Science equity? What is that?

I attended last week, to Transfiere, a super interesting event held in the beautiful city of Málaga, Andalucia Province.

As stated in it´s name, Transfiere is all about the transference of Deep Tech and Hard Science projects to companies and finally society. So under one roof, you could meet, researchers, leaders of the most prestigious labs, researchers working in Universities and Tech Centers, all across Spain; VC, Public institutions and of course, our company TRL+.

It was the place to be if you wanted to connect with all the players in this wonderful science system.

I was lucky enough to watch a presentation about the role of VC, in the success of Hard Science and Deep Tech projects.

Almudena Trigo, from BeAble Capital (a VC firm specialized in Tech Transfer, Deep Tech & Hard Science early stage investment), shared with the audience the concept that automatically caught my eye, Science Equity.

Let´s start with her definition, “It´s a new asset class, comprising funds looking to obtain profitability… Investing in very early stages… In Deep Tech & Hard Science projects”

In easy words, is the money, that smart enough, Angels or Specialized VC´s (Like BeAble), invest in projects, that would find very difficult to finance (raise money), for their amazing inventions, under the traditional unit economics, professional investors in the Startup world look at.

There are key factors to know the winners in this interesting scenario:

1. The researchers (as well as in the regular startups), have the leading role in achieving against all odds and many complicated circumstances, the final product/service, in order to reach Market Fit
2. Patience, because unlike traditional startups, DT & HS projects, can take in some cases (especially in Health tech), up to 20 years to be market-ready
3. Hands-on support, because most of the researchers know little to none, about the business world, so to walk along that way with them, finding, training and supervising (like we do in TRL+), the business experienced C-level executives, is a life or death situation for many projects
4. Contacts and introductions. Many of the projects won’t succeed unless they are able to reach key people at companies, that can become early adopters and costumers at the end.

Luckily, thanks to people like Almudena and BeAble Capital, whom are helping to spread the word of the important of Science Equity, to increase GDP and make the life better for companies and the society, makes our journey at TRL+ have the certainty to succeed.