Show Notes 223: From Cambridge Tech Week 2026: How the UK Can Build Its Next Deep Tech Giants
The UK has the research, talent and capital to create category defining deep tech companies. The missing piece is a more connected system that turns breakthrough science into globally scaled businesses while keeping more of the economic value in the UK.
In this Cambridge Tech Podcast panel, Joanne Hosker of Northern Gritstone is joined by Tom Adeyoola, Executive Chair of Innovate UK, Brad Jones, founder and CEO of ThatRound, Owen Thompson, CEO of Cambridge Future Tech, and Dr Christina Yan Zhang, CEO of The Metaverse Institute. Together, they unpack the practical shifts needed to make the UK a stronger launchpad for founders building in fields such as quantum, AI, climate technology and advanced engineering.
The conversation challenges a familiar assumption: that UK deep tech lacks capital. The panel argues that the issue is less about the total amount of money available and more about how confidently investors understand technical risk, how effectively funding connects with founders, and how incentives keep high value companies rooted in the UK.
What you will hear
Why the UK’s world class science base needs stronger commercial pathways, not just more research funding
How founders can adapt their pitch for different markets while keeping a genuinely global ambition
Why early stage deep tech must be evaluated differently from software businesses with immediate revenue
What investors look for when product market fit is still emerging, including defensibility, market access, resilience and coachability
How government procurement could become a major growth engine for UK innovation
Why employee ownership, exited founders and angel reinvestment can create a more circular capital ecosystem
Where US expansion makes sense, and why a UK research and development base can remain strategically valuable
Standout insights
Tom Adeyoola makes the case for moving from funding isolated projects to supporting companies from breakthrough idea to industry scale. His central message is clear: government and investors must align around sectors where the UK has the research base, talent pipeline and industrial strength to win.
“We have the research base, the talent pipeline and the industrial strength that gives us a right to win.”
Owen Thompson explains why deep tech founders cannot always show traditional commercial traction at pre seed. The challenge for investors is to identify and mitigate risk rather than expect it to disappear before backing a company.
Brad Jones calls for a stronger culture of celebrating ambitious founders and for capital reforms that expand the pool of investment available to private markets.
“We do have the case studies. We just do not celebrate them enough.”
Dr Christina Yan Zhang adds an international perspective, urging UK innovators to pair modesty with the confidence to communicate the scale of their ambition.
“We should perhaps do a little bit more. Instead of saying we are not too bad, we should say we are absolutely phenomenal.”
This is a sharp, practical listen for founders, investors and operators who want to help build the next generation of UK deep tech leaders. Subscribe to the Cambridge Tech Podcast for more conversations from the people shaping the future of technology.
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Episode Transcript
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[Speaker 3]: Well, good afternoon and hello. I'm Joanne Hosker. Northern
Gritstone is an independent VC investing mostly in deep tech and life sciences businesses. And I own our deep tech playbook. So I'm as excited as you are to hear the views of our panelists today and hopefully take home some tips. So the first thing I'm going to do is just ask everybody to introduce themselves so that we get a feel for who they are. Tom, can I start with you?
[Speaker 1]: Hi, everyone. I am Tom Adeola, Executive Chair of Innovate UK. So I'm in post now 16 months, I think. So prior to joining Innovate UK, I pretty much spent all of my career in the startup world. I graduated from Cambridge, and I had my own startup called Metail, where I had a tech office here. I only sold that company in 2019. So I had an office right next to Emmanuel College above the Sainsbury's. Worked on computer vision, machine learning-based technology, sold that business to a Hong Kong-based clothing manufacturing business. Subsequently, I've invested in startups. I have co-authored the startup scale-up review for Rachel Reeves in opposition. I sit on various boards, including Channel 4 and my old school. And in particular, I've always been motivated by disruptive innovation and understanding systems and fundamentally trying to make the innovation ecosystem better for founders in the UK so that we can start scale and generate real industry giants based on our incredible research in the UK.
[Speaker 3]: Thank you.
[Speaker 4]: Hi, guys. My name's Brad Jones. I'm founder and CEO of That Round. I started my life at Imperial College, graduated from there as a math student, and then went on and built my first business, which was a tech company, software business that I sold in 2016. Off the back of that, I then went into angel investing. So I invested in about 40 companies to date, run an investment syndicate called Align Syndicate. Of those 40 companies, I looked before today's chat, about 16 of them are deep tech, so relevant for this conversation. And since then, the business that I'm in the process of building at the moment, that round, relevant for this conversation because we are building infrastructure for early stage companies in the UK to raise capital, so matching startups with relevant investors.
