Funding Deeptech and Decentralized Science (Panel) - Tokyo 2024

funding the Deep Tech and decentralized panel uh I'm sorry decentralized science panel and uh this will have Rio kawaguchi of Anri uh Gus DL of boo VC and estano panila of atheno thank you very [Applause] much right yeah thank you very much everybody's I me so uh the the I'm uh hero um the moderator of this panel sorry like maybe I'm repeating the sessions but uh please let me introduce the each panelist and we can start a little bit um yeah I can pass also too um so from the front um Lio is like from vure capes from Andi um and uh she leades investment in research dorin deep Tech startups um as a senior associate and also we have a Stefanos from atina D science Ked so he is aost apostal researchers specializing cardiovascular pharmacology at o University and Denmark and Baker had diabet Institute in australas and uh lastly we have a gas domos gas is a a principal at uh boost BC uh California based deep Tech VC fund uh so he has be active also in a uh funding and uh decentralized science community so we all have it let's welcome again uh all the panelists [Applause] so yeah before actually we move to the what what you know the the what this uh decentral science how they think that this is opportunity I want each of you introduce by yourself with yours so yeah Leo please please start okay um can you hear me great okay hi I'm rho um I work at a venture capital Fund in Japan um it's Tokyo base um we focus on seed stage and we um not only invest in deep deck but we also invest in internet companies and we have like 280 portfolio companies and we have been doing this for 12 years and my main um interest is is in deep Tech like robotics AI um anything deep um related to science and um currently I'm really interested in femtech so I'm really happy to talk with you aell so nice to meet you thank you thank you so yeah PR Stefano yeah my name is Stefano Pia I am a postdoctoral researcher at orus University and the baker heart and Diabetes Institute in Australia um and yeah I joined the thod uh as a co uh lead in the science working group in Athena da what we do is we are we are a DA so a decentralized community worldwide and what we do is uh in we fund a early stage uh health research in women's health uh uh I'm by my background I'm particularly interested in drug development but we also fund uh deep Tech we we are having now uh uh yeah our run concerning like reproductive Technologies wearables so we we go a little bit Broad in women's health and uh yeah we are in the in the DI ecosystem in particularly using the molec molecule protocol and yeah happy to to share with you my experience thank you very much yeah PR gas hey everybody I'm Gus uh can you hear me okay great uh yeah quickly on my background uh I'm from a very scientific and Technical background originally uh so I did my PhD at Harvard and my postto at Stanford in a handful of different deep Technologies uh it ended up directing product I was a chief scientist for a healthtech startup for some time before switching over uh to the investor side I'm a principal at Boost VC we are a deep Tech fund based in California and we love to be the first investor uh first check for for people starting deep tech companies and so we do everything from bio and health to space Tech materials climate energy VR crypto we do we do the whole deep Tech spectrum and we've done quite a bit of D stuff as well so we've uh backed some really great uh D companies including like research Hub molecule cerebrum Dow hair Dow and a couple others as well um so really love the ecosystem thank you very much so yeah we all have uh the introductions from the speakers uh please let me start was the uh you know that how uh those panelists see the this opportunities of this side so and because of we have also uh the uh uh investors from the deep Tech so we have somehow like a shared um point of view but D somehow is quite different so uh G would you explain that how did you find dii and like is it like a through the crypto or blockchains or you just found the D side how how did you find dii from as a investors yeah uh great question so I'll first just answer on me personally and then on as a fund uh so as I mentioned I'm from a a scientific background originally and so I was always really interested in how you translate science to meaningful outcomes and uh that's part of the reason I became an investor is because I was interested in a lot of different scientific communities and uh that's what got me like I said switching over to the Venture Capital side and when when I learned about DSi and when we learned about it as a fund we realized there was a really great opportunity uh to kind of rethink How We Do Science in a way that can really benefit the world and so you know we we all talk about in D A lot of the really important things like you know realigning incentives more properly for the scientists and the people who discover you know really important things um and yeah and generally we that's how we got interested at Boost VC we've been doing a lot of crypto for a long time so we were uh early backers in companies like ether scan Unstoppable domains coinbase and stuff like that and so we had always been interested in crypto but we also separately were very interested in in in deep Tech as well and and dii was a really incredible way to combine those two uh in a way that makes science more transparent and and uh aligns incentives better yeah thank you very much that that part is I want I want to come back again like your points because uh seemingly for me at least maybe from also default that deep take and D side somehow is