Introduction to Deep Tech Investing
Ryan Davies: Welcome everyone to the Tech Business Roundtable podcast show. This is a podcast show dedicated to shining a spotlight on tech innovators, entrepreneurs, founders, and the compelling narratives behind the movements they’ve established.
I’m your host, Ryan Davies, and I’m hosting today’s discussion. Venturing deep: Colin Webster’s approach to deep tech investments with Colin Webster. Thanks so much for being here.
Colin: Happy to be here. Thanks very much.
Ryan Davies: I think this is going to be incredible. We’re going to have tons of takeaways from this. Colin is incredibly strong, and versed, and it’s going to, I think we’re going to cover a lot of different areas and answer a lot of questions that people may have and don’t know where to get the answers for it. A little bit of background for everybody. Colin Webster, the co-founder at RiSC Capital, you know, experienced in early-stage technology and investing a great track record and history of working in start-ups. Previously, the co-founder and partner of Hero Ventures as well. Very strong in entrepreneurship, venture capital partnerships, management, and corporate development, has founded a number of organizations invested in, you know, over two dozen companies since 2004 with incredible exit success. You know, even an inventory, he’s got a couple of patents out there. The Golden Jubilee medal from the Queen. My goodness, and a deep experience in e-commerce. AI Blockchain software MedTech devices. I don’t know if there’s a question I can ask you that you can’t answer, but we’re going to find out here as we go on. Colin, thanks so much for joining us here today. Really appreciate it.
Colin: No, you’re welcome. I’m happy to be here.
Defining the Seed Stage and Investment Criteria
Ryan Davies: Excellent, and you know, I think maybe you could color up a little bit more if I’ve missed anything but provide an audience maybe with an overview of RiSC Capital and its mission and, you know, maybe in the context of supporting deep tech start-ups and anything that I missed in that in that intro.
Colin: I mean, you didn’t miss very much. I mean, I think that’s a good background. RiSC Capital, a firm that I started 3-4 years ago as a venture capital firm focused on the seed stage, deep tech. Mainly I think we’re trying to kill two birds with one stone. My partner Scott and I one is we feel there’s a lot of good deep tech coming out of Canada that it’s not being funded. So, you know, there lies the opportunity if we have good opportunities and there isn’t enough capital around, then we should be able to find, you know, the one, the good ones ourselves and, hopefully, do well on that, but the other side of the coin is if these Canadian deep tech startups aren’t getting any capital and they’re failing at that stage when you know, they’re perfectly good innovations, and they could be game-changing, world-changing technologies. You know, we should be funding those companies from a Canadian perspective like we need to invest more into those companies. I mean, for the future of the planet, for jobs, for the economy, for everything about Canada. So we’re trying to help Canada, the planet, but also it’s an opportunity for us and so we started the venture capital firms focused on this seed stage, deep tech, which is what we feel is the gap that exists in Canada. This ecosystem is just not broad enough to cover everything, and so we found that little niche, and so that’s what we’re focusing on.
Ryan Davies: That’s amazing. I guess that that gives a good intro to what draws you to the sector, but you know, kind of taking that next step when you’re talking about investing in deep tech and that side of things, how do you identify what is promising for a deep tech start-up?
Colin: I mean, that’s kind of the secret sauce.
Ryan Davies: I was going to say that might be a loaded question from that.
Colin: No, no, but it’s ok because I mean, there’s the standard kind of like, well, you look at some new technology, you decide whether you think it’s going to have a nice impact on the world or it’s innovative. You look at the team,, if there’s any traction. I mean, yeah, of course, you look at the technology, you try to put it together from a fundamental point of view, but the reality is you kind of have to have a sense that, that the technology is, I mean, to invest so we do all those things but to invest, you kind of have like have to have this sort of spider sense that this is going to be a home run. I mean, there are lots of great technologies that aren’t home runs because of a lot of unfortunate situations that come about that would have if you know that if the world was slightly different at the time. So it’s really hard at an early stage to pick the best ones. So, to mitigate that, you diversify, right? So you build a portfolio of 15 to 20 companies, and with that kind of breadth diversification, there’s got to be a few in there that are home runs or successful companies that’ll make the fun successful, and then you can go on and do another one.
