Deep Tech

“I think there's this perception, you know, outside of hard tech, deep tech, whatever you want to call the segment we're in, that they're incredibly capital intensive, and you can't imagine how much they're spending on capex, but that's not really the case. I m…”

“And then the final thing is maybe being a bit away from the valley. There is some disadvantage in that. You're not plugged into the network and the gossip and the latest trends and vibes and all of these things. We're a little bit out of it here, but it does, …”

“I realized that you didn't have banks that were aligned with the United States, interests that were aligned with deep tech, hard tech, energy, the things that are really complex and hard to understand, but that do really matter, ah, that could also serve them …”

“We believe these are markets that absolutely are going to grow and are essentially existential for humanity and certainly the Western world to continue to thrive over the next 10 or 20 years.”

“The way that those products and industries evolve, you can't use the same rubric like you can looking at SAS and applying the rule of 40.”

“The deals that get done are the obvious ones. And the one, you know, and because if somebody doesn't understand, especially in deep tech or advanced technologies if there's somebody that doesn't get it, like, They like, or they did one deal four years ago and …”

“Approving drugs is really hard. It's probably one of the hardest areas of deep tech broadly, because it takes not only on engineering risk, but also on scientific risk.”

“You need to aim for market education, and you need to invest in your brand and your communication, and of course your validation to have all pieces in place to Educate people, and of course, you educate your innovators and your champions, not the laggers, righ…”

“For these companies, there's just, like, actually an opportunity to just show off what you're doing, and, like, that in itself is differentiated because it's so hard to do. That like just actually getting the thing done, like kind of creates all of this unbeli…”

“When you deal with something as early as what we are, and we're taking multiple bets, you know, across all these emerging fields of research generally difficult for VCs to invest at that point in time, you know, because they're pre, pre-formation of teams, you…”

“You kind of can attract, like, exceptional talent into your company at an early stage because there's kind of, like, nobody else doing this thing, and so if someone is passionate or wants to come work on something that's meaningful, that's difficult, that's ch…”

“I think 70% of all the deep tech dollars goes to, you know, there's some headcount for engineering, but a lot of it is producing prototypes and then scaling factories and components.”

“And you know, we never use those terms because they, I mean, frankly, they just never made any sense. And certainly, and they also were just, Boring, stupid terms. They weren't galvanizing, that's for sure.”

“And I think we're seeing some incredible innovations happen in the deep tech fraud arena right now, where we have companies that are raising, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars on technology that does not exist, will never exist. And is plainly impossib…”

“I'm trying to make actually moving closer to the series a now and like not doing deep tech because like, I'm not the guy to underwrite the science. And if I'm like the investor that you're calling to have something that has a bunch of science risk in it, like …”

“There's a lot of like deep tech that I think you're taking science risk. And like, I think with vertical integrators, you're taking integration risk where there's like five different kind of like cutting edge-ish, but proven technologies that you're trying to …”

“I think what you will see is the, you know, sort of profile of investors start to change. You need these very sort of broad polymaths that can, you know, sort of get up to speed across biotech, material science, aerospace, et cetera, more so than people whose,…”

“The way I would underwrite deep tech is basically like series B is the biggest risk point because you're starting to tip real money at the company. C and D is like what's already working. It's a fucking near monopoly. C to A is like, well, it's insane. And you…”

“Cause the other thing about deep tech is there is no iteration, honestly. Software companies, you can raise a couple million bucks, have an idea, test an idea, ship something new in four weeks. Whoops. Customer base sucks. Pivot, pivot, pivot, pivot, pivot. Th…”

“Every founder says I'm going to change the world. B to B mate, nobody changes the world. You're not changing any world. Very simple. In consumer, in deep tech science, yes, you are changing the world.”

“There's, you know, some folks at the big groups that focus on D tech, but they really focus on like kind of the ancillary businesses. They're not focused on the businesses that need a ton of cash that have potentially low odds of success that could be really g…”

“If you're trying to do something in deep tech, it's not going to just be a marathon. It's going to be 10 marathons because that's how long it takes to get an ROI as an investor.”

“I think it's a fair case to be made that SPACs have generated more upside for deep tech in climate tech and in other sectors than they have for any other Type of investment”

“Unfortunately in India it is tough to invest in certain spaces because the capital which will be needed to support those investments is not available, right? So, so for example you would want to invest in a lot of companies in in the deep tech space, right? Or…”

“In a way, it is an environment where, The founders tend to be older founders. They tend to be founders who worked in a particular industry for a long time and then come up with propositions within that industry. And therefore what happens is these tend to be v…”

“And so for me, like, you know, I always tell people, make sure you have a product marketing person on day zero. Especially if you're a deep tech company, especially if you're a B to B SaaS company, you really have to talk about the value of your product from a…”

“It's a lot easier to invest in seed in series B than it is to invest in A, and there's a reason for that, and that's because a lot of the companies I work with are deep tech companies, or they're engineering driven, and there is little traction at the A, so th…”

“We know we're backing deep companies, and sometimes the waiting period has to be longer if you want to create you know, non-linear upside, and I think we were aware of that, and we're playing for it.”

“Generally cycle one is where there's a lot of learning and unlearning and cycle two in some of them is when their commercial viability and opportunity sort of represents itself much better.”

“My DNA and I think my partner's DNA is a little more inclined towards saying, let's take signify person of the fundraise and go build product and R and D as against saying, let's take 60% of the fundraise to go do sales and marketing. And then a natural byprod…”

“Array focuses on enterprise deep tech companies. So founders that want to go solve big industries that are old, but need reviving with data analytics, machine learning, any strong tech.”

“We have half of our portfolio is sort of deep tech, wonky stuff.”

“Yeah, there's certainly a lot more capital and deep tech at the venture and the growth stages of investing. So let's say series a and beyond, which is really fantastic news for us at refactor, but we haven't seen many dedicated seed funds in these areas, espec…”

“Yes, I do think so. As long as we're really just not stepping too naively from one domain to another, and we recognize essentially both the promise and perils of analogizing from one complex system to another. So as long as we do this with open eyes, I think w…”

“If you can build a business that is sustainable from a revenue standpoint, and then grows from a revenue standpoint in deep tech the same way that you would in any other business, you can still build that deep technology, but you have to fill it, figure it out…”