Venturing into "Deep" Tech with Mark Hammond [Idea Machines #19]

09/14/19 • 46 min

In this episode I talk to Mark Hammond about how Deep Science Ventures works, why the linear commercialization model leaves a lot on the table, and the idea of venture-focused research. Mark is the founder of Deep Science Ventures, an organization with a fascinating model for launching science-based companies. Mark has many crisply articulated theses about holes in the current system by which research becomes useful innovations and what we might do to fill them.

Key Takeaways:

There are many places where innovation is slow and incremental because everybody is focused on individual pieces: batteries are a great example here.
The perception that deep/frontier/hard tech companies are riskier and take longer to provide returns may in fact be more grounded in popular perception than fact
The factors that make translational research so expensive may not be inherent but instead driven by administrative overhead and the fact that much of it is pointed in the wrong direction.

Resources

Deep Science Ventures

Mark on Twitter (@iammarkhammond)

Systematised ‘quant’ venture in the sciences.

LifeSciVC on biotech returns

Key Takeaways:

There are many places where innovation is slow and incremental because everybody is focused on individual pieces: batteries are a great example here.
The perception that deep/frontier/hard tech companies are riskier and take longer to provide returns may in fact be more grounded in popular perception than fact
The factors that make translational research so expensive may not be inherent but instead driven by administrative overhead and the fact that much of it is pointed in the wrong direction.

Resources

Deep Science Ventures

Mark on Twitter (@iammarkhammond)

Systematised ‘quant’ venture in the sciences.

LifeSciVC on biotech returns

Previous Episode

Promoting Science Patronage with Alexey Guzey [Idea Machines #18]

Alexey Guzey is an independent researcher focusing on how to systemically increase the rate of biology discoveries and the idea that reviving the patronage system may be a way to do that. We spend most of our time talking about the project he's been working on for the past year but also touch on some of his thinking around connecting with people, which he's written about extensively.

Key Takeaways

Most people doing biology research are embedded in a system that incentivizes incremental consensus steps and divides researcher time
There are some institutions that stand at least partially outside of that system - Calico and Janelia being two examples
Maybe we should be supporting more crackpots

Resources

Alexey's Essay: Reviving Patronage and Revolutionary Industrial Research

Followup: How Life Sciences Actually Work: Findings of a Year-Long Investigation

Alexey on Twitter:@alexeyguzey

Phillip Gibbs - crackpots who turned out to be right

Next Episode

Bubbly Innovation with Bill Janeway [Idea Machines #20]

In this episode I talk to Bill Janeway about previous eras of venture capital and startups, how bubbles drive innovation, the role of government in innovation. Bill describes himself as "theorist-practitioner": he did a PhD in Economics, was a successful venture capitalist in the 80's and 90's with the firm Warburg Pincus and is now an affiliated faculty member at Cambridge and the member of several boards.

Key Takeaways

Bubbles have arguably been the key enabler of infrastructure-heavy technology.
Venture capital may be structurally set up to only be useful for computing and biotech.
Most technology that venture capital invested in was subsidized at first by the government in one way or another.

Resources

Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy

VC: An American History

Wikipedia article on Bill

NYT Article on Fred Adler from 1981

Bill's Website

Bill on Twitter