Ryan Davies: Right now, I think, you know, deep tech still involves really substantial R&D longer development cycles in some senses, but at the same time, we’ve seen such a rise in the ability to accelerate some of these processes from that standpoint talk to the audience a little bit about again, that approach that you have when it when you’re considering different deep tech start-ups around, you know, is there risk involved between people who are at different stages of the curve and how you know, deep tech, you’re seeing the deep tech landscape evolve as a result.
Colin: Yeah, for sure. The speed to market is much faster now for some deep tech innovations. So that makes it more investable than it has been in the past. I mean, I think there are some older deep tech great success stories from decades ago, but they may have taken 20-30 years, which is to become successful, which is very difficult to invest in, but nowadays, you can either you can build your AI models, your e-commerce platforms in seconds rather than years. So makes a big difference for sure. Hardware is still a little bit because you’ve got to build the physical prototypes and that takes a lot of time. We haven’t really done, you know, made a huge amount of progress in the physical hardware side, but there are lots of technologies around that help with that a little bit, but the risk associated. So the second part of that question is around how much risk do you take on when you make an investment. And because the Canadian ecosystem, venture capital ecosystem is mostly made up of financial people, I mean, I think there are two routes in the venture capital. One is you have a financial background, you work for a finance bank or VC junior to VC and, and you kind of work your way, and then the other route is kind of entrepreneur like I did build some companies and understand it from that perspective. Either way, the Canadian venture capital ecosystem being younger than the US and European, there aren’t a lot of venture capital people with sort of, you know, deeper tech backgrounds in their education. So, I did electrical engineering at Princeton. My partner did computer engineering at McMaster. We have a pretty good understanding of some of the niches and in areas that we don’t, we have a bunch of advisors on board who we refer to. So if we’re looking at a deep tech project that would not be invested in by the typical Canadian VC, because they wait for later, they wait for traction, more traction because they don’t really understand the technology, and they don’t want to take that risk. So they wait for more traction and, at a later stage, we get to go and look at the technology and make our own personal assessments on how what we feel about the technology and take on that technology risk, and we don’t mind doing that because we enjoy it and, and we feel we can do that. So we have some deep expertise in material science and AI and computer technology robotics that we can leverage and try to understand the technology as early as possible and make a bet and we’re pretty unique in Canada. We were the first venture capital firm to build a deep tech, entirely deep tech-focused firm, and so we get sort of the pick of the litter, but now we’ve seen a few more other deep tech companies arrive since we’ve been around, and that’s really good for the ecosystem.
Ryan Davies: That’s great, and I think, you know, that speaks just to deep tech on its own and kind of what it covers that same acceleration, right where you’ve got your early adopters, and that makes it great, but now you’ve got the people that are continuously catching up and taking part, and I think there’s no shortage, I’m sure you get pitched all the time that there’s no shortage of companies that are out there or just is looking to grow and looking for that investment and I think you kind of touched on a little bit about the importance of the collaboration when innovation, you know, it desires it needs that collaboration between the start-up’s research institutions that they’re working with maybe industry partners or like you said, hardware partners and then investors like yourself, right? So, you know, how do you see the importance of that and for building and fostering these ecosystems to support deep tech ventures? Because I think that’s exactly what RiSC Capital is doing.
Colin: Yeah, I mean, it’s an expression. It takes a village, I mean, yeah, you need a lot of universities are involved in supporting the federal government or the local governments are also, you know, giving grants out at an early stage to help these companies. There’s a lot of support to get them to a place where there’s a little bit of attraction. There’s very little support to get them commercialized into the market. So we’re on our soapbox talking about it. The US venture capital industry has arrived in Canada. I mean, when I was doing angel investing even 20 years ago, there is no Americans up in Canada doing feed stage, let alone the top-tier American firms. Now we see, I mean, we’ve done a deal with Coast Ventures, a top-tier US firm doing a seed stage deal. We’ve done a deal, see another seed state deal with DCDC, another top tier deep tech fund in the US. So, in the US, I’ve acknowledged or realized that there isn’t enough deep tech feed stage money for what we have. So they’re up here doing it, but yeah, we’re cooperating with everybody just to kind of get them done and of course, and at the seed stage, you know, unlike later stage investments, later stage investments are probably, you know, when you get one, you kind of like take as much as you can and maybe there’s a couple other people involved and you know, you often don’t get a chance to participate in the later stage ones that are really good stage ones there. We collaborate with a lot of other firms that aren’t necessarily deep tech seed stage but if we’re involved in, you know, we can partner with them to do the investments and help the companies.
