How Agentic AI Changes Founder Economics

When a University of Chicago professor published 200 academic papers in nine months, the main complaints, surprising, weren’t about his use of AI in churning out these papers, but more about peer review integrity given the high volume of papers published. What does that tell us? That the legitimacy of AI assistance in serious professional […]

Beyond the TAM: What PhD Founders Get Wrong About India

The Total Addressable Market slide tells you nothing about India’s deep tech opportunity. What does? India is full of opportunities, and surprises. My initial years working with Indian companies was fairly conventional: investing in companies in the ecosystem of Infosys and Satyam, the pioneers of outsourcing services to the US, and working with sales channels […]

The US Market, From the Outside In

How East Asian PhD founders and spinouts, and Asian TTOs, can navigate the US commercialization ecosystem. This post is not a general GTM analysis for Asian companies entering the US market. It is written specifically for research-backed ventures and university spinouts; that is, founders who have built something out of research, have institutional credibility at […]

International PhD Founders Can Stay. Here’s How

A graduate dean told me international PhD founders can’t stay in the US and build a company. That’s only half true. A graduate dean at a major research university told me recently that they weren’t really interested in the founder track content because international students can’t be founders and stay in the US due to […]

Asian Deep Tech: A Map for Spinout Founders

South Korea, Japan, China, and Singapore as commercial launchpads Early in my career I advised KEPCO, Korea’s giant state energy monopoly, on its expansion into China to secure energy investments and partnerships. Having lived and worked in both countries, I ended up working both sides of the engagement: helping a Korean state institution navigate a […]

Brilliant Science. Empty Chair.

In a university spinout, the co-founder decision involves three parties rather than two. I‘m currently working with a climate tech founder: he’s a brilliant scientist, Chinese-born, based in the US. His venture is running early pilot deployments that are generating promising results. He has differentiated technology and defensible IP. This venture looks fundable on paper, […]

Your University Signed First. Now Your Investor Wants To. Here’s What That Means

Most founders negotiate the valuation. Focus on everything else. One of the medtech ventures I currently advise is running a SAFE round. The regulatory sequencing is on track, they have a manufacturing LOI in place, and NIH and NSF applications are in review. By most measures, raising a Series A round is still a long […]

China: The Most Misread Deep Tech Market

Most founders either romanticize China or avoid it entirely. Both are costly mistakes. I lived in China through the 1990s and the early 2000s. I learned Mandarin, attended post-grad at Peking and Nanjing Universities, later worked in Beijing and Hong Kong, and was in China when its technology sector was born. During that period, near […]

The Evidence-Based Venture Framework

A commercialization sequence built specifically for research-backed ventures, and the five layers most founders are missing. In an era of hype and marketing, would an evidence-based startup guide be helpful to PhD founders? I thought yes. That’s why I started this newsletter, and why I’ve been deliberate about what goes into it. Every issue of […]

The Regulatory Roadmap: Why Your Compliance Strategy Is Your Funding Strategy

Why do teams with genuinely innovative technology often approach investors without a commercially-minded regulatory pathway? I’ve noticed this pattern with some of the deep tech, medtech and climate tech founders I advise, where regulatory work is seen as something distinct from building a company. I also see the results: stalled fundraising, or, if rushed, closing […]