The story you tell about your technology is the frame through which everyone else decides what it is worth. Most early deep-tech founders describe their invention. Investors buy a thesis about a market. I work with you to reframe the technology as the answer to a problem the market already knows it has, and challenge every default assumption: who this is really for, what it displaces, and why now.

I will push you to defend every claim until the pitch stands up under pressure — not because the words matter, but because clarifying the story almost always reshapes the company.

• The one-sentence description you can give a stranger on a train.
• The two or three sectors that actually matter — and the ones you stop chasing.
• The wedge that gets you a first credible industrial reference.

Deep-tech founders usually misread their own market. The big market-size slide is easy. The hard part is picking a starting point narrow enough to win in, with customers willing to vouch for you, in an order that eventually convinces the kind of large buyer you ultimately need.

This stage works through three questions. Where exactly do you start — which small group of customers can you realistically win first? Who are the first ten conversations, in what order, and why? And which “target customers” are just logos for a slide rather than a real route to revenue? The rule is simple: deciding what not to do is what speeds you up.

• The one or two sectors you commit to first, and the sequence behind them.
• The role RTOs, lighthouse customers and OEMs each play in unlocking the next.
• How to read early signals — and how not to over-read them.

Scientific founders almost always price too low. They price off cost. Investors care about something different: whether the business has strong margins and can grow revenue from each customer over time. This stage breaks pricing into three questions. What is the customer actually paying for? How should the revenue model change as the product matures? How much pricing power does the technology actually give you?

The rule is simple: price for the value you deliver, not what it costs to deliver — then test that price with real buyers before you commit to it. Where the technology supports it, we also explore the path to recurring, predictable, “sticky” revenue.

• The phases of growth: validation → industrial entry → scaled adoption.
• Value-based pricing versus cost-plus — and where you have real pricing power.
• The long-term pathway into recurring revenues.

A good financial model is not simply a spreadsheet; it is the operational narrative of the business expressed in numbers. It allows you to understand the economics of your business and the levers and trade-offs that need to be tuned for success. If you cannot explain it in three minutes, it is not finished.

I help you build, or rebuild, a model an institutional investor will actually find useful. We work through scenarios, milestones, hiring plans and cash runway together, and I will push back hard on anything optimistic enough to embarrass you later. The goal is a case you can defend in a room full of people trying to break it, and use to run the company the day after the round closes.

• Base, upside and downside scenarios that investors will actually believe.
• Cost structure, hiring plan and runway linked to the milestones that matter.
• A staged funding plan through seed, Series A and on to break-even.

This is where most founders feel least equipped — and where the wrong decision quietly costs a company years. Cap tables, institutional IP licences, founder equity, option pools and governance all interact, and the institution's interests are not always the founders', even when everyone is well-intentioned.

My job here is to be your experienced counterparty: to translate what the TTO is proposing, tell you which terms actually matter in three years' time, and help you negotiate without burning the relationship. I will tell you when a term is market, when it is unusual, and when it is worth falling on your sword for.

• A cap table that balances founders, institution and incoming investors.
• An IP licensing model aligned to long-term commercial impact.
• Governance that protects the company without hamstringing future rounds.

Investors back teams as much as technology, and a strong team is rarely accidental. Most spin-outs begin with a brilliant principal investigator and a co-founder or two; what is needed by Series A looks very different — commercial, technical, operational and financial leadership working in concert.

Some of that work is structural — roles, skills matrices, governance. Most of it is judgment: knowing when to bring someone in, when to grow into the role yourself, and how to stop a single weak link defining how the whole team is perceived.

• The leadership team you need at seed, and the one you need by Series A.
• A skills matrix and hiring sequence aligned to capital and milestones.
• Building investor confidence in the team you have, and the team you are growing into.

By the time you open the raise, the preparation you have done will decide whether it takes three months or nine. Most of the pain I see in first rounds comes from opening conversations before the materials, the data room and the rehearsal are ready. We build the stack together: the deck you will actually pitch from, the narrative behind it, the data room, the supporting model, and the answers to the twenty questions every investor will ask.

I will role-play investor meetings with you until the weak points are fixed rather than hidden. Preparation is the single biggest lever you have on round outcome.

• The deck, the narrative and the Q&A you will be hammered on.
• A data room that answers questions before they are asked.
• Investor targeting — deep-tech, strategic and industrial capital.

Running a raise is a different job from preparing one. It is part sales campaign, part stakeholder management, part stamina. Founders who try to run it alone almost always lose momentum at the point momentum matters most. I run alongside you through the live round: warm introductions from my network, prep before each meeting, a debrief after.

When term sheets arrive we work through them line by line — economics, governance, what is negotiable and what is not. I help you manage the consortium, the legals and the professional-services engagement so that you can still run the business that has to be run.

• Investor introductions, meeting prep and the sequencing that builds momentum.
• Term sheet and consortium negotiation — economics, control, protective provisions.
• Closing mechanics through to funds in the bank and the first board meeting.