What’s been lurking in the deep (tech)
Create. Accelerate. Incubate.
That’s how we at Cicada Innovations help our deep tech founders build and scale their companies. We know about the long and capital intensive journey riddled with valleys of death (yes, sometimes more than one) that deep tech founders face when taking their science and engineering based technologies to market.
It’s worthwhile taking you back to where Cicada’s story starts back in 2000, owned by four of Australia’s leading universities, and bestowed with one of the heritage locomotive workshops based in the Australian Technology Park in Sydney, Australia. The original purpose was to foster companies that spun out from our shareholder universities — Australian National University, University of Sydney, University of NSW and University of Technology Sydney. That’s still the case and we’ve had a number of successful stories to share on this, but as times changed our model has evolved to support and be the home for deep tech from all over Australia.
Cicada Innovations is a program driven incubator (let me explain). Australia is a pioneer in research, but it’s been an age old challenge on how this translates into the world where it benefits us everyday in society. Our country has some of the brightest inventors that have made significant impact in how our lives are shaped today— polymer bank notes, Wi-Fi, the black box flight recorder, cochlear implant, cervical cancer vaccine, I could go on…
Our mission at Cicada is to support the most promising deep tech founders that are solving global challenges with their technologies
Create: We run industry specific programs to up-skill researchers and inventors on how to meaningfully translate and commercialise their technology. Not all inventors or researchers are destined to be entrepreneurs, but the ones who are and who have realised that their technology can make a significant impact, take the plunge and go on to become a founder of their company.
Accelerate: Cicada currently runs two accelerator programs for early stage founders in medtech, MedLab, and agrifood tech, GrowLab. We pressure test these companies, help them build a robust roadmap to take their technology to market, challenge them to access as many customers as possible through a scalable model and help them raise their first round of capital. It’s not a cookie cutter approach to our accelerator programs, we’ve carefully tailored each of them to their industry verticals in investment, duration, topics, mentors and immersion experiences.
Incubate: Our incubator is the long term home for our deep tech startups and scaleups, with over 60 companies making up our ambitious deep tech community. Selected companies from our accelerator programs may be invited to join Cicada Innovations’ incubator for further long term support and subsidised space for up to 5 years. It’s more than just co-working space — it’s offices (for IP sensitive development), our hardware makerspace and labs.
Did I mention one of Cicada’s resident startups has the original founder of Wi-Fi advising their team?!
If you’re a researcher with a technology that solves a problem, a deep tech founder or a deep tech enthusiast, we’d love to invite you to our community. There’s beers and metres pizza and plenty and quality banter and connections made at our Monthly Buzz events. Stay in touch and don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter! www.cicadainnovations.com
