find pathways to develop and scale. Our mandate remains the same: backing Australian research and Australian companies, and these partnerships extend how far those companies can go.

We are building on strong foundations, because Singapore’s Temasek has invested in all three Main Sequence funds and backed v2food and Samsara Eco as they grew, so that for several of our companies, the partner who helped them scale has been Singaporean. Our governments have supported ongoing collaboration with a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership since 2015, upgraded last October, and a Green Economy Agreement that gives both sides a framework to build on.

This is one link in a broader corridor, because Singapore already hosts the regional headquarters of many Japanese energy and chemicals companies and Japan is where much of the capital and demand for these technologies ultimately sits, so Australian science, Singaporean industrial scale and Japanese capital and demand can connect to move technology and capital from south to north as companies grow.

Australia brings the science and Singapore brings the scale and the gateway, and our companies are ready to build this corridor together.

Here is the companion piece on Startup Daily.

Enjoy!

Now it is time for a new creation.

I would love to know your ideas for what that should be.

• From your context in the world, what problems do you see that will only compound over the next decade?

• What technologies are ready to answer that call?

• And where is that work happening?

Instead of just asking you a to fill in a form, I thought I might give back by building a model that shares back some design ideas if we apply Venture Science to your inputs.

Share your ideas

Moonshot Country: Darwin

Innovation is not confined to startups. It thrives in universities, governments, and large companies. I’m fortunate to see this every day, and it fuels my optimism about the future. Problems in the world aren’t roadblocks; they’re the raw material for jobs, businesses, and opportunities. The real question is: where will the trillion dollar industries that address them concentrate?

At Main Sequence, we call this Moonshot Country—the idea that regions, not megacities, will be the next engines of global innovation.

Why the Northern Territory Could Lead

The Northern Territory has advantages that align directly with emerging global industries.

• Energy transition: With unparalleled solar resources, projects like Sun Cable can more than power energy exports—they’re the foundation for new industries that need renewable energy.

• AI infrastructure: Data centres won’t be built without renewables. The NT can compete here.

• Sovereign manufacturing: Every part of the global supply chain is shifting. Regions powered by clean energy can capture major segments.

• Commercial space: Launch capacity is scarce and in demand. The NT’s geography makes it an ideal hub.

These aren’t abstract opportunities. Each represents a multi-trillion-dollar market in formation. The question is: how much of that value will be concentrated here?

Lessons From History

San Jose was orchards in the 1950s. Shenzhen was farmland in the 1980s. Today, each generates half a trillion dollars in GDP.

What changed was not luck but choice. Leaders in those regions concentrated their ambition around emerging industries and backed it with focus. That is the scale of transformation possible in places like Darwin.

What a Moonshot Country needs

Moonshot Country requires more than capital. It demands:

• Abundant renewable energy

• Land for 'carbon farming' -- both sequestering and growing new carbon in crops for manufacturing

• Skilled, practical workforces—not only coders but builders, miners, and farmers

• Transport and digital networks

• A moonshot mindset that embraces risk rather than diluting it through incrementality

Incrementalism is the enemy. When we want certainty, we chip away at the ambition. When funding is smeared too thinly, we fund too many projects to fail. Moonshots require concentration, courage, and focus.

Radical Collaboration

No single organisation can do this alone. Moonshots fail without radical collaboration across startups, governments, corporates, and research institutions.

True collaboration feels uncomfortable: competitors sharing secrets, governments declaring bold national ambitions, corporates backing small and unproven startups. If it doesn’t feel risky, it’s probably not radical enough.

Governments must do more than fund—they must pick winners and provide narrative clarity. The most valuable thing government can do is state “this is what we’re building” and clear the path for others to follow.

Examples Already Emerging

• Mackay, Queensland: Building a bioeconomy by turning sugar into biomanufactured products such as milk—an ambition that could match Australia’s coal exports in scale.

• Bowen, Queensland: Developing a vertically integrated space industry, with launch capacity that addresses a global backlog of 10,000 satellites.

These examples prove that with the right strategy and conviction, regions can align around moonshot industries and create entirely new economies.

The Narrative is the Strategy

Moonshots begin with story. The Apollo program was technically impossible when it was announced. It became possible because a clear, audacious narrative aligned scientists, government, industry, and the public.

Australia needs the same. We must repeat bold stories until they stick. Clarity of ambition is more valuable than subsidies.

The Call to Action

The next Silicon Valleys will not look like Silicon Valley. They will be regional, resource-rich, and deeply collaborative. The Northern Territory has all the raw materials to become Moonshot Country.

The opportunity is real. The industries will be global. The only question is whether we choose to concentrate them here.

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The recent Lululemon x Samsara Eco deal is a playbook for how to partner with startups for real impact.

They didn’t just announce a vague intention to work together. They painted a bold picture of what success could look like:

• A world-first enzymatic recycling process for polyester and nylon 6,6

• A pilot run using actual Lululemon products

• A specific plan to scale the solution into a material volume of Lululemon’s global supply chain

This sends strong signals to the market:

• “This is real.”

• “There is demand.”

• “This can scale.”

These signals do heavy lifting. They crowd in capital. They attract serious partners. They align internal teams. And they make success more likely.

This is the playbook: Start with the end in mind.

That means corporates and startups sitting down together to model what happens if it works:

• What would 5–10 years of scale look like?

• How will the corporate’s infrastructure, supply chain or customer base need to be deployed to make this possible?

• What revenue, margin outcome might be unlocked? In deep tech this could be hundreds of millions of $.

This aligns both parties around shared possibility. It helps them think at the same altitude. It surfaces barriers early. And it energises people across both organisations.

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And it gets real about value.

A corporate can ask: if this innovation scales through our footprint, what new revenue streams emerge? How does it reduce cost? Improve margin? Grow loyalty? How does it open new categories, geographies, or business models?

Startups can sharpen their thinking too. If this corporate is the first domino, what’s the market signal? What revenue pathway does that unlock? What pricing power might emerge with proof in market?

This future-casting is not just a visioning tool. It’s a commercial compass.

This requires trust. Startups are rightly protective of their secrets. Corporates are often siloed and cautious. Nobody wants to share too much.

So how do you build trust and protect value?

For most of this task, specific IP does not need to be shared. If the startup’s product does what they say it can do, corporates build their internal models with their specific knowledge, but only need to share the outcome they would like. e.g. Stage 3–2027 — Expand to European market — Volume Required Estimate: X tonnes. Forecast Estimate: $XM

Of course, some IP will need to be shared, depending on the context. For example, the startup may need to understand parts of the corporate’s supply chain or infrastructure to model their fit accurately.

Without trust, nothing happens.

Signaling involvement is the feature. When both parties signal their ambition to work together, it increases the chance of an outcome. Public signaling doesn’t need to imply a sure thing — it can reflect a collective intention based on specific shared modeling. This kind of strategic transparency invites aligned support from investors, talent, and partners.

Model what good looks like. Share just enough to imagine a world where it works. Build the trust to go deep early.

This is the Altitude Playbook: think higher, align early, and shape the conditions for transformative — and profitable — impact.

In venture capital, we talk a lot about “support.” We talk about networks, operational help, fundraising advice, and talent introductions. But support is not the same as duty. Duty is heavier. Duty doesn’t clock off at 5 p.m. or turn away on weekends. Duty is what takes hold when things get hard.