[Speaker 5]: Hi, everyone. I'm Owen Thompson. I bizarrely started life in the Air Force, did 13 years flying fighters, moved on to BAE Systems for a stint in corporate, and then I'm now the CEO of Cambridge FutureTech, where we do a lot of pre-incorporation tech scouting across UK universities. We spin out and build companies and then invest in the pre-seed rounds, currently with a portfolio of 22 deep tech companies.
[Speaker 6]: Hi, everyone. I'm Dr. Christina Yan Zhang, CEO of the Metaverse Institute. I also sit on the Global Advisory Council for Center of Science Future at International Science Council, which is the world's largest scientific body with a membership of 250 National and International Academy of Science, where we advise them on how to develop really responsible use of innovation at scale. I also co-chair a task group at the United Nations, set up global standard about responsible use of AI digital twin, with eight technical standards approved in the past three years. Very nice to meet you all.
[Speaker 3]: Thank you. I think we should start with probably a difficult question, but have a candid conversation about what is actually holding us back. We've talked about all the amazing research base that we have here and the opportunities. So what is it that is holding us back from producing more global scale businesses that are internationally successful? Christina, I'm going to come to you first with an international perspective on the UK. What do you think is holding us back?
[Speaker 6]: Well, as you can see, I was made in China, reinvented in the UK, and so I'm traveling a lot to different parts of the world as part of my job. And I often hear people saying that British people can sometimes be a little bit too modest, and they find it not always easy to appreciate the beauty of British sense of humor being self-deprecating. And that's what I often hear. And I guess when it comes to being a really powerful technology innovation powerhouse, modesty is a virtue. But maybe from a business perspective, it's a missed opportunity. So we should perhaps do a little bit more. And instead of saying we are not too bad, we should say we are absolutely phenomenal, fantastic. Right? Would you agree?
[Speaker 3]: Because if you're in the US and you're pitching over there, Owen, we were talking about the international elements of pitching. If you're in the US, then presenting yourself in a way that is confident and is ambitious is what you should do. So how do you think we compare with those in other countries in terms of what might be holding us back?
[Speaker 5]: Yeah, I mean, this is like a common theme, isn't it? The founders in the UK don't possess this kind of visionary pitch capability that people in the US do. I think there's a nuance in there, which is like, and we were just discussing this, obviously, it depends where you're pitching. If I go to Zurich, I might want to present my spreadsheets and tell them all that I can beat the Bank of England base rate on a convertible loan note. But if I go to the US, I need to present a multi-multi billion dollar visionary proposition. Do UK founders possess the ability to do that?
Of course they do. But probably one of the issues that we have is retention of those founders and locating them and bringing them back to the UK to do a second iteration and to be able to honcho those startups in a way that they can do that presenting. So I don't think we lack talent in the UK. And I'll also add that it's certainly not a science problem. We've got an enormous cadre of world-leading universities in the UK. The science is here. Probably the ability to pair that up with a commercial leader who can do that visionary pitch is the tricky part. And again, not because the talent's not here, just because retaining that talent and keeping it in the UK is a challenge.
[Speaker 3]: Tom, you have a national view through Innovate. What do you think is holding us back?
[Speaker 1]: Yeah, so I think the thing that attracted me to taking on this role was I felt that Innovate UK was an incredible institution with a big budget, with the potential to have a multiplier effect on the economy. And as Owen mentioned, we've got world class, I think probably pound for pound, the best research base of any country in the world. We also have the second biggest private capital market in the world. And currently, for me, it felt like there was a disconnect between the two things. We're too fragmented. We look at things in a point to point type way. And Innovate, as I came into it, was very much an organization that funded projects rather than supporting companies. I think our role and the role that I am pushing the organization on with our new strategy is to be able to take companies through from breakthrough idea to industry giant scale. And that I think is through essentially acting as a tech due diligence engine for these companies and bridging the knowledge gap to funding community. So that the funding community feel comfortable investing in what is world-class technology and world-class founders who do have the ambition to achieve that scale, who do want to be able to reach the heights that the Americans do, but often I feel that they lower their ambition to match the funders rather than anything else. So if we can help with helping funders understand that the UK government, through its initiative, through UKRI, through its incredible investment in the universities, we as Innovate have a billion budget year. We're distributing up to a billion into the ecosystem in grants and funding. We're spending a lot of time with incredible companies. We are de-risking that multiple segments in a way that UK investors should be investing in, because the best investors in the US are finding our talent. They are investing in our companies, but the danger is they invest in our companies and then they lever them out and move them to the US and other entities so that we then don't accrue the economic value of the incredible breakthroughs that we generate here. So my goal is to make sure that we can scale the companies here, but also to ensure that the rest of the ecosystem, the funding base and the culture enables them to stay here as well.
