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:

1. There are many places where innovation is slow and incremental because everybody is focused on individual pieces: batteries are a great example here.
2. 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
3. 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