We can’t just ‘place bets’. We must place (bet) ourselves — right beside the founders, the teams, the mission. When the pressure rises, that’s when duty reveals itself for what it really is: a moral and emotional commitment to do whatever it takes.

Duty Is Not Arms-Length

To live with duty in venture capital means to inhabit the same emotional weather as the company. It’s not just about being accessible — it’s about proximity, immersion, even vulnerability. You place yourself in the same position as what you’re supporting. That may mean being there at 11 p.m. when a founder is about to tell their team they’ve got weeks of runway left. It may mean helping negotiate a hard financing round, or backing a decision you know is reputationally risky — because it’s the right thing to do for the company.

This isn’t occasional heroism. In venture, this is business as usual.

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Crisis Reveals the Culture

The moments that test our commitment are also the ones that reveal what kind of investors we really are. When a startup is approaching the end of its runway, the gravity is real. Founders can see the futures of their teams and their missions vanish. Our role isn’t to advise from a safe distance. It’s to stand with them, inside the pressure, helping them navigate through it — or out of it.

That may mean putting our own reputations on the line. It may mean deploying capital we might prefer not to risk. It almost always means dropping everything — calls, meetings, dinners — to be there when it matters. This is not a bug of the work. It is the work.

Duty + Discipline: They Are Not in Conflict

We are also stewards of capital. Our responsibility is to generate returns. But duty does not stand in opposition to discipline. In fact, the two reinforce each other. Duty means being relentless about clarity, alignment, and recommitment. It means asking again and again: what must be true for this company to succeed? And then doing what we can to make it true.

When we operate this way, we build a sharper edge of decision-making. We avoid the drift and distance that often creeps into portfolio relationships. We stay in it — where we’re needed most.

In this market — where capital is harder, timelines are longer, and the hype cycles have cooled — duty is the new differentiator. If you’re an investor:

• Don’t just write checks. Write yourself into the work.

• Be the first call at midnight, not the last to reply on Monday.

• Treat your commitment as an emotional contract, not just a financial one.

Support is table stakes. Duty is what changes outcomes.

If we want to build the future, let’s start by showing up like we mean it.

You’re approached by startups all the time. You listen politely. Maybe you sponsor a pilot. Maybe you write a cheque through the corporate venture fund. Maybe you even set up an innovation lab.

But if you’re serious about transforming your business — and playing a meaningful role in shaping the future — you need to go further.

The most valuable thing a corporate can give a startup isn’t money.

It’s trust. And it’s sweat.

Trust: Share the Real Stuff

Startups don’t need more high-level meetings or vague encouragement. What they need is specificity. Inside access. The real stuff.

Trust means saying, “Here’s how we actually operate.” It means opening up about the details: infrastructure, supply chains, sales architecture, customer relationships. It means being honest about the hard parts — the awkward processes, the underperforming segments, the messy edge cases that don’t make it onto slides.

Because that’s where the opportunity is. Startups aren’t afraid of complexity. They’re designed to thrive in it. But they can only build meaningful solutions if they have access to the real materials.

That’s trust.

Sweat: Plan Like You Mean It

Startups run fast because they have to. Time is runway. Certainty is fuel.

If the collaboration feels like a side experiment, it won’t survive. What startups need is evidence that there’s something bigger down the line — if they deliver.

Sweat means investing time and energy into building a roadmap together. Not just a proof of concept, but a staged plan with real commercial outcomes. Conditional, yes — but clear enough that the opportunity is visible from the beginning.

Even better: base the plan on data. “If you can improve this metric by X, here’s how it transforms our P&L.” Now you have a strategy. Now the startup knows why it matters.

That’s sweat.

The Role of Venture Capital: Building the Bridge

This is where venture capital can help.

A good VC doesn’t just write checks. They translate. They help both sides see the full picture — where the risks are, where the leverage is, and how the relationship can evolve.

Venture capital also unlocks funding where a corporate may be constrained. Capital that is early-stage, speculative, or strategic can be deployed through the VC — giving the startup the fuel it needs to meet the conditions of the long-term plan.

And when the VC is involved from the beginning, it ensures that everyone — startup, corporate, and investor — is aligned on the opportunity and committed to getting there.

Don’t Play It Too Safe

Too often, both sides hold back. The startup doesn’t want to show its cards too early. The corporate doesn’t want to make promises it can’t yet commit to.

So nothing happens.

Or worse — it drags on for years, going nowhere.

The antidote is clarity. Specificity. Shared ambition.

The startup says, “If we had access to this data, this infrastructure, and this sales channel, we could create a $100M business together.” And the corporate says, “If you can show us that traction, we’ll scale it globally.”

Everyone leans in. Everyone builds.

What Happens When You Share a Plan

When a startup has access to a high-fidelity, specific, at-scale plan from a corporate, everything gets stronger:

• Fundraising becomes easier (investors see the path)

• Talent acquisition improves (people want to join high-certainty missions)

• Focus sharpens (less noise, more signal)

• Product roadmap aligns to real-world outcomes

• Confidence increases across the team

• Risk-taking becomes more disciplined

• Time-to-impact accelerates dramatically

That’s the power of trust and sweat.

Not everyone can provide it. But the corporates that do will shape the future — not just observe it.

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I was speaking to a fellow deep tech investor recently who told me he was pulling back from “capex-heavy” ventures.

I was disappointed.

Modern venture capital loves capex-light. SaaS. Marketplaces. Mobile apps. Cheap to start, fast to scale. Most of the big wins have come from there.

So he’ll do well.

But there are whole new industries coming that won’t work like that. Quantum computing. Industrial biomanufacturing. Nuclear energy. Robotics. These are physical. They need hardware, infrastructure, steel in the ground. They’re not optional. They’re the platforms the rest of the next economy will stand on.

Look at Nvidia. No AI boom without their hardware. And no Nvidia without TSMC, one of the most capital-intensive companies in the world. Both are dominant. Both are essential. Both are capex-heavy to their core.

Capex Is Hard. That’s Why It’s Worth It.

I am inspired by the people that want to build physical things. But I know it needs a different playbook. We can’t use the same tactics that work for software.

My investor friend asked what we do differently.

Here’s what I told him, and a few more things we’ve learned along the way.

1. Only Build What You Absolutely Have To

Don’t default to owning the whole stack. Run every other option to ground first. Can someone else manufacture it? Can you license your plaform to others?

Every piece you add is another way to fail. Every asset is a cost. Don’t let ego push you into being a full-stack hero.

If you have to build it, fine. Let’s do it and find a way! See below.

2. Know the Value Chain Cold

Map the ecosystem. Then go deeper. Who makes real money? Who scrapes by? Who are the incumbents you’ll threaten? Who will benefit from your success?

Some will block you. Some will pull you in. You’ll need both. Know who they are.

Look for the “drop-in” — solutions that fit with how the world already works. Help incumbents make more money. The more you ask the world to change to suit you, the lower your odds.

3. Think at Industry Scale, Not Just Company Scale

You’re not just building a company. You’re nudging a whole industry forward.

• What needs to change in regulation?

• Who needs to work together?

• Are there trained people to run this?

• Where should the first examples be built?

• What’s the story that gets everyone moving?

This is market annealing. If you don’t do it, nobody will. And your company won’t go far without it.

4. Partner With the Best

Being a manufacturer is different from being a product company. Most startups that try to be both, fail at both.

