The Boost VC Podcast

If a VC is excited about a deep tech company upfront, what can we do to temper our enthusiasm and make a rational decision on whether to invest?

Maryanna Saenko is Cofounder and Partner at Future Ventures, an early-stage VC firm that focuses on mission-driven companies at the cutting edge of disruptive technology.

Future Ventures looks to back visionaries who push the boundaries of possibility. Some of their recent investments incl...

Deep tech founders are either technically gifted or great at building a business. But it's seldom both, at least in the beginning.

So, what should venture investors pay attention to when we’re choosing founders in these disruptive technologies?

Greg Castle is Founder and Managing Director at Anorak Ventures, a firm that invests in early-stage deep tech startups.

An entrepreneur and corporate marketer turned VC, Greg has invested in...

How does a venture firm approach investments in deep technology?

Seth Winterroth is Partner at Eclipse Ventures, a VC firm that partners with exceptional entrepreneurs to build companies that redefine physical industries.

Seth has nine years of experience in venture capital, serving as Associate at GE Ventures before he joined the team at Eclipse. 

On this episode of Boost VC, Seth joins us to explore how Eclipse thinks about inves...

What inspires a venture firm to focus on deep tech?

Ian Rountree is Founder and General Partner at Cantos, a venture fund that invests in potentially world-changing deep tech startups. 

Cantos focuses on hardware and bio investing at the intersection of climate and industrials, life sciences and AI, aerospace and defense, and next-generation computing.

On this episode of Boost VC, Ian joins us to share his definition of deep tech a...

Many independently minded, young scientists are too ambitious for academia… But the startup world isn’t quite right for them either.

How might decentralized science provide a space for these innovators to do their work?

Niklas Rindtorff is the classical scientist behind LabDAO, an online home for inventors that builds open tools for scientific research. Niklas coauthored his first paper before the age of 20, and he has expertise in...

In academia, most scientists publish their ideas and stop there. But if we want our breakthroughs to benefit society, we have to take it a step further. 

So, what does it look like to commercialize scientific research? What mindset do academics need to work at the intersection of science and industry?

Ben Lamm has a career of building successful deep tech businesses, and George Church has a career of commercializing academic scienc...

Why invest in decentralized science?

James Sinka is a classically trained chemist and materials engineer and DeSci investor at Orange DAO, a fund for crypto projects supported by an alliance of Y Combinator alumni.

On this episode of Boost VC, James joins us to discuss where he sees opportunities in DeSci, describing the benefit of publishing null results and how open science helps us get to the truth more quickly.

James explains h...

Under the current centralized system, drug development happens in silos. 

Pharmaceutical companies don’t share information. Scientists run the same failed experiments over and over again. And the process of bringing a drug to market typically takes ten-plus years. 

But Paul Kohlhaas and Tyler Golato are building a new way to do drug development. A system that allows for collaboration and dramatically increases the speed of breakthr...

The internet has given content creators of all kinds a way to monetize their talents. Writers have Medium. Teachers and vloggers have YouTube. 

But scientists don’t have a platform to earn money for their research. 

That’s why Dr. Jocelynn Pearl calls scientists the ‘unappreciated creator class.’ And that’s why she’s working to further the DeSci movement, leveraging Web3 technology to enable breakthrough research through better inc...

Only 1% of first year PhD students become research professors. 

This creates a hypercompetitive environment where scientists will do whatever it takes to get funding, even if that means tweaking statistical analyses to make their findings seem more significant.

But decentralized science is working to address this egregious misalignment of incentives and reward science done the right way. 

Patrick Joyce is the Cofounder and COO of R...

The system for publishing scientific research is broken. 

Academic success is measured by citations rather than scientific quality. And publishing companies have a monopoly on the knowledge scientists produce.

Can we use blockchain technology to promote the verifiability of scientific findings? And make science accessible to everyone?

Dr. Christopher Hill is an interdisciplinary scientist with a background in neuroeconomics and mac...

At Boost VC, we’re known for supporting early-stage blockchain startups. 

Why is that such an important part of our identity? Because institutional trust is dying. And that trust is being passed down to the individual through peer-to-peer technologies.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are solving for trust in our financial system. But what other institutions are ripe for this kind of disruption? 

Where else might we apply decentr...

The media is filled with experts comparing today’s market with the dot-com crash of 2000. But few, if any, of these experts actually lived and worked through the dot-com boom and bust.

Marc Andreessen is Founder and General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, and Tim Draper is Founder and Managing Director at Draper VC. And both Marc and Tim were either running or investing in tech startups at the time.

So, what was it like to experien...

Dr. Edward Lu is an astrophysicist and former NASA astronaut who logged 200-plus days in space between 1995 and 2007. Today, he serves as the Cofounder and Executive Director of the Asteroid Institute at the B612 Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting Earth from asteroid impacts. On this episode of Boost VC, Ed joins us to discuss what makes space fun, describing what daily life is like in zero gravity and why he thinks we...

A total of $2T in apparel is sold online each year. But 30% to 40% of that apparel is returned. So, what if consumers could snap a couple of photos with their smartphone camera and get clothes that are the right fit for their body?

Vadim Rogovskiy is the Cofounder and CEO of 3DLOOK, a deep tech startup solving the problem of apparel returns for retail. Vadim is an experienced entrepreneur, building and selling two companies in the ...

Design is about much more than just making things look good. Design is valuable because it translates the complexities of technology to us mere mortals. It serves as a way to educate the market and make tech easy for everyday people to use. But what is the design process that gets us to that end?

Daniel Scrivner is the CEO & Chief Design Officer at Flow, the project management software used by teams at Apple, Shopify and TED. A lea...

Orla Harris is the Cofounder and COO of SideQuest VR, an early-access testing platform for virtual reality with headquarters in Northern Ireland. Orla and her team provide tools that enable developers to grow a community around their app and solicit feedback from users in the early stages of development. Prior to SideQuest, Orla spent eight years working as a project manager in the construction industry and dabbling in virtual real...

When serial entrepreneurs Thibauld Favre and Joris Delanoue joined forces to build the future of fundraising, the Frenchmen chose San Francisco as their home base in large part because of its investor mindset. So, how do Silicon Valley VCs think differently from other investors around the globe?

Thibauld and Joris are the Cofounders of Fairmint, a continuous financing instrument that allows startups to raise money WHILE they build—...

More and more people understand that crypto is going to be big. But they don’t really know why. And they don’t want to be forced to turn all of their money into cryptocurrency right off the bat. So, what if there was a way to demonstrate the benefits of the technology with US dollars and then migrate users to digital currency over time?

Andy Bromberg is the new CEO of Eco, a wallet designed to simplify everyday finances and maximiz...