[Speaker 3]: Because many here and many founders might believe that capital is the challenge, that there isn't the capital here to secure and to back that. But actually, the stats don't back that up. And you talking about having a billion, the capital is not the problem in your
[Speaker 1]: View. No, there is capital here. It's just there's a disconnect between the understanding of the technology. So even to an extent, there's an anecdote which is slightly different. But I spoke to a US VC who were opening an expansion fund in the UK. And their opening pitch was, we believe in scaling companies in situ. So once you dig behind that, I said, well, you wouldn't have said that last year. So why are you actually saying that? They eventually admitted it's because they couldn't get scientists from Oxford and Cambridge to move to the US anymore. So they understand where the talent is and they will move their capital to the talent. We need to be as good in offering a competitive UK-based capital element to those companies because the second order, third order effects... Of the company staying and scaling here is hugely important and of significant impact to UK citizens, because we want our UK citizens to benefit from the returns of companies being successful. And if all the money and equity and capital comes from abroad, those returns then accrue abroad. So that's the part where it's not about stopping foreign capital going into companies, it's about making UK capital at least as competitive and at least as aware. So the likes of the pension funds start to invest in more than Gritstone and other entities who are finding and seeing these talented companies.
[Speaker 3]: So what you're saying is effectively all the elements are here, we just need to join the dots up and make it a bit more rounded and joined. Brad, what do you think is holding us back, if anything?
[Speaker 4]: I've got, in terms of those dots that you were talking about connecting, I've got a view, I suppose, on a couple of those dots. The first being right at the beginning of the story, which is culture, I think, to Christina's point. I don't think as a country we have enough case studies for young entrepreneurs to hang their hat on in terms of this is the vision that I want to go for. I felt that as a university student. I didn't stay on and do a PhD. I could have easily done that. But I think when I was a student, it was all about banking, investment banking, and that was the kind of the vibe in the UK. And a few years after that, it then became tech, going to work for a big tech firm. Whereas that kind of culture that's distilled in San Francisco of becoming a founder because you want to build your unicorn company and solve a problem. I don't think we have enough of that culture in the UK. And I think the reason that we don't have that is because we don't have enough. We do have the case studies. We just don't celebrate them enough. And I think we should do a better job of that as a country.
And then one of the dots at the end, which Tom touched upon, which was the funding element of that and connecting that. Whilst I do think the funding is there, I do also think that there is potential to unlock a lot more. So thinking about the Mansion House Accord, like put it stacking the numbers up against each other. So correct me if I'm wrong, Innovate UK fund around a billion pounds of grants per year. We've recently had the scale up fund announced, which is a billion pound. So that's two billion pounds in an estimated venture capital market of around 10 billion in the UK. The supposed mansion-house accord, if that actually comes to fruition, we're talking 20 billion pounds of capital. I appreciate it won't all come down to the early stage, but it's a massive number to be unlocked, which hasn't been unlocked. And you only need to look at what France have done with the TIBI policy, 6.3 billion euros unlocked. I think they're going for 13 billion euros this year. I think, yeah, it starts with culture and having inspiration for early stage founders, but it also ends with that larger pool of capital coming into the private markets.