Use the supply chains that already exist. Partner with people who’ve done this before. If you have to give up margin or exclusivity to get started, do it.

Speed is more important than purity. Get to market. Learn. Then improve.

5. Stack Your Financing

Capex-heavy companies get into trouble when they raise equity like they’re a software company. It doesn’t work. We need to build a stack of capital, sharing the risk and minimising dilution:

• Target 50% non-dilutive. Get serious about grants. Globally. Have someone full-time on this.

• Learn how project finance works. Know what FOAK and NOAK mean. Understand what debt investors want to see before they will engage? What kind of offtakes from customers do they want to see? How might you bring those forward? The sooner project financing can scale the business, the sooner founders and investors stop diluting.

• Get commercial pilots. Get customers to pre-pay. Try to do deals that build into larger outcomes as milestones are reached.

You can’t brute force a business like this with equity financing. It will be too dilutive for founders and investors and they will lose faith.

6. Milestones Cannot Slip

Capex sucks up cash. So you need to be crystal clear about where it’s going and deliver it on schedule so we don’t deplete reserves before you have the evidence to raise the next round.

Set tight milestones and build the team discipline to hit them.

7. Hire People Who’ve Done It

You need people who’ve lived it. Who’ve built plants. Run pilots. Closed big industrial sales. Delivered government-backed debt deals.

This isn’t a learn-on-the-job environment. Don’t hire for potential. Hire for scars in these critical roles.

8. Get Creative With Business Models

Don’t fall into the trap of commoditising early. It happens often as new companies race to the bottom to get the business that will be hard to drive back up.

• Focus on revenue now. Even for pilots.

• Show you can sell, even if the margin is thin for now.

• Build toward long-term pricing power. Consider models from other kinds of business. You don’t need to default to traditional models.

• Don’t expect a green premium. Customers and investors have lost faith in that. You must have a path to better cost structures.

Find models that give you control and flexibility. And let you scale without betting the company every 12 months.

—

Silicon Valley was founded to do hard things like this. VC rhetoric says that it is ‘Time to Build’, so let’s do it. There is no need to be afraid of capex-heavy companies. We just need to invest differently.

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Deep tech (or frontier tech, as it is sometimes called) is becoming a mainstream venture category. There is still plenty of SaaS investing to be done, but I think we've passed the peak of digitising real-world workflow, media, and commerce. Alpha lies elsewhere.

SaaS investors will look at deep tech

The next waves of tech that will build growth industries of the next few decades are biological; they are in space, they use quantum physics, sequester carbon in millions of hectares of land, and they make physical things in sustainable ways.

Deep tech, in other words.

So, SaaS investors will look at deep tech. They must look to get the growth benefits of this new wave. The question is, how do we help them to invest?

The job of financing and building a deep tech company is different to SaaS and wrought with cliches that give SaaS investors pause.

The 4 cliches of deep tech that can lead to a 'No' and some ideas for your response

• #1 - Deep tech companies cost a lot more to build: This can be true, but the sales process is less contested than SaaS due to the uniqueness of most deep tech solutions.

  • Focus on: How to articulate a financing plan and how that will play out over time. Do investors believe you enough to back you? Is it a big enough outcome to take the risk?

  • Consider: What are the different sources of revenue? Is there more non-dilutive funding like government grants? How will you use consulting revenue to monetise your business development? How quickly can you get a modular version of your company to something that can use loans to fund infrastructure and hardware builds?

• #2 - Deep tech companies take longer to build: Sometimes this is still true, but it is also true that several platform technologies are now reaching a maturity that allows for a deep tech speed we have not seen before.

  • Focus on: Designing your process for 'visible velocity' by breaking down the work into units of proof and stepping along that plan as fast as possible.

  • Consider: Can you get out of the lab sooner to work directly with customers? What can you sell sooner while you grow towards the main vision? Regularly show investors that you are moving along as planned.

• #3 - Deep tech founders are not entrepreneurial: Some scientists are also gifted entrepreneurs, so this cliche is overly broad. But if your team is only scientists communicating as scientists, this is a risk to address.

  • Focus on: Creating an interface for your company that demonstrates that you have the other parts of business building on the team.

  • Consider: Can you tell a story people understand and get excited by? Is there an approach to business development that is well thought through? Does the org chart have the right people in the right seats for the stage of the company? Are you presenting in a way that non-tech people understand?

• #4 - "This could be Theranos": When deep tech founders show up with a cure for cancer or an emissions-free way to make fertiliser, investors are worried they won't understand the science enough to back the company.

  • Focus on: Providing access to people and resources that remove this uncertainty.

  • Consider: Who could you add to a list of independent experts investors can call to validate? What information could the investor send them to review? Do you have published scientific papers that you can send in a pack to investors? Do you have 'Dummies Guide' versions that explain them without needing a PhD?

SaaS investing is a mature category. There is data that SaaS investors refer to, which they map to stages in your lifecycle to arrive at a reasonably clear assessment of risk.

You need to work harder to show them how to think about your deep tech company.

And, whatever you do, don't let them rest inside one of the cliches. They probably won't make it out of there!

Paul Graham recently wrote about 'Founder Mode'. I am sure this will gather momentum as a reason for founders to be protected at all costs as a companies scale. But, I think the piece is more nuanced than that.

It is about a mode, not a person. A mode that great founders have which allows them to out perform when contrasted with 'Manager Mode'.

We can't be founder zealots here leading to inexperienced, unhappy people running complex organisations with thousands of employees, just because Paul Graham said. We need to understand what is behind founder mode.

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#1

Founders think differently. No doubt. They are the seed. They have a commitment to an idea that needs to become manifest before anyone else believes, before compensation, before proof, before anyone is trying to optimise, automate or build culture. They are the original believer.

I think this is the core of founder mode and it is something that is hard for any future manager to acquire. It is the DNA, the instruction set that weaves through everything that comes next. If it is highly tuned and responding to its environment, it is a powerful force.

#2

Next, founders need a capacity for synthesis and learning that is super human. As the seed grows into a complex organism, the core idea needs to resonate with its environment and the founder needs to know where to flow and adapt. This includes assembling the right team who know how to build the ideas that need to become real.

#3

Finally, there is the important point Graham makes about resisting gaslighting. As companies grow, investors (guilty!) and employees, tell founders they are not thinking about the job to be done 'correctly'. That their experience suggests a better way. They maybe right, but it is the CEOs job to synthesis this and find the clear path through. And Point #1 suggests that founder mode can be a powerful filter for that.

Deep tech needs IMPATIENT capital

I was speaking to another investor last week and she said: "I suppose deep tech needs very patient capital?".

I almost defaulted to the normal, affirmative answer, but it niggled me. And then I said:

"Actually, no. It needs IMPATIENT capital."

Any startup is funded through a series of capital stages. None of these stages can invest along the whole lifecycle of a startup. In the early stages there is too much risk for the big cheques, but there are smaller pools of capital to build the evidence that the big cheques need. Each of these stages is a temporary custodian of capital. For the most part, they need to return that capital with a multiple within a fixed time window. None of them can get there alone.

In deep tech, we might be building rockets, quantum computers or networks of factories all of the world. This takes time and we need 'impatient capital' for each stage. Each stage must be obsessed with how to slingshot the startup to the next investor proof-point in the time we have.

We can't except 'slower' because we might not make it to the next stage.