quite like uh kind of neighbor but we also see like this lot of differences I know it's crypto cultures and we don't know what you know differences and I also want to um ask Stefano as a scientist how you see this you know aena D lecture that you know this side Grand gr Dow and how you get into uh this crypto space yeah would you explain the your experience yeah I'm I'm very far from anog in crypto I was not I knew about it but I was not particularly interested in it uh before sign because Financial stuff is not my strong point I'm not particularly interested I'm more like a science person and when I heard about like I think I heard first about bead da that was the first da in the molecule ecosystem and my research has to do with longevity so I started like uh getting involved with them and is when I learned about okay what does this technology can do for Science and to advance to translate scientific knowledge into uh new drugs new treatments for people and I think for a scientist it's actually been kind of comfortable to switch to this I think it's like the ethos of open science and this type of hacker culture actually fits quite well with most researchers it doesn't fit well with like the structure academic um yeah establishment but in general individual researchers are not very comfortable in that super structure I would say so it it was very very interesting to see the different solutions both not only to funding that is what we do at Athen we focus in a very neglected area of research at is Women's Health uh but there are also a lot of other problems that daa is trying to solve for like publication with research have and and other areas of funding and I think that that is uh something that scientists welcome very much when you talk to them and approach them as aou hey we are doing this they they really really want to participate and want to contribute with their time scientists are very used to work for free so they always are like yeah yes sure we want to review we want to uh participate with you because we think is very much needed to to bring this uh new new community and and different way of doing things into into science so yeah thanks when when did you actually find that this uh beat out longevity supporting you know D I think it was 2021 2021 so it it was basically when when the entire molecule ecos system was starting with v i got involved just before they they did that initial auction so a little bit from the beginning of of uh of the protocol yeah okay thank you yeah that's the timing actually the the this uh entire um molecule ecosystem that they provide um intellectual property NFD like soal IP NFD uh we actually uh can buy those NFD uh sorry we uh sorry Dow F the researchers research labs and instead of that they will get the IP NFD and Community own just ipfd right so this the how uh this Dow actually fund uh the research and uh Dow Community actually sell this NFD to the pharmaceutical company that is like kind of model the the framework they um they do is is it the same timing when V spec invested start investing in the size is it 2021 or yeah it was around right around 2021 that I think we started I think our first dite check would have been right around that time or shortly after yeah yeah thanks actually we also have a uh the speakers from uh resarch chub I'm also curious about so you guys also supporting uh uh research H is that kind a similar timing or a little bit uh the different timing uh yeah it was a little bit after that but uh it was part of that first uh round they had raised yeah and I'll let Patrick talk about uh research up I won't steal his Thunder but yeah yeah I see so yeah also the so let me like uh come back um to the the point actually the differences between like a deep Tech and this side because um so you guys uh boost BC uh already started investing bating uh investigating um and investing um uh crypto space like uh coinbase and is scan this kind of stuff is is that the kind of uh the kind of opportun for you guys to you know like kind of seamless uh connection with a d side or how how do you see the differences and a similarity between like usual conventional deep Tech and this thisi do you see there any differences uh yeah good question so uh I guess two-part answer uh first is at Boost VC like we the way we tend to think about things is we like to really Empower people and so like crypto was a way of empowering everyone financially and we've backed a lot of other uh different industries that Empower people in different ways uh and and what's cool about dii is that it's empowering scientists uh and and researchers and and all folks like that to uh more properly benefit from the work they do and for them to work outside of the traditional systems that uh are incredible in some ways but handcuff you and and hold you back in many ways too and so uh in that regard like that's why you know we get excited about those things and on on on the Deep Tech front like the way we Define deep Tech is a little more broad than maybe other people do but it's anyone who's really using like some sort of strong Innovation to solve some of the world's hardest problems uh and what's really cool about dii is it's very tangential in that in dii uh you know it's a system to empower people to solve the hardest problems outside of traditional kind of funding and and other you know scientific work and so they're in some ways they're extremely overlapped uh and in most ways I would say even they're extremely overlapped yeah yeah I see this is like uh For Me Maybe from the maybe Japanese perspective it's very um very huge disc at the same time so we don't know what's coming out of it