[Speaker 3]: So if we talk about, you know, you've already said one of the largest research bases in the UK that's here and joining the dots with the research and the academia and joining with the commercialisation. Tom, I've heard you say before you think we're a bit too focused on the tech and the capability of the tech and what it does. How do you join that tech with the commercial arm and then you do dual discovery as in... Developing the tech at the same time as finding a market for it and commerciality
[Speaker 1]: Yeah i i think this is crucially important so coming in to innovate again by focusing on funding projects that has led to a bias towards focusing on the technology as the interest part. We've just gone through a process where we've developed a lookbook of the most investable and highest growth potential businesses of businesses that we've supported. So businesses that are actively now looking for funding across all sectors. That's been a really important forcing function for us in terms of as we move to this strategy of integrated business support, we're going to need to think more like investors with respect to execution capability of team. And market opportunity. And those two elements, by looking at projects, aren't really considered because you're focusing just purely on novelty. So now, by thinking about a lookbook process, force the organization to think about, well, actually, what's the market opportunity? What's the commercialization pathway? What are the reasons why this technology might be interesting and commercial longer term?
that has presented the case of what good looks like. So again, back to Brad's point, you need case studies by which other people can follow. I think organizationally, we're developing that internally so that we can see that. And likewise, in the same vein, we need to push that understanding and thought process back through each research stage. So as Innovate, we're now working much more closely with wider UKRI, and we're thinking about programs end-to-end from the research base through to scaling companies. And as a consequence, in designing programmes, we're thinking about the holistic end-to-end.
So is there an opportunity in this sector to build an industry giant?
Quantum being one of those examples where we've got world-leading research. We're now actually a fully connected ecosystem with EPSRC, the Engineering, Physical Sciences Research Council, funding initial research. We're then creating the conditions for companies to emerge. Government through NSIF and the British Business Bank have invested in some of those startups coming through. And they've now created a pathway to government procurement where there is the opportunity to to for government to purchase 1 billion in quantum compute by 2030 if specific targets are hit. But that is focusing on the commercialization angle. If you hit these milestones and commercial milestones, we will buy compute. So by adding that into the sector, I think we're giving ourselves a much better opportunity for an industry giant to emerge. And we're taking that same thought process into how we're looking at other sectors. Let's think about the holistic end-to-end. Let's think about what is our right to play and right to win in each of those sectors. And if we can do that, we can start to basically surface some of those really high potential cases and ensure that they move at the speed needed to be successful because that I think is the key thing. I think where we've been is in a sort of dead zone for a bit of a period where we spread the jam and as a consequence we haven't been able to see the signal of what good looks like and that is the bit we need to do now which is focus on where we see signal, double down on those to ensure that they reach the right speed to compete internationally.
[Speaker 3]: Oh, and this is really what Cambridge Future Tech do, isn't it? You're in with the research departments looking at amazing technology and then you're marrying that up with where the market opportunity is and bringing commercial people together. You do that really, really early, don't you? Is that one of the key markers you think that makes you successful of bringing that commerciality in at that early stage or is there any downside of doing that?
[Speaker 5]: Yeah, it's fascinating, really, because if we're looking for intellectual property still within the research group and we stumble upon this same issue that Tom speaks about, which is that what we're looking at is a stack of technologies, not products. And so with very little on which to diligence that from a traditional venture capital perspective, as you would be able to at a pre-seed round where a company has been formed and there's a team in place and some work has been done on market research, For us to diligence, a very early stage intellectual property opportunity, while it's still in the lab, requires us to go out and do the market research ourselves. And inevitably, if the topic we're discussing here today is deep tech, you're looking at technology that has the potential to disrupt or create a market. So not only do you need to validate whether that potential is real, but we're going out and having many, many, many commercial discussions. We've got three people full time having phone calls with corporates on these topics. But you also need to establish whether the corporates are going to adopt something that's going to interrupt their market or disrupt their market. You need to build a foundation and a grounding on a vision and a potential for something that's going to disrupt everyone, but that you believe there's still a revenue line for. It's very difficult. One of the things that would increase the volume of early stage startups in the UK and indeed capital coming into those pre-seed rounds is an understanding that while the intention is for commercial traction for deep tech startups at pre-seed, it won't be there as they emerge from the labs. They're not going to have commercial traction immediately. And so what that comes down to is risk appetites. And I think deep tech VCs in the UK have a lower risk appetite than they do in the US. And this demand for commercial traction at pre-seed when they have literally just emerged from the lab is a bit of a fallacy because they just won't have it. They might have a stack of MOUs and LOIs at best, but they're not going to have paid POCs at that stage. So we would really like to see a mindset shift in the early stage investment space, which is to start to understand that there is some risk that needs to be accepted in early stage deep tech. And it's a very high risk, very high reward game. And the job of the venture capitalist or the venture builder is simply to try to identify and mitigate risks where you can, but not to refuse the presence of high risk in deep tech. There has to be a bit of risk taking.