This sounds like the investor tail wagging the startup dog, but it is actually a useful dynamic in deep tech company building. It aligns us. Everyone that can move a company forward is focused on the next milestone, dragging a complex, game-changing company into existence, often against the odds.

In the end, the whole finance stack needs to add up to patience, but each phase needs radical impatience.

#1

PROBLEM: Doing work without a destination feels futile. There is nothing to pull us along and unite us as a team. Almost as damaging is a destination that is too close, too easy or not inspiring or challenging to shoot for.

SOLUTION: Clearly define an outcome or a change in the world that happens because of this project. Make it difficult. Be comfortable with the fact that there are elements that we don't know that we need yet. That's OK because an aligned team can discover and execute.

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#2

PROBLEM: We have our project WIP and discuss how it is going, but we don't ask, 'What do we do next?' Having this discipline defaults a team into thinking about what comes next. Without it, we might drift through the next sprint.

SOLUTION: Add a default item to agendas to answer this question by the end of each WIP.

#3

PROBLEM: When leaders hold onto the need to make every final decision, teams slow down dramatically. Worse, it trains the team to stop thinking through possible next steps over time.

SOLUTION: Implement "I Intend to" as a part of the team culture. Give the team accountability to act and, Instead of asking for permission, share out loud what they intend to do.

#4

PROBLEM: Teams treat every decision with equal risk and too much momentum is halted while more research is done or someone else takes time to decide.

SOLUTION: Amazon has solved this problem in a couple of ways. Consider 'One-way doors and two-way doors'. One-way doors, decisions that we can't reverse, we DO need to think carefully about. We can just reverse two-way door decisions if they don't go according to plan. What kind of decision is this? Their other approach, which I use a LOT, is "Disagree and commit" - does it matter if you disagree? Is it a reason to halt momentum? Let's see what happens.

#5

PROBLEM: We've all been in meetings when an idea is put forward, gets passive acknowledgement, "Sounds interesting", and then gets moved on from. Most ideas are a bit crap at the start, or even hard to understand. The next time, this person will think twice about putting their idea forward.

SOLUTION: When someone else puts up an idea, do the work. Enquire to understand. Try to build upon it. See what it could become. Is it worth an experiment?

#6

PROBLEM: It just feels like work.

SOLUTION: Consider 'So what?' about this project. Why should the team give a shit? What will motivate them to want to deliver this project for free? What's the adventure?

#7

PROBLEM: Everybody knows, deep down, that risk and speed are only valued in this organisation if the project goes well. In the event of failure, you will be 'punished.'

SOLUTION: Understand how you behave (everyone, not just leaders) that might lead to this signal and resist. It doesn't mean that failures are left unspoken.

At Main Sequence: We’ve been working on our process to get clarity to founders as soon as possible. Alezeia Brown wrote about it in Eating Our Own Dog Food.

Momentum is at the heart of my practice

A team or person with momentum can develop incredible performance and feel unstoppable. Like moving a physical object, it takes considerable effort to get started, and then it is easier to keep running.

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I am interested in how we habitualise momentum. If our habits fuel momentum rather than interrupt it, they can drive consistent success.

Momentum creates momentum, and it matters how my day begins before I start influencing others. The simplest example of this is this idea from Admiral William McRaven:

“If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed."

So, I start my day with a win. For me, it is making something. A post, a slide or just an image in Midjourney to reflect my coming day. It doesn't need to be huge, but it needs to feel like a win.

As I get into my day, I start working with others. Every action can kill momentum or fuel it. Even having a conversation with the team. Daniel Coyle in The Culture Code puts it well:

"the most effective listeners behave like trampolines. They aren't passive sponges. They are active responders, absorbing what the other person gives, supporting them, and adding energy to help the conversation gain velocity."

Deep tech startups need a lot of capital. This means that:

• The work of raising capital must be a core discipline in the leadership team. One that is nurtured and practiced at all times, not pulled out of the drawer as the end of the runway draws near.

• The startup needs to increase in value faster than it needs capital in order to minimise dilution for the founding team.

A startup should raise money when it CAN raise capital, not when it MUST raise capital and it should plan milestone proof points that make this possible as frequently as possible.

At Main Sequence, we call this a "Slam Dunk Financing", where the work we focus on is anchored to investor proof milestones.

Most startups raise every 2-3 years and generally avoid it because many founders hate it. Of course, we've all been extending the time between raises in the recent 'Venture Winter' but spring is here and it is time to show investors the value we have created.

I propose that raising capital every year can deliver great advantage. Here are the benefits I can see:

• We maintain relationships. The relationship between startup and investor becomes one of collaboration and creation vs a moment of value assessment on the scales.

• We spread the frog kissing throughout the year. No doubt, there is no avoiding the 9/10 conversations with non-believers.

• Frequent check ins on value fit/perception between investors and founders teach both about what is happening in the market in real time. These ideas that flow back into product and future pitches. Continuous improvement.

• Incremental valuation uplifts become possible, assuming the milestones are being hit. Investors don't like being asked for a huge leap between a target valuation and the post-money price of the last round.

The argument against this is that it is a distraction. But I think that this IS the work for a CEO. Understand what is valuable, align teams to express this value in products, bring in the people and the $ to take that product forward.

Postscript

This post caused a good debate on LinkedIn that I welcome other thoughts on. The main objection was my specific suggestion to raise capital every year. For the record, I don’t believe this should be forced, and many of the companies I work closely with have been unable to do this in the past couple of years.

The suggestion is, if we explicitly plan around what could show investors value accretive progress, and that progress emerges once per year, raising capital more frequently becomes possible. And many deep tech companies can’t move without capital because time to revenue is a longer journey.

Steve Blank defines a startup as “a temporary organisation designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.” 

There is never a straight line to success — startup teams expand and contract all the time as they learn what they need to become. Being in a startup means trying things that may not work. In fact, most things we try in startups don’t work the first time and many variations of an idea are attempted before the winning solution is discovered. Sometimes a solution cannot be found. 

Teams and the people within them are one of the most important ingredients in a startup recipe and they change as much as anything else. If they don’t, it is likely that a company will fail, or be a weaker version of its full potential.

Walking into the office (if there is one) of any startup looks and feels the same, regardless of whether the team is perfection embodied or hopelessly mismatched. The humans probably look happy, meetings are happening, work is in progress. So great companies and the people that lead them, need to know how to look inside. 

There are two main areas of focus that can lead to layoffs. The first is team design to constantly optimise person fit with the jobs to be done as we currently understand them. Under this, people are made redundant all the time. And hired all of the time. 

The second area is runway management where we are looking at the team from an investment and resources perspective. Payroll tends  to be the biggest cost for a startup and it is the biggest lever to pull to extend the runway to a point when the company believes it can raise capital or be break-even.

Let’s explore each of these in turn.

Team Design Layoffs

Who is on the team and what do they do? This question is one of the properties startups must experiment with. It would be nice to think that startups can hire people into a secure job that stays the same as the role described before the interview. But that role description was probably wrong, the jobs to be done will evolve, expand or become irrelevant. 

And it is not the purpose of a startup yet. It is still discovering what the sustainable version of itself does each day and who the people are that do it.

Part of building a startup is building a team that can effectively do the various jobs. And part of this is figuring out what the jobs are in the first place.  The perfect team has the right people in the right seats to effectively deliver on the company's shared mission. 