and so maybe like I don't know how how do you see know their investment Styles and uh because it's seemingly like it's the way know we don't know like what's coming out of it uh from the this uh uh investment uh investing dii yeah actually um to be honest in Japan dii is not like um a common knowledge right yeah it's not it's a tot that's just me saying you know this is something exciting so it's just I'm I'm a kind of mediators like a g and stos with um in deep de um investment field in Japan um we didn't we don't hear the DCI word actually but we know the word da because of um several years ago the web 3 movement came to Japan too and we yeah understand the um word but we don't understand the like dii d d thing and I'm curious um um can I ask you one thing um how do you evaluate the um how the Dow earns money like compared to like deep Tech startups and thei like yeah it's a good question uh and it's one that we I think everyone uh who is investing into Dows as like a venture capitalist has struggled with is understanding how how like the Dows scale in a venture manner uh and that's something we've we've been really talking about and thinking about internally because the the reality is and when you're investing in a dow you're really investing into a fund you're kind of a fund of a fund in some ways and it's interesting because you know in any startup the most important thing uh at the especially at the earliest stages are the people that are part of it the project and so with even with Dows even though it's decentralizing uh decentralizing this the the ecosystem that they're building the people are still so important those early people because they're the ones who are going to Galvanize the community and stuff and so we still try to focus on like who are the people that are really important to the The Da and how are they galvanizing the community around them uh and that's how we think about it but the reality is it's different especially because there's also certain restrictions around holding like if you're a venture capitalist holding so many tokens you only can hold so much unless you're an RA uh but yeah the long story short is something we're thinking a lot about is how does that uh how to Dallas like scale in a very Venture Way I see thank you so much um I want to ask you hero too um is there like restrictions in Japan to if you want to start a this um this side out like yeah yeah so that's a good point um the kind of difficulties in Japan's about um about dii is I think there um two two perspectives one is that most of the scientists don't know much about you know that's how this um U Brock chain systems works and like not so many people know about this know crypto Trend itself uh it's kind of hard to catch their attention that that is one one really big uh difficulties and another point would be about the token uh um launch is very uh difficult in Japan so we you have uh have a token launch then immediately your amount of the uh money in a dow will be taxed so you have to pay immediately even though you just have our uh tokens and uh sry monies but you want to use it for your own uh business but uh at the very beginning you have to pay for the taxes with this U amount of money you get from the community that that is a huge difficulty so I want to uh slightly um sift the scope of D side so I want to expand that's why actually I'm also having this event fing the commment together um since uh science is also um kind of um public goods right and decentralized science is like I think a way way to um have our new findings uh with decentralized community so not necessarily we should utilize um blockchains or this token incentives but it's it's much I think efficient we have it uh in the end but um uh so in that way maybe we can slightly um tune the definition of dii and maybe adapt uh to uh Japanese ecosystem that's actually I intended to do and this is a kind of difficult part in some sense um that's why like I wanted to have the G and Stefano the actual experience you guys had uh pre um last couple of years uh so that that is the kind of things actually I'm doing so for now for uh um as a for a Japanese scientist who wants to like be in a d side you have to um search for the foreign foreign D yeah yes AB yeah but and estano said yeah we were talking and said that um a lot of scientists from abroad like from all over the world um is gathering in your D right H how do you like um how did they find your aadal that's basically the work we've been doing for the first two years so the first the first years of the Dow is basically building our Rel relationship with the different research communities uh we are trying to uh to fund in our case Women's Health we have a lot of uh normally the people that join at out at the beginning are PhD students uh people a little bit more Junior but they have a lot of uh Network they know people in the field so through them and through oneon-one we build those relationships we talk to them we see what they need because is also what we're interested in funding okay where uh I'm going to talk uh later about a c more deeply and and how we process is but before we um do a call for applications we basically do research in what is needed um and we find the bottlenecks what are on okay what what are the needs of the scientist working in in this field uh so it's it's basically oneon-one uh we just go and and look for them attend conferences and most members of the Dow in the science and working group are also scientists in the field so they attend conferences because of their work H they have their own uh networks so that's that's more or less how we work and commenting on on