[Speaker 3]: That's why it's so fun to be in VC, isn't it? If you've got any element of caution about you, then it's just pointless being there. Christina, what do you think about that balance of risk and about looking at the market versus the tech as well?
[Speaker 6]: I think firstly, we need to look at the finance because there is actually plenty of money from a financial perspective. If you're looking at the latest announcements from Financial Conduct Authority and the Bank of England, Earlier this year, there was a major announcement around tokenization of real world assets. And what they have been doing is something quite significant basically in May this year so FCA and Bank of England issue a framework to allow tokenization of real-world assets for UK wholesale markets connecting 16.5 trillion pounds of managed assets and the two trillion pounds sovereign debt markets. Imagine even one percent of that can be channeled into deep tech innovation in the UK. We have more than enough money to commercialize nuclear fusion, quantum space, next generation data technology, ESCO. So money is not a problem. The only thing is there is not a standardized financial rule to allow national wealth funds, pension funds, insurance, private equity, family office from around the world coming over to invest in deep tech because it's so specialized, it's too expensive. And it takes too long for IP to be commercialized. If we're talking about 10 years, a lot of investors will say, I prefer to put most of my money, 60% in the stock market, 40% in the bond market. But then we have a massive pension fund gap. We're all living longer. So they're going to have a financial crisis. And then instead, they should put that additional maybe 20% reallocation as according to Larry Fink from BlackRock last year to all the investors worldwide goes into alternative assets. So we're talking about roughly 40 trillion US dollars. A part of that can go into deep tech innovation, but we need to manage that risk and create the standard rail. And I think Innovate UK and a lot of other agencies are doing a wonderful job.
[Speaker 1]: Following up on the risk question de-risking is ultimately what we're trying to do so you know the government has set out an industrial strategy saying these are areas where we have industrial strength and these are the sectors so we're aligning ourselves with those and then specifically looking at areas and sub-sectors where we have the research base talent pipeline and industrial strength that gives us a right to win and those areas we're investing in and by investing in i i'm hoping that we basically shift the dial with reference to the risk percentage for investment to catalyze more private capital into those spaces because fundamentally for me i think my measure of success is whether we've catalyzed more private capital into the deep tech areas where we have that research base
[Speaker 3]: But it's having the playbook isn't it to want to draw that capital in so it's making sure that when you're looking at your business as a founder you're not going to mitigate that risk completely because you haven't got anything proven basically so what you're trying to do is say this is the route that I will take and these are the things I know and this is how big the opportunity is because we back things that are full of opportunity don't we because it's a complete massive risk reward thing so Talking about that massive opportunity, one of the questions that we often hear is, shall I stay in the UK? Shall I stay to the US? And is that where the true glory is going out to the US or do I do it here? Brad, as a founder yourself, how do you think about this? Because you look at the US as a big opportunity for you as well. How do you balance that between the two?
[Speaker 4]: I think we have to be realists as British citizens that we're never going to have as much capital as the US. And at the end of the day, the US is a very big fish. And we're a small to medium sized fish. And big fish eat little fish. And that's just the way of the world. So I think there has been a lot of negativity around in the kind of tech venture world recently about companies moving to the US. I don't think we should shout that down when it gets to the latest stage stuff. I think we should actually champion that because inevitably that is what's going to happen. But in the earlier stage, startup to scale up, getting to that point in time.
Yeah, I do think that we need to do better to keep and retain companies here in the U.S. Sorry, in the U.K. We have, you know, there are companies out there that are U.K. Startup consultants and providers doing the Delaware flip because there's an opportunity. There's a lot of sentiment out there in founder world at the moment that I should move to the U.S., I just think we need to do a better job of educating founders that in the early stage, building the technology out, distribution, commercialization, the UK is a good place to do that. It's well funded with the likes of Innovate UK and we've got a great venture capital system here as well.