This is a constant task, and alone can sweep through a company over years to replace much of the team. It is quite normal in a board meeting to hear about 2 or 3 people who have left the business and 2 or 3 people who have joined. Sometimes this is driven by performance, and sometimes it is driven by fit. Sometimes people leave because they don’t like it, sometimes they are asked to leave. 

This work is more pronounced, ironically, in companies that are doing well because these companies outgrow themselves. The teams do so well at discovering the next strata of growth and opportunity that they find themselves now in-experienced to the job that needs to be done next.  

If everyone in a startup accepts the responsibility of these questions, then we align the goals of the startup with the aspirations of the individual:

• What are the important jobs for this company?

• Which ones should I/my team do?

• Am I still the best person for the job?

An honest interrogation of these questions may land on the uncomfortable fact that you are the wrong person doing the wrong jobs. But there are responses to that. How might I learn new skills quickly? How do we measure that? Who could I hire ‘above’ me to lead the company to the next level and teach me new skills along the way. 

This does not need to be just the CEO’s job.

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Runway Management Layoffs

Startups are ‘Default dead’. They still haven't found a sustainable business model and if the capital dries up before they get to a break-even business model, they will crash into the end of a runway and everyone will be out of a job. 

At any point in time, a startup needs to know the precise length of its runway and have a belief about how and when it can extend it. In a deep tech startup this is more pronounced than any other kind of venture because a simple pathway to break even is probably further away. 

In the absence of break-even, this comes to an ability to raise money from investors. To do this, the investor market needs to be active with investors believing in the startup’s space, and the startup needs to be hitting targets that investors can weigh and see progress.

In the past two years, startups have been in a perfect storm where the investor market hybernated for a financial winter. Some have performed well against their milestones and others are still hunting for the hard-to-ignore evidence of progress. 

This has resulted in companies avoiding raising capital or minimising the burden of a round with SAFE and convertible notes from insiders. One way to maximise runway without raising capital is to downsize the team. 

Most of our companies in the Main Sequence have done this to some degree over the past 2 years and I am sure if we look closely at most venture portfolios the same pattern will be evident. 

In recent years, we’ve seen teams grow and shrink in line with their internal priorities and changes, as well as broader conditions. 

Layoffs are often seen from the outside as a sign of imminent death. But startups are ALWAYS in a state of imminent death if we come back to what a startup is. Rightsizing is a common method of providing sufficient runway for the startup to get to a point where market and evidence are ready to unlock the next stage of the runway. 

As an example, one of the companies I work closely with came into the ‘venture winter’ with a runway of 10 months. A year earlier, this would have been comfortable and not unusual. In winter, this is dangerous.  It cut plans to build infrastructure, ceased non-essential R & D and reduced the team size, extending its runway to 2029. It was now ‘antifragile’ for the uncertain months and years to come. As spring is now upon us, this company has options. 

This is also an area of focus that does not need to be the exclusive domain of the CEO. Some of our companies are internally publishing their daily burn rate - how much they drain the bank account each day - to all employees. 

In this way there is an organisation-wide perception of the sand passing through the hourglass as the company works to show evidence. There is the risk that the sand runs through, but everyone has agency to flip the hourglass before that happens. 

–

Layoffs are a constant and healthy activity for a temporary organisation designed to find a repeatable and scalable business model. 

We're not secret agents. We're innovators.

When asking ourselves, should we be careful about who to let inside, who knows what we know, the easiest choice is batten down the hatches. Nothing obviously bad happens with such a choice. Not like opening the doors and letting others gain our advantage.

But what does NOT happen because of this?

🥺 We don't learn from others about how our ideas could be better.

🥺 We do not mobilise a community to expand the impact of what is possible.

🥺 The benefit to the world only goes as fast as our own resources can muster.

🥺 We don't feel the pressure to relentlesly improve our part.

Do you really need a wall around your organisation?

I like porous edges, because it is at the edges that the magic happens.

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Sherpas not Gatekeepers in Research Commercialisation

I met Tony Raven last week. Tony was the Chief Executive of Cambrigge Universities tech transfer office - Cambridge Enterprise.

A big idea I took from our conversations was that research commercialisation really comes down to two questions from the team working on the spin out.

❔Will this invention/technology be good for the world?

❔How can we help?

These questions are optimistic, momentum building and default to the idea of a successful outcome.

We need more 'sherpas' in research commercialisation. People that show the way, carry the maps, help those less travelled to understand that we can get to the destination. And then stay on the journey to the next way point, because the road is long.

In contrast, we actually have too many gatekeepers who make it hard to begin the journey and then vanish when the next stage commences.

I'm not just talking about tech transfer people here. I am looking at you VCs.

Carry as alignment in tech transfer offices?

Deep tech startups are not destined for success from the moment they spin out of a university. When they leave the nest to survive on their they must brave the daily attack from an outside world.

In venture capital, we know this. When we make an investment, we are making decadal commitment to a company. We know that companies falter many times along their lifetime and we are there for them to assist when it happens.

There are also opportunities that we see for our companies when we are in other environments and we are constantly bringing this advantage to companies to benefit from. This is still happening in years 7, 8, 9...

These activities are things we could do, or not do. No one would know if I saw a valuable opportunity for one of our companies and I did not bring it to them. If a company that I invested in fails, well, that's a shame, but that's on them.

But it does not happen. I am vigilant, obsessed, constantly scanning the universe for threats and opportunities.

To incentivise this, I am entrepreneurially aligned with the startup through the venture fund equivalent of equity that we call "Carried Interest" or "Carry". After our investors have been paid, some of the returns flow into a carry pool which is then distributed to the investment team. Some investors become very wealthy through their carry. And if the companies all fail, we get nothing.

I wonder what would happen if university tech transfer offices incentivised their teams this way?

WDYT?

Spending time building companies in a university takes academics off the Professor track.

There is no path to become a "Venture Professor". The default career pipeline is to publish and academics (in Australia at least) are not rewarded for entrepreneurial activity. So a year out might be seen as a year BACK and, even when academics get over that, they will be weighed as a poor academic and struggle on the professor track if they are spending time entrepreneurially instead of publishing.

I propose a new career pathway that is recognised and rewarded. A Venture Professor is a senior, highly regarded academic who stays in the institution and has a focused output on company spin outs and creation over publishing. Like a venture investor is a company builder operating across a portfolio rather than a single spin out, a venture professor is an academic who operates across a portfolio. Like a some of the well known examples in the US, these professors will have a small amount of equity in tens of companies that they have incubated in the university. 

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So what is the track to get there? Well, it begins with a Venture Fellowship where post docs can do a 1 year fellowship. This is a deep immersion into creating companies from science. There is specific training in company creation and mindset through residencies in VC firms. There is time in the most 'agile' of labs in research orgs that are already working dynamically with external innovators and adapting as they go. 

The objective is to incubate a science leader who is passionate about building impact through companies and spin outs.  These people might be our 'Founders' in company creation projects for that first year. Then we would be more focused on hiring chief scientists into the companies.

I have discussed this with a few of the more entrepreneurial scientists I know and they have liked the idea. 

The trick will be to make sure that the university culture does not repel them when they come back enthusiastic about this approach.

This pathway might internalise an incubation engine that creates customers, employers and inspiration for the university.

WDYT? How do we build on this idea, and who wants to try it? Join the discussion on LinkedIn.

