I consider Deep Tech is the new chapter in innovation history and the next milestone humanity will reach in the near future. The power we obtain when we combine robotics, synthetic biology, blockchain, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and other developing technologies could be what makes the impossible possible.
That is what Deep Tech is all about: the collaboration of high-end technologies alongside engineering and design to review and resolve some of the most fundamental matters in every industry.
SpaceX is one of the most renowned and well-known deep tech companies as they manage to reduce aerospace travel costs by a factor of ten. Another example could be PASQAL, a start-up that combines fundamental physics, data science, and Software engineering to create analog quantum processors.
As stated by Deep Tech experts 4 characteristics rule all successful Deep Tech Ventures:
- They are problem-oriented rather than technology-focused.
They focus on the problems that the industry already has to review and come up with a proper solution to them instead of creating an innovative product to then search the problem it may alleviate.
- They create a collaboration ecosystem.
It is all about the convergence of a multidisciplinary team that is able to collaborate in a problem-solving way to achieve better solutions.
- They have a Desing Thinking approach powered by tech.
Working on prototypes as quickly as possible, testing them, and fixing issues along the way will make it easier to identify what works in the lab and the market.
- They adopt a design-to-cost approach.
The fusion of a multidisciplinary team creates the need to have economics in mind all the time. Even before production starts you need to have the right products at the right costs. Creating better and cheaper solutions to the ones that already exist.
How Deep Tech Ventures come across real answers to life-changing problems is known as the Four Moments Of Truth where they place four different questions to review industries´ problems. The Boston Consulting Group illustrates these questions perfectly in the next graph:
Each of these four questions requires restatement to determine whether solving the problem through the deep tech approach is probable, possible, real, and profitable.
Deep Tech Ventures and labs have the ability to solve our most pressing issues. That is why, for me, as a start-up investor funding these kinds of projects and creating a venture capital fund platform to attract other investors to it is a top priority.
- Ricardo Orrantia Cantú
Sources:
What is deep tech? A look at how it could shape the future | Antoine Gourévitch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLd0AqSxIyk
BCG | Deep Tech and the Great Wave of Innovation
https://www.bcg.com/publications/2021/deep-tech-innovation