what uh G said before I think the value of a dow is not that much of a fund uh because again we don't have that much big Pockets we work more like a crowdfunding type of organization I think it's more valuable as a uh we are trying to think about ourselves as a incubator of of new projects and startups so we connect scientists with uh entrepreneurs people in crypto that want to start things in women's health in our case h and that's where we see the main value connecting scientists with a huge community of people because scientists most of the time they want to do science and that that's what they want to do and what to focus on okay I have this idea I think it it's going to have an impact in women's health but I don't know how to start a company I don't know how to you know take a project from my lab bench that has very promising data into uh the patients and that's where we come in we provide some initial funding um and we incubate and connect the researcher to uh to other people to bring the project forward or even like go uh spin out something with the scientists we have a couple of projects in that direction yeah I have a question related to that actually um so you so Dow is kind of global you know communities and at the same time we have a lot of um local restriction like a legal system for example I was curious about as when you you know contact with some people in a different countries each countries and also each university has a distri how how do you convince that how how did you get involved because uh you know you can't just give a token to the university right how how does this work I'm curious about it that's an excellent question and it's precisely one of my main roles in the right now is is doing that with universities because I have some experience with tech transfer offices that are the part of the University that deals with Spinning Out projects or uh yeah handling the intellectual property rights that the university produces and it's actually surprisingly simple because even though uh there are a lot of like local regulations what we do with universities is kind of a very standard procedure almost all universities have what is called like sponsor research agreement that is a way for private companies or private institutions to fund research in exchange for something normally IP or sometimes you know like okay I'm going to fund for you to produce like a paper for us or like a report for us in our case what we do is funding them in exchange for uh rights to the Future IP that the project generates even like it can be ownership or uh just licensing uh so most universities all over the world have like a structure already and we just do it like tailor it to what they normally have we have of course our uh our uh templates but but we adapt to to this format that most universities have all around the world yeah oh wow that that's very great to know because um um so once actually I contacted some of the people in Japan so it's they say like H it's very hard for us to do it in Japan maybe local yeah yeah what what we try to do is like the universities don't have to interact directly with with uh crypto or with web 3 because we don't think like we use web three as a tool uh to fund science and to advance science we don't want the tool to be the center and most universities uh in some countries they are even like I'm I'm originally from Spain and we have found a couple of Spanish projects and most universities in Spain are part of the government and the government doesn't want to touch a wallet like they don't want to get mix so we make sure that we are the intermediary and they receive cash they can do everything normally and we just uh are kind of like the pH between web 3 and uh the university um of course we offer the possibility of the some some researchers want to get involved in web 3 and no yeah I want to hold tokens I want to vote I want to participate in the community and some others are like you know you you hold the tokens for me I will I will advise you uh how to vote but I don't want to hold them myself or I'm not that interested I just yeah and they receive a regular cash so that makes everything possible basically if not it would be very difficult it's very cool you guys have any questions to the other panelist um if not then I can I want to ask G uh so you you see the mper prayers in a in a daa ecosystem uh do can you share the your perspective on like um uh you know the kind of experiences like of thisi and what the difficulties and like uh uh something you learn from this side like maybe like this would work some aspect some aspect didn't work yeah uh it's a good question uh so you know we've been doing this for a couple years and I think with any new movement uh there's always a period where the movement is trying to figure out what it is and and you're and the right people are being onboarded on to it and what I mean by that is like uh early dii it's still very early like dii relative to everything else we pretty much invest in in most deep Tech investors invest in D is still very like it's in infancy stages and the the I think the big challenge for dii Is uh you know scientists are really brilliant and great you know I'm a former scientist myself but Translating that to tangible products and outcomes can sometimes be uh a headache and and it's easy for I think scientists to lose sight of that and I think in dii I think the kind of the the really important next piece for Dai is going to be okay you know there's these really great dials spinning up there's some other really great companies that are spinning up but you know what tangible Pro like products and what tangible