The 'Time Problem' in Research and Industry Collaborations

In research, we need time. The culture and system around it for funding is anchored on this. Grants are open for applications once or twice a year and take a long time to process. Programs like CRCs take a long time to agree IP sharing regimes with collaborators. Teams think in longer timelines and optimise funding to spread the project over as long a period as possible.

In industry, we have no time. We need to start today. And when we have started, we need to get to an outcome as soon as possible. Whilst a research collaboration brings a depth of possible value creation that would not be possible for industry to achieve on their own, putting it on a critical path introduces too much risk.

From Industry's perspective, this means that research collaborations are often avoided or only focused on lower priority projects.

If we fix the time problem, I think we can open the gates.

Deep Tech Venture Building and "Hit Factories"

Motown founder, Berry Gordy worked at Ford’s Lincoln-Mercury plant and it gave him an idea.

"The factory had this assembly line and I would see the cars start out a bare metal frame and go round a circle. And different stations would put things on there, and they would go out another door a brand new car. I said, my goodness, I could do this with people."

His record label was built on this idea to become a "Hit Factory" that would work like an assembly line to take raw talent and package them up with producers, writers, musicians, choreographers, sales and marketing.

We often start a deep tech venture with just the 'bare metal' - the founding idea and some IP. This is the equivalent of the raw talent when Diana Ross walked into Motown. It is a unique advantage that others will struggle to replicate, but there needs to be more.

Motown would have been very different if Gordy had just given Diana Ross some money and expected her to figure it out.

In deep tech venture building we can't waste time for founders to figure out on their own how to package their technology into a the world class company that will deliver it to the world.

A "Hit Factory" is needed.

The Lunar Society Downunder

During 'The Enlightenment' the world saw science collide with the ambition of entrepreneurs to create an industrial revolution.

Between 1765 and 1813, one group of people met on a Monday by the light of the moon to discuss ideas. They called themselves 'The Lunarticks' and their group was known as 'The Lunar Society'.

Principal members included James Watt who invented the steam engine; his partner Matthew Boulton who also revolutionised coin minting and social innovations like workers compensation; Erasmus Bolton who was already imagining Evolution before his grandson Charles completed the theory; Joseph Priestly the chemist who discovered oxygen and carbonated water and; Josiah Wedgewood the potter and social reformer.

These innovators, and many others collaborated outside of their Monday gatherings in daily conversations, exploring the ideas and discoveries that would move society forwards.

Today, we live in a similar time, but the steam engines of today are quantum computers and large language models. The discovery of oxygen is the ability to harness nature to build products in a sustainable way. The sailing ships that opened up the world are rockets taking us to Mars and beyond.

Last week, we convened a new Lunar Society as Australia's deep tech founders gathered for Deep Tech Week.

And the work continues now it is over.

I think we should make it 'a thing'.

"In fact, the most interesting aspect of evolution is that it only works because of its antifragility; it is in love with stressors, randomness, uncertainty, and disorder." Antifragile - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The universe doesn't want a new startup to exist and will work against it at every turn. There is no place for it and the world hasn't made room for it in the minds of customers and the supply chains that will feed it.

This is why building startup is one of the riskiest endeavours a person might attempt and an 'unreasonable belief' in its need to exist is the first currency which needs to begin accumulation in the resource treasury of any new company.

This is also why the last thing a startup creation program should do is design for comfort - it must design for jeopardy. Something real has to be on the line.

I've talked before about "The Eye of the Tiger" that founders acquire when they work through catastrophe to become the more resilient version of their former selves. This applies to teams as well. When teams work through a real challenge to land on the other side, they feel inspired, proud of their collective ability to achieve something difficult.

These aren't nice-to-have attributes in a team. They are necessary.

In risk work like ours, we must face risks head on, but do so in a controlled environment. We can't avoid them, and the last thing we should do is delay insights by avoiding the moments where we might fail a test. In that failure is a transformation and a readiness for what comes next.

Here's what deferring risk sounds like:

🗣️ "I need to do another 2 years in the lab before speaking to customers."

🗣️ "I need to operate in stealth mode otherwise someone will steal my IP"

🗣️ "I need to work on this in my spare time because I'm not sure that it is safe to leave my day job yet."

A startup program should design in:

🔅 Career Risk: have at least one person that is all-in. No hedging.

🔅 Time Risk: create burning platforms with portals to 'safety' on the other side

🔅 Utility Risk: expose the idea to people who will explain what doesn't work for them

Increase capital as the risk of complete failure is decreased and as capacity to take on risk and to manage it increases.

Build the resilience muscle in the people and company, before the risk is turned up to full volume.

It is tempting to give a company 'everything they need' at the start to build strength. Tragically, this normally does the opposite.

p.s. experienced founders do this to themselves.

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Compromising is Learning

We think of compromising as giving something up. But this assumes that our idea is perfectly formed and other ideas are going to end badly.

What if, our idea is weak?

What if compromising is actually learning?

What if we just learned a better way through our collaborations?

Pause. Listen. Synthesise. Move forward.

"The Gift"

Venture investors think a lot about how we make decisions. We are often faced with incomplete data. The earlier the company, the harder it is to objectively weigh an opportunity.

We've been asking our peers how they do it. One idea we heard, which I love, is "The Gift". The firm that shared this idea has quite a large investment team. In their case, every team member shares one thing with the lead who is presenting the deal: why they would NOT invest in this company.

The lead does not respond or argue against these positions, unless they need to make a factual correction. They take all of the negative feedback as a positive contribution to the decision.

This is "The Gift".

The lead takes the gift away overnight and returns the next day with a decision on how they would like to proceed.

When we encourage the negatives to rise, and the deal team / lead thinks of the comments as data points for their own process and not a vote - not a storm of headwinds to kill the deal - we can make a better decision.

Disagreement is data.

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Arranged Marriages for Startups

There is a myth that startups are best founded on magical friendships which exist prior to a company's foundation. A moment of epiphany between two peers which leads to a shared commitment to change the world.

But, startups don't work this way usually. A startup is work, albeit with an "unreasonable belief" that is higher than the general workforce. A startup needs people that can do the work. It needs people who compliment each other.

When a founder looks up from their desk and sees their co-founder at work, they need to think "Thank f**k that person is here, I couldn't do this without them."

This is why I am a believer in "Arranged Marriages" for new startups. I believe we can, and we must, assemble a founding team as deliberately as any other part of a company creation process.

In deep tech, this is even more important because the depth and complexity of the different jobs-to-be done is extreme.

Understanding Stubborn People

I once pitched an idea to the CTO of a large telco and he rejected it very quickly as a terrible option.

He paused for a moment and then said: "But, my wife bought me a shirt the other day that I said was horrible and I would never wear it. But the next day I put it on and I looked good. So why don't you leave this idea with me."

We tried the idea the following week and it worked well.

Sometimes, a stubborn rejection of an idea rises at the tail end of a long process of synthesis and thesis development, especially from people who are operating in highly complex environments. CEOs of startups are some of the most 'stubborn' people I know because of this.

When an idea is tried against a thesis and it doesn't fit well, it might be rejected quickly because this mental model is used to decide what to do and not do. Companies can't do everything.

But the best leaders don't stop synthesising inputs. The idea will move through their mental model in time, and maybe unlock a new compartment of value.

I've learned to not push to hard and to let an idea sit. We can't force 'stubborn' people to change their mind on the spot. We need to give ideas time to flow through the bigger picture.

