Breakthrough Science Conference Takeaways
We are living in a world of abundance
Last week we hosted our first annual Breakthrough Science Conference where we facilitated discussions with founders driving innovation and investors funding these breakthrough inventions. In this post, I have highlighted some of the key takeaways from each discussion.
Peter Diamandis Keynote (Click for the video)
Peter Diamandis, named by Fortune as one of the “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders,” left us energized with a powerful keynote about the future of technology. Here are a few of the key takeaways from his talk:
Today, we find ourselves in a world that is global and exponential due to faster, cheaper computing. This has been one of the most incredible periods of innovation that we have seen in the last few decades.
Technology is a force that can transform scarcity into abundance. We are headed towards a world that is abundant in energy, water, health, learning, time, money, resources, and food.
Data driven artificial Intelligence is bringing us into a world where you are going to be able to know anything you want, anytime you want, anywhere you want.
The focus of artificial intelligence should be to “automate the routine” and “humanize the exceptional”
A negative mind will never give you a positive life. The world’s biggest problems are the world’s biggest opportunities and we should celebrate how well we are doing.
Founder Panel Takeaways (Click for the video)
The world-class founders on this panel discussed what it means to be building a company that has the potential to change the world and improve the quality of life of billions of people. Here are the panelists and a few of the key takeaways from this panel:
Blake Scholl: Founder & CEO at Boom Supersonic
Greg Wyler: Founder & Chairman at OneWeb
Maureen Hillenmeyer: Founder & CEO at Hexagon Bio
Bill Gross: Founder & CEO at Heliogen, Founder & Chairman at Idealab Studio
As a founder you must find visionary investors to back you. It’s very important that they are able to understand the science behind what you are doing.
Learning how to craft a story around your technology being inevitable is crucial. Storytelling is an underrated skill and is needed to attract investment.
The founder has to believe that it’s going to work otherwise no investor will buy in. In order to build certainty around the belief that it will work, the founder should have 5+ back up plans and believe that one will eventually work.
You’re going to have to excel on product market fit experimentation in unorthodox ways to get the money you need to scale the company.
When you have a mission driven company, it is way easier to attract good talent. There’s something else that happens, everybody in the company is there for that mission, so there’s much more consonance about what everybody’s doing together.
Investor Panel Takeaways (Click for the video)
In this panel we heard from some prolific investors and their experience with funding and supporting entrepreneurs that are changing the world. Here are the panelists and a few of the key takeaways from this panel:
Shaun Maguire: Partner at Sequoia Capital
Maryanna Saenko: Co-founder & Partner at Future Ventures
Eric Migicovsky: Partner at Y Combinator, Founder at Pebble Technology
Ian Rountree: Founder & General Partner at Cantos Ventures
This pocket of venture is a very collaborative space where investors can call up one another with questions. We are all on the same team and we all want these companies to succeed.
We all have biases and we all have strengths and weaknesses, so making sure you are partnering with the right VC is crucial. You have to shop around until you find your match.
As VCs our jobs is to make sure that the unit economics make sense at scale. This means that founders and their companies must be well modeled out in terms of what economics at scale look like and the de-risking at each stage of capital.
We should hold ourselves to a certain standard about what technologies we are bringing to light, putting an emphasis on technologies that are positively impacting the world.
When we fund deep tech companies, we really look for a financing structure that continues to be fundable down the road.
Learn more about our panelists here.
Prime Movers Lab invests in breakthrough scientific startups founded by Prime Movers, the inventors who transform billions of lives. We invest in seed-stage companies reinventing energy, transportation, infrastructure, manufacturing, human augmentation and agriculture.
Sign up here if you are not already subscribed to our blog.
