Post by Pablo German

I’m starting a new article series looking back at the ventures that went through the Deep Tech Incubator Programme in New Zealand. The programme recently marked 100 companies funded through the programme. I worked with the programme for more than a year as Product Manager, and I’ve become increasingly interested in what lessons we can learn by looking at each of the ventures that went through the programme. The first article looks at three early ventures: Tiro Medical, Koti Technologies and Avalia Immunotherapies. Each was based on ambitious New Zealand science. Each also shows how difficult deep tech commercialisation can be when long development timelines, regulatory pathways, manufacturing scale-up and follow-on capital requirements come into play. My main takeaway: company failure does not necessarily mean science failure. In deep tech, every attempt can build capability, experience and ecosystem learning.