And it is also possible that we are wrong - and it really is a terrible idea.

Mucky Middle Podcast

The creativity of building a business with Phil Morle from Main Sequence Ventures

A big thanks to Nick Hunter for having me.

I am lucky enough to attend a forum of chairs and directors from deep tech startup companies. Each month we extract from our collective som new ideas to improve our practice. Here are some recent ideas on board pack refinement.

#1 - Consider a written narrative instead of slides. Like Amazon's now-famous six page memos, a different clarity can come from a story.

#2 - Send a Loom video of the CEO talking through the pre-read to put some context behind the data and minimise the need for talking through the pack in the meeting itself.

#3 - Show a burn-down chart that shows the day that the business runs out of money and overlay before and after lines for changes since the last meeting.

#4 - Label pre-read pages in the pack to be clear what the meeting will expect directors to have read vs those that will be formally discussed in the meeting.

#5 - Use Culture Amp to to pulse check the team culture and show a report routinely in every board pack. Show changes. This is a low touch way for boards to track people issues without requiring management interpretation.

#6 - Build out a board pack from actual management reports and dashboard where possible to avoid extra work for board meetings. We should all be tracking the same things with the same clarity anyway.

#7 - Track impact of board decisions with metrics. Too often boards make decisions that are not followed up for progress over time. "6 months ago we decided X - here's what is happening in the data".

A CEO can't lead the board as well as lead the company

Perhaps a controversial statement given that it is common (especially in the US) for the CEO to be the Chair of a startup. But the role of chair is a specific function.

🗣️ "One of my core jobs is to give the CEO oxygen." Peter James - Chairman of Macquarie Telecom and Droneshield.

I chair a number of boards and have trusted relationships with the company's CEOs. Indeed, when this trust falls away - which it can do - I do what I need to do to get it back quickly. The job is impossible without it.

What we do together

🔅 The Chair manages the conversation and owns the task of getting decisions made. The CEO can focus on listening, understanding and providing insight. We hold each other accountable for delivering on our function.

🔅 We agree the desired outcome of a meeting in advance and collaborate on ensuring that the papers and the pre-work are ready to get to that outcome in the meeting.

🔅 We know which directors to spend time with between meetings. We know who can inform a decision the most and who has the most at stake around it. Then we do the work to get the meeting content and structure ready for the right discussion.

🔅 We agree on how to use the skills of directors outside of a board meeting to get the most out of their expertese and experience.

The relationship between a CEO and a Chair manages an unavoidable tension that is always present between those that govern a business and those that run the business. The same board room can feel like 'going to the Principal's office' or like a special place where we all get sharper.

An effective chair needs to get that balance right.

The dinner decompression chamber for boards

A board is unsettled when it reconvenes. Questions and concerns that may have been seeded weeks ago have started to grow in the minds of directors. With the best intention in the world, directors still worry that management has not considered important factors, or has failed to see something obvious to them.

Some have read the board pack from cover to cover and come with a folder of scribbled notes. Others have not read it at all and enter with their opinion. Most are distracted about the multitude of other projects that flow through their lives.

A crucial job of the board chair is to start a board meeting with a calm and focused board that is ready to understand, provide insight and make the best decisions for the company.

I've found the best way to do this is to go out for dinner the night before. Directors chat while walking to venue, mingle in different groups over drinks and start to surface ideas that are top of mind in an environment that is more relaxed at the dinner table.

Directors offload issues that are important to them and topics come up that may have not been seen when the agenda was assembled. We prepare our minds to enter the same meeting, not a seperate agenda for each director.

The job of the CEO and Chair is to listen and be curious about topics they have missed or under-baked.

Now the meeting is ready to begin the next day. Concerns have been de-pressurised and the focus os clear. Directors begin the meeting confident that there is alignment on what topics are important and the knowledge that they will be covered.

If everyone disagrees with you, leave the board

If a board does one thing well, it must help a company to move forward. Velocity is everything in a company that is starting up, and probably burning capital every day on the journey to product market fit. If boards disagree and defer decisions to the next meeting, they are making a business weaker.

Sometimes this is because the whole board has a question. That probably suggests that there is a problem with the strategy which needs some more work. The action here is to agree on what needs to be done to get to clarity and then re-convene as soon as possible to make a decision.

Sometimes there is one director in the way. Sometimes that director is me and I am hyper-aware that I am a blocker. When this happens, I need to understand why I disagree and communicate as clearly as possible why that is so that the issue can be addressed quickly.

If it is addressed quickly, it makes the company sharper. It is a contribution. If I alone block the way forward, I am making the company weaker, even if I believe my position is valid.

Sometimes single directors have a different position on decisions quite often. Sometimes that has been me. Now I think it may be time to leave a board. Not to storm out in an act of protest, but to acknowledge that I am making the company weaker by creating a tension on the board and slowing down the company.

I hold myself to that accountability. Company first.

A tool for fragmented boards to act as a single decision making engine

David Thodey (Chair of Xero, Ramsey Healthcare, former CSIRO Chair) once told me that the Chair's main job is to know how a board makes decisions and lead the process to become good at it.

I keep coming back to that idea, but it can be challenging to deliver because:

🔅 Individuals can dominate: Boards are generally populated with smart, opinionated individuals.

🔅 We're intellectually conflicted: Directors can be torn between responsibilities they have in other organisations - such as being a shareholder as an investor in the company - and their role as a director.

🔅 We forget: Some boards have 3 months between meetings.

I have found that companies that bring a 'Plan on a Page' to the front of their board packs tend to avoid these issues. Usually it doesn't need to be spoken to. It's just present for all as a recent reminder of a what the thousands of decisions came before this moment has led us to as a company.

Here's what it needs to include:

🔅 Why we are here. Our mission.

🔅 How we do it. Our unique approach to delivering valuu to customers.

🔅 What we do. The products we make.

🔅 Our focus. What we are concentrating on in this period.

🔅 Metrics. Tracking how we are doing with our focus.

From here, it is hard to introduce distractions and opinions that are off-piste.

I've learned to recognise the 'Eye of the Tiger' in a founder. I've seen it many times in my work building companies.

When founders start companies, anything is possible. There is an intoxicating sense of opportunity, an optimism for a better world that this company can deliver. At this stage in a company's life, seeing the 'Eye of the Tiger' is rare. Instead, we see curiosity and openness. The founder is hungry to learn and observe how the market responds to their ideas.

Over time, burdens accumulate. The founder builds a team and raises money from investors, both of whom they make promises to. They show them a world that they alone understood at one point and convince them to make a bet on their ability to bring it to life.

They make early versions of the product and show them to customers. Most likely, they are a bit scrappy initially, but they mobilize the whole company to deliver the best possible experience. And the first customer loves it.

But then, unless the founder is very lucky...

Something breaks...

Or a co-founder quits...

Or the technology doesn't work as predicted...

Or, most commonly, the value promised when the money was first raised has not eventuated as hoped, and the end of the runway looms closer, while new capital is not receptive to funding a new round.

When all hope seems lost, feeling the weight of what they have promised on their shoulders, they get to work instead of giving up. These struggles can take months - or years - to resolve.

But when the founder comes through, you can see it.

The 'Eye of Tiger'. It presents as an un-wavering look—a refusal to the resistance displayed others.

They have tested their own ability to do what it takes to deliver. Now they will not tolerate something in their way. They will barge through or route around. Either way, they are moving forward.

