Lost in Translation: Why Great Science Doesn’t Always Close Rounds

$398B is sitting in the European university spinout funnel. PhD founders are missing their share. Here’s why, and how to fix it. Deep tech founders face a real paradox: the very complexity that makes their technology defensible is the same complexity that makes it nearly impossible to pitch. Yet with a third of all global […]

The Sovereign Lab: Why Singapore Wants Your PhD

For most PhD founders, the obstacle isn’t the science. It’s the gap between a discovery that works in a lab and one that works in the world. Most systems weren’t built to close that gap. They were built around it. That gap is now a competitive advantage; but only if you know where to stand. […]

China Just Redefined the PhD. The Rest of the World Hasn’t Caught Up Yet.

China’s “Practical PhD” and what it means for every PhD founder worldwide In January 2025, China’s landmark Degrees Law came into force. This is the first legislation to explicitly permit doctoral candidates to apply for degrees through “practice achievement defenses” alongside traditional thesis defenses. What’s changed? Under the law, universities can now award doctorates in […]

Central Asia: opportunities revisited

I first traveled to Almaty in 1998 as a very young investment banker keen to research a complex deal (they were never easy) related to a cross-border gas pipeline between Kazakhstan and China. This was before China’s Belt and Road Initiative took off, but was an early sign of what was coming. GDP in Kazakhstan […]

America’s brain drain

For decades, America has stood as the world’s premier destination for advanced education and research. This “brain gain” has fueled American scientific leadership, underpinned sustainable economic growth, and cemented our reputation as a hub for discovery and invention. Yet, in 2025, the U.S. advantage faces unprecedented threats—not only from global knowledge rivals like China, India […]

Scaling to 60+ countries, with no safety net

I’m excited to share my recent conversation on Spotify, where we dig into some of the most pressing questions in language assessment and edtech. As the host (Summer Long of Cathoven AI) put it, this episode “hits hard if you care about language assessment, AI grading, or scaling edtech globally.” We covered a range of topics, including […]

Global Zero – Tools

Companies and investors are faced with continued ESG and sustainability challenges as reporting and compliance becomes more complex, new standards for public and private companies arise across jurisdictions, and the need for execution expertise becomes more critical and high stakes. Fortunately a thriving start-up sector of SaaS platforms and tools is providing enterprises with cutting […]

Global Zero – Data and Resources

Emerging and frontier markets have an urgent need for sustainable and impact investments to tackle economic, climate and societal challenges. As investors and advisors in these markets, we have long relied on numerous on-ground resources as well as “other people’s data” relating to sustainability issues around the world. Below are a just a few of […]

Global Scarring: Investment RoundUp

Global investors are facing a widely varied post-Covid recovery with the IMF forecasting per capita income losses in emerging markets (ex-China) of -6.1% between 2000-2024, and potentially greater “scarring” over the medium term. There are a range of fiscal, humanitarian and social issues to consider and debate. I’ll pick one: the impact of an estimated […]

China’s massive skills gap

China may have created the most impressive advance of educational attainment in history but it also suffers from a growing skills gap. In fact, China has one of the least educated workforces in the world as measured by the proportion of its labor force with a high school and college degree. The evidence piles up in […]