[Speaker 3]: Think in our playbook we certainly say you know secure your beachhead market get your product market fit but as soon as possible think of yourself with global ambitions if you are selling internationally your revenue curve is going to rise twice as fast and you're going to be more successful how do you think about it in cambridge future tech of at what stage do you encourage businesses to think globally rather than secure everything and target the uk
[Speaker 5]: I love this question. So I have a career of building sovereign capability, and it deeply offends me that we lose value in the UK ecosystem. But equally, I think the question is more nuanced on a number of fronts. So it's multifaceted. If you break it down by function, why are you moving to the US? Because of the availability of investment capital, because the availability of the market potential. If you are setting up a deep tech company that is supposed to be venture backable and will reach a valuation of billions, you're going to be a global company.
Yes. So the question, therefore, is where do you headquarter yourself? And what happens is this very appealing, very attractive situation builds up whereby this commonly discussed topic of price arbitrage occurs. As a UK-based founder going through, say, a pre-seed round, if you're lucky, you might hit 4, 5, 6 million pre-money valuation. You might get an equivalent check from a US investor that will happily give you 8 to 12 to 15 mil pre-money immediately out the gates. If you relocate your headquarters to the US. But equally, they still want you to leave the science talent back in the UK, because there's a talent arbitrage and there's a salary arbitrage issue going on. So we've had two companies do the US flip in the last two years. Both of them have moved their headquarters to the US, maybe because they needed to get DOD contracts and such like. So that's the way round the headquarters needs to be. But both have left the R&D back in the UK. They've got access to lab space, resource, talent. There's no need to move the actual R&D part. So I just I think it's really complex and it's very appealing for people to immediately jump ship and go into that market But I guess if we were to advise someone we would say that the real draw should be that you have a reference customer who wants to buy your product who's drawing you into that market as opposed to It would be really good if we go because there's loads of money over there and we can get moving So it just needs to be more nuanced and split down by function and everything needs to be thought of as global Just where does the headquarters set?
[Speaker 3]: Yeah, I think it's about targeting global customers, isn't it? And getting that revenue and then deciding where the best place is. I'm thinking one of the businesses within our portfolio at the moment where the CEO is American, the CPO has just gone out and the chair is sitting in America. Everything else in the business sits in the UK and they will continue to be headquartered in the UK, but their main customers are in the US and so that's how they're going to get to them.
We talked quite a lot about capital and whether the capital is there. And as a deep tech company, you're going to need quite a lot of it, if we're honest. From an investor's perspective, and we've got investors, grant givers, angel investors here, what makes you say yes to somebody who is asking you for a significant amount of money? Anybody? What makes you say yes?
[Speaker 4]: I'm happy to start because I'm going to give a non-answer. But I just think the question depends so much on the business that you're looking at. And in my line of work, I don't just look at deep tech, I look at all the other sectors as well. But even within the sub-sector that is deep tech, It's totally dependent on the type of technology that's being built, the founder's background, the stage of that particular business. Does IP matter? Do they need a patent for this particular type of tech that they're building? Maybe they don't. Maybe the moat is somewhere else in the business. So I think um really difficult question to ask blank to answer blanket and it's a you know it's a big part of the technology infrastructure in the uk that i think needs fixing to to correctly map uh companies or used to be projects now companies to the funding that will look at them based on their various attributes and because it's you know you're asking um we'll see what everybody else answers to this question but you're you're asking a a panel of supposedly experienced people here, and we probably will find this quite difficult to answer. You can imagine what early stage founders who don't have this experience are thinking. It's very, very difficult. But yeah, again, to try and give you some kind of answer, deep tech, From my perspective, what do I look at when I'm angel investing in pre-seed companies? Usually a valuation of around the five million pounds level. I'm looking at the founder's domain expertise. So have they, you know, is this on the back of some kind of PhD or extensive research? I'm looking at IP and protection of that IP if it exists. And in... Most cases, I'm looking for some form of traction, but defined traction, particularly when I'm angel investing, I am taking that risk on that some of the VCs don't want to take, which is bridging the gap for commercial traction, but usually that traction, we're looking for at least some evidence that there is or could be market pull for that particular technology.
[Speaker 3]: Which if you've done customer discovery as part of your AgCure programme, you will certainly have. Go on, Tom.