Ryan Davies: I think being in, you know, that that’s just so incredibly valuable too to partner with somebody that can advocate more partners, right, to be able to, like you said, grow that ecosystem and things to that extent, and you know, I’m going to shift gears a little bit because I had this one a little bit later in the conversation but I think, you know, again, you’re overseas right now. You just talked a little bit about the global landscape and the global perspective of deep tech, but with the evolution and, you know, the rapid growth, are there specific regions or markets that you think are becoming, you know, maybe a hotbed for deep tech innovation or maybe again, that are just overlooked or anything to that extent or is this just a global, you know, anywhere you go there’s going to be growth in this area?
Colin: Yeah, I mean, if you look at the landscape, so when we started looking at the landscape a number of years ago, we found that there was a lot of traction in deep tech investing in Europe and South Africa and Israel, those were like the leaders of deep tech investing. So those were countries that realized from a federal level, I think, but all the way down to venture capital level that the deep tech innovations coming out of their universities and labs needed to be supported, and there’s lots of infrastructure around that. I don’t know who is bigger between those three, but South Africa is real, and Europe is huge. Second is the US, so a little bit behind but later acknowledging the importance of deep tech, and now we have significant deep tech funds in the US, and then Canada is third. I mean, in terms of getting this ecosystem up and running and fortified the way it needs to be. So we’re new but it’s a good opportunity really to be a part of it basically.
Ryan Davies: Yeah, I think maybe from both sides, it’s a great opportunity, right? So if you’re an early stage founder that gives you a little bit of a, you know, again, maybe the resources, like you said, the infrastructures isn’t set up, but at the same time, you’ve got a little bit more attention, I guess you’re not as buried as some of the other places where you’ve, you know, they’ve maybe accelerated in some areas or there’s a bit more crowded, competitions essentially going on. Right.
Colin: Yeah.
Ryan Davies: So, I’d love to go a little bit further kind of here, and I think this is probably the question that you get asked. I would assume all the time is advice to founders of deep tech start-ups seeking investment. You know, are there key elements that they should emphasize when people are pitching to you? Are there elements that really stand out or where you say, look this, these are your table stakes, and then from there, this is what’s really going to potentially differentiate you.
Colin: Yeah, I mean, I was an entrepreneur for a little while as well. So, I’m familiar with fundraising from that perspective. I think it’s important to really get a handle on the VC landscape, so if you’re going out to raise money, that’s even a question in itself. A lot of entrepreneurs think raising money from a VC is a big success story. You know, for me, as an entrepreneur, building a company and not having to raise money from a VC is the big success story because then you get to control it and own it and manage it yourself, but of course, if you need the capital. So then you go to various places for that, including VCs but first of all, to focus on, you know, what stage you’re at and what VCs are investing in that stage. If you’re like, precede, I mean, in these terms are very loose anyway, but if you precede, then, you know, coming to us, it’s not really that much worthwhile. I mean, maybe you should pitch to us, but we don’t do precedes. So you’re kind of maybe not wasting your time, but maybe you’re wasting our time, or you have to understand that if you see a no from us, it’s because we’re not in the right area, the right stage that you’re at. So, learning who is funding each stage is really important, and understanding what that means could mean different things to different venture capitalists. So for us, we like to see, you know, a valuation of like 10 million and below. We like to see the product finished and in the hands of potential customers. Maybe no revenue, maybe revenue, but at least customers are actually someone looking at it to validate that it’s actually a done product if it’s in the hands of a customer. Even if it’s not complete, it doesn’t have to be all the bells and whistles, but as long as it can be looked at as valued or evaluated in the hands of a customer, that’s kind of the stage we’re looking for. So we have sort of our sweet spot of what we and how we define seed stage, and the technology has to be, you know, fairly complicated AI or robotics or computer or advanced materials or something like that we like, and we can do a deep dive on and try to understand the tech as much as possible. So I mean, that’s the answer to the question of who should be pitching us is you really have to find that we see tons of companies that are deep tech, but they’re not in that particular space and that fifth stage or whatever. So they’re either too far gone, or they’re too early, or something like that. So, knowing your audience and pitching your audience is a good learning lesson for sure. You know, the other thing is we look at a lot of patents. We like to see if there’s something that’s patentable or patented or patent pending. You know, that’s kind of one of our definitions of our deep tech world is, you know, is there something innovative patentable and maybe you don’t patent it, maybe you do trade secret route instead just fine too, but I mean, there’s gotta be something that is innovative. We don’t risk capital doesn’t really look at companies that just build a service or something that’s a bunch of existing technologies sort of put together to try to make life easier for, like a restaurant or something like that.
