Scale Up Talk: Keys of Growing Deep Tech Startups
Date: Oct. 28，2021
Time: 9 PM Taipei Time, 9 AM US Eastern Time
Where: Zoom + Microsoft Real-Time Translator
Group: LinkedIn Event Group
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Deep Tech Investment Accelerates
The EU is heavily investing in strengthening Europe’s deep tech, according to a report created by Dealroom and Sifted, and supported by the European Commission and European Parliament, European deep tech companies are now worth a combined €700B, including Artificial Intelligence, blockchain, robotics, quantum technology, and more commercialization of deep Science R&D, now accounts for a quarter of all venture capital investment in Europe.
The report gives a definition for deep tech…
Many of Europe’s top deep tech companies have their roots in academia and drew early support from government grants. Different stakeholders play different roles throughout the lifecycle of a deep tech company.
Deep tech startups are having broader and deeper impacts in diversified domains recently. We are thrilled to host speakers from Europe and the US to share their experience in deep tech startups growth!
Speaker: Mikko Kumpulainen, Voima Ventures
Mikko Kumpulainen is a co-founder and partner at Voima Ventures, a deep tech early-stage venture capital investor in the Nordics. Mikko has over 17 years of experience in venture capital and private equity investments in the Nordics. He has also worked as a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group.
About Voima Ventures
Voima Ventures has over 65M€ under management and approximately 30 deep tech companies in its portfolio. Voima Ventures focuses on seed-stage investments into Nordic science-based startups and spin-off companies coming from academic research organizations. We combine science-driven innovation together with the Nordic serial entrepreneurial experience and a global mindset.
Speaker: Tuomo Virkkunen, Boardio
Tuomo is the founder and CEO of Boardio which is a matching service for companies and advisors. Before Boardio Tuomo worked for Nokia where he headed several early phase innovation projects. He will share the strategy of leveraging board members from a global network and success stories.
About Boardio
Boardio is a global platform that finds advisors and board members for companies. There are over 3500 advisors from 100 countries on Boardio. These people are willing to help companies grow, develop their business, enter new markets, or whatever needs the company may have. Boardio offers a Turnkey service with a success fee to find advisors with suitable backgrounds and interests to work with the company.
Speaker: Hani Elshahawi, NoviDigiTech
With more than three decades of experience (18 years in Shell) in operations, innovation, technology management, business consulting, and the full cycle of innovation from cradle to grave and from concept to commercialization, he is currently the managing director of NoviDigiTech. He will share his experience in Shell and its GameChanger program — how a leading energy company engages with deep tech startups, builds game-changing success, and his future endeavor.
About NoviDigiTech
NoviDigiTech LLC (NoviDigiTech.com) is about Helping People & Powering Progress through Innovation, Digital Enablement, and Technical Excellence. We do that by partnering with innovators, academics, startups, entrepreneurs, investors, and customers to create impact and drive growth through integration, collaboration, digitalization, and education.
Moderator: Jessie Chuang, Wise Ocean
With a background in Science and Engineering, Semiconductor Industry R&D, and consultancy experience with corporations on learning technologies and AI, Jessie believes that innovations flourish from the collaboration between parties in different domains, and has been dedicated to building interdisciplinary knowledge networks for big challenges, digital transformation, and open innovations. She co-founds Wise Ocean to help scale-ups and build up the growth journey to scale up impact through strategic partnerships across boundaries.
Interview questions might include:
How do you evaluate the IP or core technology of deep tech startups in diversified fields?
How do deep tech startups overcome the risk of product-market fit along the growth journey?
Deep tech startups need much more than IP to succeed, do you have a framework for supporting them?
Comparing EU and other countries, what EU has done right to grow deep tech startups by the governments and enterprises?
When deep tech startups enter a new market, what resources are needed to grow? What is your advice for them?
What are the deep tech innovation domains most exciting to you in the next 5 years? (Or you’re most interested to invest/involve in)
Note:
What are the key elements of deep tech startups’ success at a higher level? Growth entrepreneurship, science-driven innovation, value-adding capital. More specifically, what are the key elements of human capital that are the foundation of everything? That might include recruiting strategy, growth culture, diversity in the board, and ecosystem partners.
Some startups in Voima Ventures’ portfolio:
Leveraging space technology(nanosatellites), novel hyperspectral technology, Earth observation imagery datasets, and AI methods, a startup helps farmers as well as bio asset owners, businesses and governments get better insight for making decisions towards precision farming, carbon binding and reduction of climate effects.
Commercialization of 25+ years of continuous innovation in energy storage, a startup provides high-power heavy-duty energy storage solutions based on proprietary water-based electrolyte and Engineering know-how. Their slogan is “Powered by pure water”.
Disrupting the light-sensing component market by providing a universal photodiode for all applications, a startup utilizes advanced nanotechnology & atomic layer deposition techniques (Black Silicon) to produce light- and X-Ray detectors with superior sensitivity, accuracy, efficacy, and match with the design.
Another startup cures severe corneal blindness with an off-the-shelf stem cell therapy, it is developing new cell therapy products for the treatment of blindness.