[Speaker 1]: All I was going to say is I remember going to the US and talking to some people there, and they were very clear about how you should think about investing, or rather, if you're the founder, how you should think about those meetings. So their view was always, you present the vision first. Does the investor understand or get or care about the vision that you're presenting? If the answer is no, leave the meeting. You move from that to the product and value proposition. Do they interact and are they interested in that? Fine. If not, leave the meeting. So, and then everything thereafter becomes a post-decision rationalization. So, if they care about the vision, they care about the products, then they're in, then you're basically going through, is this something that works or not? And is there a reason to say no? But the starting position is, do your views and visions of the world align, yes or no?
So if I'm thinking again about Innovate, where I talked about we're aligning with the industrial strategy, our vision is of a world where we have the research base, the talent pipeline, the industrial strategy, strength that gives us a right to win, if that doesn't match the vision in those spaces, then that's our starting position. So after that, is then the product something that can disrupt the market? And ultimately, people. Are the people able to deliver it? And people is the main, main thing. And I think that's a bit where Innovate previously has abstracted away from the people part of the question. And I think we need to put that back into the equation.
[Speaker 3]: I think people is such a vital part. Everybody says, it's the people that I back. You take money from people you like, you know, all the rest of it. I would say from the other one is the project or the company is such an early stage. The people are fewer in number and actually you can't judge the people completely. So what I would say is, Are they willing to augment the team? Are they willing to learn? Are they willing to work with you? Are they willing to bring in people with additional scaling experience? And so the willing to would be one of the things for a very early stage business.
[Speaker 1]: And can they sell to you, so therefore can they sell to bring other people in to work for them?
[Speaker 3]: Yes, they're going to have to persuade somebody to join an early stage startup, which perhaps doesn't pay. Owen, what do you look for?
[Speaker 5]: What's fascinating about this question is that if you ask five different VCs, they'll give a different answer. Isn't it amazing that it's 2026 and we don't have a consistent answer on what good looks like? That's because it's early stage, it's high risk. I don't use the word gambling, but... What is true is that there are a set of criteria that are non-negotiable. So you need something defensible, either some IP or something like that. You need market access. Think ultimate potential because VC needs to make returns. Ultimately, they're answerable to their own investors and so on and so on and so on. But then each VC will major on something different. So if you speak to concept ventures, they're interested in exceptional outlierism. They want to see founders who at every stage of their life have shone in some way. Maybe they were a professional basketball player when they were 14, and then when they got to 18, they're looking for people that have always been outliers and exceptional in that way.
If you speak to Type 1 ventures, they're very concerned about their ultimate vision is about reducing global energy consumption and how the metrics of this startup will affect that or not. So, everybody has a set of consistent tick boxes that are very real that need to be ticked and then they have something that they major on. For me personally, and it always comes down to the people for us, in the very early stage deep tech companies, they will pivot and perhaps the patents that were spinning out of the university won't be relevant in two years time to that company. So, the company will pivot, the market will move, the conditions will vary. So, the only consistent thing that you have really is the people. When it comes down to people, we're looking for coachability and resilience. My perfect founder candidate, and this is my personal opinion, is someone who has been through the ringer once already, failed, has a chip on their shoulder because they almost made it, but something went wrong. And they've got the energy to go again. And it's maybe their last chance. And they've got permission from their family to go through that journey again. And then you've got someone who is driven and resilient who's going to head back their way through those challenges because it won't be pleasant the whole way through. So if you can do all the tick boxing and everything and then you've got a nut job on top, you're off.
[Speaker 3]: It's hard to pick them out though, isn't it? Between eccentric and maverick and good and eccentric and maverick and mad as a box of frogs.
[Speaker 1]: But ultimately when you're choosing and you're finding amazing people, the amazing person basically is improving the chances of success rather than guaranteeing you success. Yes. So that's an important thing to always consider. This is not guaranteeing you success. It's just reducing the space and less likely to fail spectacularly.
[Speaker 3]: Yeah, it's amazing how we comment on the people so much less than the technology, which I think is not often what people write. We're going to go to questions in the audience, but I'm going to ask you one each, one line each, one practical change each, founders, funders, government, whatever, that you believe should happen between now and 2030 that would give us a better chance of creating large-scale successful deep tech companies. Christina, let's start with you.
[Speaker 6]: I want to start with the governments. So let's assume if Winston Churchill is going to become a founder today, and he might have said, if he runs a startup, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, and we shall never surrender. But we still will also tell everyone our one billion, scale up funds, how extraordinary it is. And now maybe just as Tom Cruise said in the movie, Jerry Maguire, show me the money.