problems are we solving for scientists and not losing sight of that um because I think it's easy to lose sight of that uh specifically within this uh this community and I say that as someone who is a scientist originally uh and so I think like that's kind of like the where the I guess kind of hurdles seem to be right now and I think also just the reality is science is a uh it's a a field that has a lot of traditions and it's stuck in certain ways and I think onboarding those classical institutions onto these kind of new waves of doing things is interesting but I think why dii will you know regardless of that you know do something really special and why we're really excited about it is because it gives people and scientists a different ecosystem to work with and to do their work and so in terms like you asked about the prospects for DSI I think in the next couple years you know we've seen a lot of funding starting to go uh via these Dows into great projects and uh and that's really exciting and so I think if we can continue to you know excite scientists to work outside of the traditional ecosystems and and you know institutions that they work in I think some great things will happen it'll just take some time yeah thank you very much I want to have kind of uh detailed questions because uh usually like uh investment timing is 10 years is that same in uh with the BC and also D side system because you say that maybe we have very long long uh um you know like uh Le so um is that is that do you have to also convince the um the your LP like additionally or like how how do you manage that that is the want to see yeah no it's a great question and it's a it's a broader question too about deep Tech not just for daa I think uh especially at the earliest stages so we invest you know first check into a company and anything deep Tech and D included as kind of a piece of that it just takes a long time to build and and so we know at the stage we're investing which is so early to when that company you know might have an exit for example uh it can be 10 15 years and so you're very right about that and for us like dii is no different for that like dii is still going to be uh it's still going to be just like the rest of deep Tech where it's going to take a lot of time for these things to be realized and at Boost VC we're totally okay with that and the the you asked about the LPS so for those who don't know LPS are they're limited partners they're the people who give us the capital to invest essentially and you know when they give us a capital it's tied up you know with the fund for 10 to 15 years and so it's about finding people who resonate with that mission and aren't just looking for a quick exit uh and so finding people that align with our values uh is really important because these things take a long long time and D is is no different than that for sure but the impact is obviously immense when it does land excellent that's uh what I wanted to okay we are landing out of time but do you have anything you want to add or if not then we can just uh you know have a words you guys who was like about like know like what to expect the next couple of years um actually I wanted to comment one thing um what guess it um yeah the um the LPS um how the lp thinks is like really um like crucial for our species so we actually um raised a fund called Green fund it's a c climatic Focus fund and um the differences is that it is like 15 years um limit fund so um average Venture Capital fund is 10 years but it's longer and so the LPS um understand that like climate Tech um startups takes long long time so it's important for yeah like I I don't think this is this SW is appropriate but like educate the LPS to like understand the the um side es and the startups thank you very much maybe a few words from the stanos and gas and we will finish yeah I I just wanted to build a little bit in what G said because I think it's one of the main challenges of of uh bodow right now that is it's good to know that VCS are looking in the like long term and like 10 years in the future and that's one of the problems with crypto investors that is where a lot of our money comes from that is that that that world is used to much quicker return on investment and and to be in this interface between like the very fast-paced uh world of crypto where you just like buy and sell and very very quick and you expect a quick return with uh science especially drug development where yeah in 10 years you're luck if you have like if you're starting to go into humans that that's a quick project actually so so keep them keep the community and and the retail investors interested in in science for uh such a long period I think is one of the challenges that we're working on and we need to to learn uh how to manage because yeah it's I I think it's one of the things in the future that can either make or break the the the field of bodow yeah thank you very much so just yeah yeah and just one closing word I guess uh yeah at boc like I said we're super interested in dite because we know uh it can really impact the world in an immense way you know if people can figure out how to realign incentives and do all these incredible things we talk about in d uh and so like cheers to everyone who's building in this space and and is trying to you know do something special and boo VC like I said we're always looking to to invest in great people and great companies so if anyone is building anything exciting in dii or just deep Tech never hesitate to reach out and find me or re reach out to me on LinkedIn or whatever for sure yeah thank you very much uh so let's close this panel thank you much for this PL