Success Stories in Deep Tech Investing
Ryan Davies: Perfect. I saw you in your profile. You know, you enjoy treasure hunting, and I think that probably carries over into this space as well, right? So, maybe you can share a success story or an example of, you know, one of the deep tech start-ups that you’ve invested in and maybe the impact that it’s made in the respective industry in terms of finding that treasure.
Colin: I mean, we’ve only our friends, not that old and, so the successes don’t really come to later, but we’ve had one exit and a couple of pretty good stories. We had one company they built AI software that to go through hospital records. So like in a typical hospital in Canada anyway, I think it’s in the States as well. You have a team of humans that go through the hospital records, the doctors, you know, patient records, and extract out all the billable codes that get sent in the case of Canada to the government, in the case of the US, to the insurance companies. So ideally, originally, they wanted doctors to, you know when they do a procedure, to write down specifically what procedure it was, and so that would translate into a billable code, which is reimbursable. Doctors were never going to do that even though they build all these great software systems. Doctors are never going to, you know, say exactly whether they did that test or this test or the other test and what the codes are. They’re just going to write in chicken scratch what basically happened, and so that’s why they have these teams of humans going through these records to figure out what diabetes test did he actually perform, and we can look at the previous notes to probably figure that out if it was a type A or type B or whatever. And so using AI to go through the records to hold each individual’s patient records and deciding which ones are billable, how to extract the billable codes and then present that to the government, you know, increase the bottom line by these hospitals significantly and reduce the headcount of the number of people they needed in those, you know, rooms looking at those hospital records. So that was a great story, and we invested in that, and they had it out of the gate. They had a couple of successes with Toronto Sick Kids and the Humber River Hospital. After we invested, they went out and raised money, I think, a year later at 4-5 times the valuation that we invested in. So we were quite thrilled about that, and then they exited. So then they sold actually for slightly less than what they exited and what people invested in the second round, but they was an exit, and it was positive for us. So that’s a good story, and that was a quick turnaround. Then, we invested with DCDC. That was, it was great because DCDC, which is a US Deep tech company VC firm, invested together, so DCDC was happy that they could partner with the Canadian venture capital firm in Toronto, where this company was based. So, you know, that kind of relationship works for those for the American VCs. So that was a success story all around from the home founders to us and everything.
Common Hurdles and Challenges for Deep Tech Entrepreneurs
Ryan Davies: Perfect. Yeah, I think that’s an amazing impact, you know, in the med-tech space and just again, like real-world application and using that, like you said, the acceleration of AI was able to bring this much faster to fruition and have the shorter cycles almost right and being able to achieve goals from that standpoint. I think maybe that’s again, you know, maybe some of the unique challenges that deep tech entrepreneurs face compared to other, even tech entrepreneurs or just any start up founder that’s looking here. Even though the challenges can be a little bit unique, do you see some common hurdles that you’ve observed? You know, where maybe when someone’s pitching, you say, you know, get this figured out and come back to us or whatever it is and how founders should navigate these challenges successfully.