[Speaker 3]: That would be good. And what would you like to see?
[Speaker 5]: Again, I think probably government. What we haven't touched much on is a circular ecosystem thing. I think what we lack in the UK somewhat is this circular redistribution of capital. An example I would give would be, it's very common in the UK to give option schemes out to your staff. It's not very common that staff who leave keep their vested options. Whereas in the US, that is very common. And what that means is that even where you've had employees who have left over time, when that company goes through something like an IPO, there's a sudden capital distribution event across the valley or whatever. And all those people become angel investors. And there's this really circular profile. So there's a mindset shift around circularity within the ecosystem. And I think one of the really cool things the government could do would be a tax break for second-time founders or exited founders who are reinvesting a certain percentage of the capital they have back into a new startup or the ecosystem, which would encourage that circularity on a slightly higher level.
[Speaker 3]: It's interesting that share options and EMI scheme for your employees actually statistically is a really good marker of the business likely to be more successful because everybody is in it together, aren't they? There's some really great stats about
[Speaker 5]: It. And in the UK, EMI scheme is seen as a retention scheme. So if someone leaves, they're not retained. So why would they keep the vested options? Whereas in the US, it's seen as part of the comp package. So they've earned it and they keep it when they leave. And I think those little mindset shifts would create more circularity in the capital ecosystem.
[Speaker 3]: And then go on to angel invest in others and support other founders coming through, which is the vision we'd like. One quick thing you think that we should
[Speaker 4]: Be doing. I'm going to give two, but I'll be really quick. One of them's a cheap one because it's a bit of a joke. But the real one is, looping back to what I said at the beginning, it's the Mansion House Accord. And it's us politically following through on that in the best and quickest manner we can, because I just think it's a significant amount of capital. That will be pushed into private markets or pulled, one could say.
My jokey thing, which maybe we should do is like, what about a Netflix documentary about a really cool startup in the UK that was sold to a US, I don't know, Oxford Ionics or something like that, DeepMind or something to, motivate the population to go in and doing it. I became a fan of Formula One a few years ago because of the F1 series on Netflix. I mean, let's just do something to promote building cool tech companies in the UK.
[Speaker 3]: Yeah, something really inspirational.
[Speaker 6]: Can I chip in that very quickly? Say that again. Can I chip in that very quickly? Yes, go. You know, in Britain, we've got Britain's Got Talent, which is popular everywhere. Why can't we go to Britain's Got Startups? And we've got that broadcast everywhere. So everyone of you who are sitting down here got the money in the end.
[Speaker 3]: Britain's Got Deep Tech Talent. Yeah.
[Speaker 1]: I was going to say, catalysing pension fund money, I think, is why I've ended up in this job. So that's a key thing I want to get done. But ultimately, I think procurement, it's the biggest lever the government has. There's 400 billion that goes on procurement each year. How we can unlock that as a means both to get world-class innovation into government services, but also to give contracts to world-class companies to meaningfully change their trajectory and anchor them here. I think that's crucial and it's an economic imperative. And I think if we can do that, we can start to see some of these bigger companies. SpaceX wouldn't exist without government procurement. Quite a lot of these big US companies wouldn't have existed without it. So we should be unashamed in the way in which we think about that and how it can be used for the good of the UK.
[Speaker 3]: Those first few contracts are so challenging to secure for a startup that if you had a large government entity, public sector that was willing to give you that early chance, having proven you're able, that would make a massive difference, wouldn't it?
[Speaker 2]: Today's show was produced by Joe Donaghy of Cambridge TV and supported by our media partner, Business Weekly. The Cambridge Tech Podcast is available on all major podcast platforms and on cambridgetechpodcast.com. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please give it a five-star review. It'll really help others discover the show.
[Speaker 7]: If you are a start-up looking to grow in Cambridge, the Bradfield Centre offers a range of flexible membership packages which put you in control of your office and home working mix. There's a vibrant, collaborative atmosphere, on-site cafe, plenty of green outside space and regular member social events. We also offer a range of high-quality meeting spaces for hire, and for tech event organisers, our auditorium, lakeside pavilion and atrium spaces are perfect to bring your communities together for in-person and hybrid events. For more information, visit bradfieldcentre.com or call 01223 919 600.
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