This is the moment when founders are truly born.

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Phase transitions are always a mess. Lean into them

When viewed from the outside, it is easy to believe that startups grow smoothly in a single phase, from the founding moment to the billion-dollar exit.

Why, then, do founders find themselves in periods leading companies that feel broken, almost embarrassed to let the outside world see the chaos inside?

I think, because it is quite normal.

Rob Newman helped the Main Sequence portfolio understand this at our annual portfolio day last year by telling us about his journey growing and selling Nearmap for over $1 billion.

As the company grew, it needed to take on new shapes, run different processes, hire different people, launch new products. Each new phase led the company into a messy transition.

The sheer normality of the mess resonated with me. Of course it is messy. Don't resist the mess if there needs to be a phase transition to go to the next level.

As a CEO and sportsman, Rob understood the value of coaching and hired a new coach for himself each time the company took on a new form. When plunging into the chaos of change, it is good to know you are equipped to crawl out the other side.

But, resist the mess and we resist the shift. Lean in and get it done.

The art of synthesis for deep tech founders

In a conversation with a founder last week, we were exploring a new business idea. At the heart of the idea is some complicated bio-technology, a very difficult to navigate supply chain and an expensive capex build. It was also quite boring on the surface and hard to imagine a crowd of investors downstream fighting to get into the next round.

But the founder explained it to me in a way that electrified the concept in my mind. They came at it from a world of geopolitical shifts, a gaping opportunity to effortlessly reflow supply chains and a magical technology that would sustainably deliver industrial advantage to countries.

The founder started with the WHY and led me to the WHAT. See Simon Sinek for more on this.

• WHY: painting a picture of a massive market problem that most people understand.

• HOW: building a business model around an existing flow of that market and leaning into it instead of trying to force a change. So many companies fail when founders think they can bend a whole planet around their company.

• WHAT: a unique invention that no one else has. After the WHY and HOW, I am hungry to understand the WHAT.

The work to get to this simple idea takes a special kind of work - SYNTHESIS. It involves iterating thousands of times over a vast information space that includes world events, government policies, industrial trends, technological invention.

It requires an always-on radar that scans the world looking for micro-moments of hypothetical product market fit and smushing them all together until a single cohesive story emerges that a founder can unite a community around.

Three reasons to work on your deep tech startup messaging early.

"I run a B2B company, so I don't need messaging" or "We don't need to focus on messaging until we've proven more in the lab."

I hear these comments a lot, and here's why they're misguided:

#1 - Messaging clarifies value: Crafting your message forces you to pinpoint what’s truly valuable about your offering. It helps you understand and articulate the unique benefits that resonate with potential customers and investors.

#2 - Messaging is more than media releases: It’s about quality communication with a targeted audience, often just a handful of key people. Clear, consistent messaging can open doors and build credibility early on.

#3 - Messaging and product are a two-way street: Good messaging informs product development and vice versa. It’s a feedback loop that helps refine both your product and your pitch.

Don't wait. Start nailing your messaging today.

The region as a startup

A startup is an organisation formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model (Steve Blank). I have become very interested in how this applies to a whole region.

In deep tech venture building, a company can't be built in isolation. Rockets can't be launched from a cubicle in a shared office. Bio-manufacturing startups need feedstock. Waste processing startups need regulation. Green chemical businesses need access to renewable energy. I spend a lot of my time working with the leaders of regional Australia, to unlock the environments in which our deep tech companies can prosper.

Like companies, regions are re-inventing themselves as nations re-focus on sovereign capability and as the entire industrial fabric of the earth is being re-built in response to climate change. Like a startup, the regions are searching for their repeatable and scalable business model.

• What is this region's unique value proposition?

• What resources (people, feedstock, ports, energy, etc) that can unlock that value?

• What impact will this have on the economy?

• What do we need to invest to make it happen?

• What are the key partnerships and relationships that bring this to life?

As deep tech venture builders, we need to participate in these regions and be one of those key partnerships. It is a whole new dimension of effort and cost. But without participating in the region as a startup, our companies will struggle.

The old paradigm to singularly 'point a great founder at a problem and watch them go' just doesn't work in deep tech.

One of the benefits of working as an investor and builder across different kinds of deep tech themes is that I get to see the different commercialisation approaches applied in different fields.

For example, it is common in therapeutics to receive milestone payments from an eventual acquirer very early in a molecule’s development. In defence, non-dilutive grants are common, and while they build a particular use case for that funder, they contribute towards the bigger build for the mission of the company. Both of these categories have learned how to monetise early development and piloting.

Sarah Nolet from Tenacious Ventures and I were talking about our food and ag portfolios earlier this year and realised that we don’t monetise these early stages so well in this category. This matters in deep tech because these companies tend to be expensive to build. How we finance that build is a critical element to companies that make it through the multiple ‘valleys of death’ they encounter along the way.

Food and ag companies tend to default to free trials in exchange for the opportunity to prove out a technology in a real environment. But that means the company and their VCs are taking all the risk and customers are not sharing it.

This is a decision to persist with unnecessary risk. The business is:

• more likely to compromise on pilots to save money,

• more likely to run out of money in general,

• less likely to demonstrate evidence to next-round investors,

• less likely to be focused on the sales journey and customer experience aspect of a pilot,

• and does not test commitment from customers.

So we started doing some work in our companies and trying an approach we called the Customer Interest Ladder that we published on the Tenacious Ventures blog here.

And it worked. Money started to flow into companies, just because they asked and they had a value proposition ond purpose of these stages that successfully converted customers.

Introducing the Deep Tech Customer Interest Ladder Tool

We made a tool to help structure this new thinking that we have shared here.

If you are pre-revenue with your company, but have something that a customer can try, I encourage you to try this approach and see what happens. You never know, you might bring some money in.

What do we have here?

• a country that is abundant with natural resources, including massive potential for renewable energy

• a world-class research system with some of the greatest minds on the planet

• a startup ecosystem that can stand up a new business quickly and know how to take it to scale

• a venture system that is, at last, scaled to get the job done

• a government that is focused on ‘missions’, ‘sovereign capability’, and resource security

It is potent.

And we also have a planet in trouble. Climate change, polarization, wars…

So, what do you believe?

How do we deploy ‘us’ into this world? Do you believe there is something to be done, or are these other people’s problems?

I believe that Australia is ‘Moonshot Country’ - that we can and should deploy ‘us’ towards a better world.

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My Approach

• When making a decision on something that will take a lot of my time - a job, a project, a relationship, I ask myself - will this make something good? There is no time to spend on making a quick buck or jumping onto the next trendy path. What needs to be done? Can I help it succeed?

• Do ‘radical collaboration’ in everything. Radical collaboration is radical because it is uncomfortable. Because competitors stand in the same room and figure out how to help the conditions for all to improve. There is no time to send shots at each other to slow things down and make the conditions weaker.

• Play the ‘infinite game’ - there is no winning or losing - just keeping the game in play. The game of ‘Moonshot Country’, which plays out for hundreds of years, determined to make things better.

I know, I know…

People often pat me on the back and applaud my naive optimism in a world that is ultimately f*****d.

But we can’t have that view, and I will always resist it. I think we have what it takes to turn things around. Everything. In time. It might take decades or even hundreds of years. But we can do it.

But if we are all lost in our x.com streams while building our pointless NFT apps, we can’t turn this around.