Colin: Yeah, I mean, I see people present their financials in a pretty broad range of ways, and it’s a pretty quick red flag when you get a projection. So, we always ask for projections. What do you think your company is going to do in the future in terms of revenues and things like that? And there’s a pretty standard way of presenting a projection. I mean, it’s like you know, there’s a balance sheet, you know, there’s a profit and loss statement, it’s like a pretty standard. And I’m surprised at the amount of times I get presented with financials that are in a form that’s not very standard. I mean, maybe something as simple as the revenue is at the bottom and the expenses are on top I don’t know. I mean, it doesn’t really matter, really, but all of us, when the revenues are when the projections aren’t expressed in a very standard way because I’m looking at these things all the time. I can immediately see I evaluate something very quickly. It’s strange, it’s sort of a red flag that they haven’t really got an accounting person helping them with their projections. It’s totally understandable, a young entrepreneur who’s a tech person, science person, whatever they don’t know about, you know, how to present the financial side, but to not go out and get help for that and get it done in a way which is palatable to a future potential investor. That’s an immediate red flag. I mean, for sure, 11, I think the biggest challenge is for us in deep tech, which is different from other investing is you get a lot of science people who are the inventors of this new technology, and they’re in universities working with professors or whatever they’re doing, or they’re in their labs, and they decide somehow that they want to commercialize this technology. So they start going on down that path, and of course, the path is you probably get some patents, maybe the patents already done, then you have to start building, you know, maybe forming a corporation and doing some financial projections, like I was just talking about and putting the company together and presenting it, and so we look at these people a lot. One of the big questions for me is this person is someone that really wants to build a company. I mean, I think there are a lot of people who are in the science world that say they want to build a company, and they want to commercialize, and they want to make some money, but when you dig deep down, you realize they’re science people at heart and when it comes time to like spending the afternoon, you know, going over the finances and keeping track of accounting or to go back into the lab and do some more tweaking and stuff like that. You know, if they want to go back into the lab because they really don’t like anything about running a business, then their heart is not really in running a business. You don’t really want to invest in those people because their heart has to be running like the, I feel sorry for a lot of scientists that end up building businesses that are successful because to be successful, you’ve actually got to spend all your time building the business, which is zero time in the lab, zero time in the stuff that you probably really love. But, you know, if you make that jump, then that’s what we’re looking for, and so oftentimes we’ll be interviewing people to make investments and, you know, if we come to the conclusion that they really just want to be in the lab, they really want to build a business. I mean, they want to build it, they want to make money, but they don’t really want to spend the effort, building the business, and once we figure that out, then it’s, you know, we don’t want to reinvest, and so that’s one thing that they should ask themselves. I mean, independent of us they should really talk to them, ask themselves whether that’s what they want to do.
Ryan Davies: I love that story, right? I wanna work for myself, but then they see the work. Well, I don’t want to do this work for myself. I just want to do the work I wanted to do for myself. So it’s tough. It’s really, like you said, completely different. You wearing a totally different hat. You’re not even the same person. You’re wearing a whole costume like a superhero, right? You’re in something totally different to not the person that you’re supposed to be doing this sort of thing. So I think, you know.
Colin: And then not in the deep tech world, you get a lot of people saying, yeah, I’m going to start this e-commerce platform to sell clothes or whatever they’re going to sell or whatever they really want. To build a business and clothes is sort of secondary, you know what I mean? So that works really well because, and you see that a lot, they want to build a business, they want to make a lot of money, and what they build is secondary. So it’s the opposite of deep tech where what they built is like the primary, and so you gotta watch out for that.
Trends and Opportunities in the Deep Tech Space
Ryan Davies: What they build should be the vessel like you’re just the background, right? What you actually need is the vessel to get rid of that product or sell that product and promote it. So that’s incredible. I absolutely love that, you know, that piece of advice and that thought process. I think as we’re coming to a close here, Colin, I’d love to, you know, maybe I know it’s tough to do the crystal ball type of stuff or things like that, but do you see any trends or anything in the deep tech space for entrepreneurs? You know, how they can better position themselves to capitalize on some emerging opportunities?
Colin: I mean, AI is doing really well. I mean, there’s a generative AI, which is for me, not so interesting. It’s more like the pure AI, you know, trying to not replace humans. The AI, there’s been a lot of trying to replace humans, which is, you know, human sort of human experts, which is not so great, but there’s lots of things that are sort of technical wet lab. You know the coders are called at Sick Kids Hospital to go over, you know, hospital records like I was talking about earlier. There are lots of niche AI things out there which can be solved. You have to be careful with regulatory. Medical AI is huge, but there’s one thing that I learned recently, which is you don’t really want to replace doctors with AI, you don’t really want to replace the experts. I mean, you kind of, you kind of do. I mean, if AI is better than humans, you do want to replace them, but from a financial point of view, you don’t want to invest in that because that’s not something the world actually wants right now. I mean, I would much prefer to find out that I had cancer because the doctor who looked at my pathology slides was wrong than to learn that the computer that looked at my pathology slides was wrong. Like I would be much more upset if I found that the computer made a mistake, and that’s why I got cancer. Whereas if a human did it happened, not being human, doctors make mistakes all the time. We’ve kind of accepted that as part of our part of the world in a way but regulatory does not like the world where a human or a computer makes a mistake on a human that we’re not ready for. So there’s been a lot of investment in that area and tertiary areas around that and other expert areas in other fields, and that’s been not so successful, but you take a little niche of AI, some little small, little thing that just takes a bunch of time, a bunch of cost structure that you can replace with AI just technicians, things like that niche AI, that’s a great industry that I think that’ll grow the fastest going forward and I think looking at my world.
