Opening possibilities with frontier tech: we want you!
This story is brought to you by Sean Ang, Pierrick Bouffaron, and Antonio Castro Neto. AM2 is a Singapore-based venture studio that creates and strengthens science-startup projects in the advanced materials and manufacturing fields. Join an incredible community building the future 🔥🤖
Frontier tech leaders develop and bring disruptive technologies to market, aiming to solve our most complex social, political, and environmental challenges. The growing appeal of the underlying sectors — e.g., robotics, advanced materials, biotech — for the generation entering the job market is notable: young professionals now expect their employers to share their values and strive to have a sensible impact. The Gen Z is attracted by careers and companies that they feel are working in society’s best interest or in alignment with their own moral code. From the Great Resignation in 2020–22 to the current Great Layoff in the tech industry, they are part of the thousands of talents choosing to strengthen the ranks of frontier tech early-stage startups and global champions. They are much needed.
There are many pathways to a career in frontier tech. Despite the growing awareness of opportunities in science-driven and hard tech hotspots (e.g., Boston, San Francisco, Munich, or Shenzhen), venturing into the space might appear daunting to some due to the assumption that a substantially deep technology background is required. Holders of PhDs are still perceived as the “quality” talents to lead and drive these projects on account of their qualifications and academic pedigree. This could not be further from the truth. From the earliest stages, a diverse team encompassing a good ratio of technical, operations-related, and business profiles makes the difference between a maturing project and a future walking dead. Diversity means different perspectives, and problem-solving approaches, thus leading to a better-balanced decision-making process.
It can be challenging to create this team, though. First, as we wrote several times before, scientists generally initiate science-driven venturing. While we are convinced at AM2 that they should be heavily involved in supporting the initial productization, this comes with a few caveats. The gap in understanding the priorities between the technical founding team and the joining business professionals may be hard to fill. Second, we shall recognise that seasoned business leaders rarely join such risky frontier tech ventures when they go from 0 to 1. The risk-benefit analysis is not in favor of the burgeoning startup. Not everyone is up for the ride.
In Singapore, the government is massively investing in frontier tech startups and initiatives due to the promise of the segment in shaping the development of many industries, from maritime, manufacturing, transport, and consumer goods. This support is evident in the 5-year national R&D&I plan, the RIE2025. In recent years, demand for talent has soared. The sector’s fast-paced and dynamic nature has led to a situation in which the need for experts and B2B business people exceeds what the local talent pool can easily supply. More people are needed. In the Little Red Dot, general and digital tech attracts talents with entrepreneurial drive in droves due to a booming regional market. Frontier tech comes second.
If you are a — young or seasoned — business talent wondering what you can bring to the table in frontier tech, here are a few insights from the field. I joined the Centre for Advanced 2D Materials (CA2DM) @ NUS and the AM2 initiative as a business analyst in 2022— with a background in biomedical engineering and entrepreneurship. My first weeks were not easy, I was juggling between intense scientific deep dives and multiple operational sessions dedicated to market discovery campaigns, ops, community management, and HR. The subtleties behind TRLs, venture readiness levels, and the AM2 productization frameworks had to be digested as fast as possible. I was first overwhelmed, then after a few weeks felt more at ease discussing quantum dots, batteries, and construction technologies.
Reflecting on my experience of working alongside top scientists, engineers, and frontier tech operators, I can share that my significant contributions have been threefold: (1) the capacity to bring a persistent, outside-the-box perspective on any topic ; (2) an obsession to synthesize information and action points constantly, on behalf of the team ; (3) and finally, fully embracing the role of market herald to focus on what matters.
- Playing the team: outside-the-box perspective
Balancing the visions and expectations between researchers and business-minded operators is challenging and fulfilling. Both use a different — and often complementary — lens to talk about products and go-to-market, and while they may choose the same vocabulary to manipulate concepts, interpretations vary broadly. It takes a fair amount of abnegation, listening, diplomacy, and emotional intelligence to navigate the different communication landscapes of the team. I quickly realised that someone focusing on ‘how’ information is communicated instead of (only) the ‘what’ can ease many underlying frictions. Leveraging my junior position to ask for precision or a justification, a concept to be rephrased, or even an unclearly stated deadline can trigger the team to reflect and pivot. Communication is crucial: you can be an excellent team catalyst by figuring out when and why it makes sense to translate.
2. Incarnating the workflow: synthesis, synthesis, synthesis
Daily operations in an early-stage frontier tech startup require continuous synthesizing—and combining elements of several sources — to help the founding team members make their points. It may look like it is simply a matter of making connections or putting things together. But synthesizing is way more than merely reporting and coordinating. Synthesis leverages classification, division, comparison, and contrast. It is a matter of pulling various sources together into some kind of harmony, the ability to combine them clearly and coherently. When a frontier tech project is still in stealth mode, the heterogeneity and complexity of the scientific and technical data to be processed are overwhelming for everyone. Add to this market data churned every week, and many founders lose track. So we introduced a rule: everything — yes, everything — must be written in a 1- or 2-pager. And I am the one in charge of that. Guess what it meant for our action points? They are contextualised, and we have become collectively more efficient.
3. Being a market herald: the market-product fit
The product-market fit (or PMF) is not the only thing that matters. It is only one of four fits needed to grow a product to $100M+ in a venture-backed time frame. As famously introduced by Brian Balfour in 2017, market, channels, product, and model (of go-to-market) are all important and require special attention when launching a venture. In frontier tech, we frequently find ourselves in a situation of tech push, which means the team has a solution looking for a problem and a market. In other words, the founders generally put the cart before the horse by focusing (mostly) on the product. The real problem is something experienced within the market and by the final audience, not something that lives within the tech product. That is why, at AM2, we prefer to focus on the market-product fit: market validation should be every frontier tech founder’s secret weapon. And I am tasked to remind everyone that risk mitigation is vital on our journeys.
To conclude, working in frontier tech does not require being a jack-of-all-trades or a technical expert. This is more about what you can bring to the team and the character traits that make you stand out. Resilience is a big one. Patience is related to this too. Be patient on results, impatient on progress, and keep inching forward.
