🧪 How do you de-risk a science/deep-tech startup from day 0?

The term “de-risking” is increasingly becoming part of the deep-tech vocabulary. And honestly… it’s about time.

Traditional VC filters tend to prize fast growth and tidy metrics, but deep-tech rarely starts there. The real path to conviction? Reduce the right risks early, and show a clear plan to keep doing it.

In my previous post, I shared, from an investor perspective, how I look at early-stage science/deep-tech ventures. But what if you’re a founder still in the idea stage, or raising your first round?

Here’s how I’d approach de-risking from day 0 if I were building a deep-tech venture from scratch:

🧠 Interrogate the problem

Why does it matter? To whom? Is it a root-cause or just a symptom? How much is it costing society/potential future customers? Why hasn’t it been solved yet?

📚 Study previous attempts

Who else has tried? Why did they fail? Was it due to execution mistakes or systemic barriers? What have they overlooked? 

📈 Understand the market

Go beyond TAM slides. Build your own bottom-up & top-down analyses. Get very familiar with market drivers, investment trends, comparable wins, and relevant exits.

🧪 Explore multiple solutions AND 💡 Invent the ideal solution

There’s rarely only one way to solve a big problem. Compare alternatives. Assess their feasibility and risks. Determine what the ideal solution is and what must be true to build & deploy it! Anticipate hurdles and sketch creative ways around them.

👥 Validate early (and relentlessly) with experts & potential customers

Talk to users before you have a product. Get feedback. Iterate. This is one of the fastest ways to de-risk deep-tech, and very few founders do it well.

💰 Craft a business case & GTM plan

Project realistic (but exciting) returns. Determine key milestones (you can use comparables as benchmarks) and understand when you need to achieve them, what needs to happen to reach them, and what will they unlock (e.g., a valuation uplift or off-take agreements). Sell the vision!

⚙️🚀 Execute!

 Get moving. Build your PoC. Test. Refine. Scale!

Deep-tech founders face unique challenges, but they also have unique opportunities 🧩. De-risking early is how you bridge the gap between lab and market. It’s how you go from “interesting science” to “fundable venture”, and how you differentiate "hype" from "industry-disruptive" tech.

If you’re building something in this space, I’d love to hear how you’re thinking about de-risking from day 0. Let’s get more deep-tech startups investment-ready right from the start, and more investors open to allocating capital early. 

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