Advice for Deep Tech Founders
Ryan Davies: I love it. I think we’ll go for one final, you know, maybe a deep thought here with Colin Webster, based on your experience and, you know, your time and everything you’ve seen, maybe just one if, whether it’s a strategy or a mindset, something just to give a piece of advice to founders in deep tech, to help them contribute to their success in this incredibly challenging but innovative space. You’ve already shared like 50 So that’s the hard part.
Colin: No, no, he wasn’t the founder. I think patience and continuous effort like it takes. There’s an expression that you’re always surprised at how little has happened in a year, but you can’t believe how much has happened in five years. So there’s sort of an expression where, you know, a year goes by, and you feel like nothing’s happened like you’re still grinding away, and you still get the same problems, and like one year is just like nothing’s happened and then, but then five years goes by, and you realize, you know, the complete the world is completely gone upside down. Like, so you just have to have patience and, and you have to be persistent and, and stick with, you know, what you’re working on and, you know, and focus, you know, that’s another thing I see it, but I saw a company yesterday and, you know, it’s an advanced material company. They started the pitch with pretty good focus. Like they’ve got the material they want to put it’s going to be great, and then halfway through, they said, oh, but if it doesn’t work, we can do it, we can put it in this material, or we can start from the raw material and sell that and all of a sudden they’re losing focus very quickly, which is telling me, you know, they’ve got this material, and they just don’t know what to do with it yet. And so, you know, it’s good to have a market and a customer and a lot of passion around that particular thing. In fact, really, in one of my companies, we were doing online auctions, and we had all these different types of online options going on. We had to pair them all back one day to focus because trying to be too broad at one point can be detrimental to the company. I mean, it can be good when you’re really starting because you don’t really know what’s going to grab, and you’re still trying to find out what’s going to grab. But at a certain point, once you’ve got some traction, some revenue coming in in a certain area, then you got to really evaluate and sort of cut some of your revenue streams, which is always a difficult thing in order to keep the focus going.
Ryan Davies: I think it’s a perfect place to kind of wrap it up, and I want to thank you, you know, Colin Webster, thanks for this incredibly amazing podcast. And for your time today, I think there was just so much here for for people to take away and to learn from. So, thank you very much for sharing with you our audience, and I’m hoping we’re going to be able to have you back again because I think, you know, just even talking about delving into that MedTech space or any other space, there’s so much here we could still uncover and talk about but thank you. Thank you very much for your time. I know you’re traveling, and I just appreciate it so much. You take time out for us today.
Colin: No, it’s great talking to you. Thanks a lot. Excellent. Well, I want to thank again, thank you, Colin Webster for this amazing podcast today, Venturing Deep Colin Webster’s approach to Deep Tech Investments.
Ryan Davies: I think there was just so much to take away from it, and I know our listeners are going to be able to take so much here and get in contact with you to be able to do that call, and how, how could they do that? Oh, just go to calling at risc.capital. I go to the website, put in some information we’ll get to you there. It is so nice and simple. Be able to reach out and get some more again, whether it’s advice or whether it’s, you know, again, you want something to, to pitch whatever it is. Collins here. He’s obviously incredibly well-versed in the guy that we want to lean on for that.
Colin: So thank you for help. Happy to help anytime.
Ryan Davies: Wonderful. I love it. We always love connecting people here with people like you that can really help them accelerate their business and their goals. So, thank you, Colin. I also want to thank our listeners. We can’t do what we do without you. So, until we meet again with another amazing TBR episode, I’m your host, Ryan Davies. Thanks, everybody. Take care. Thanks.