The Big — But Fixable! — Problems in America’s R&D Ecosystem

At this point, when you hear “venture capitalist,” you probably think of … software. Or artificial intelligence. Or cryptocurrency.

The Engine Ventures, which spun out of MIT a few years ago, is different. It tries to fund what it calls “tough tech,” a somewhat nebulous category that includes companies working in energy, decarbonization, health, and infrastructure. As such, it’s backed some of the most interesting “climate tech” companies in business today, such as Form Energy, Commonwealth Fusion.

On this episode of Shift Key, Rob chats with Katie Rae, the CEO and managing partner of Engine Ventures. They chat about what’s missing from America’s innovation ecosystem, how close fusion is to succeeding, and whether AI is a bubble (whatever that might mean).

One more note: Early in our conversation, Katie says that Commonwealth Fusion has built “more than 300” tokamak reactors. That was, unfortunately, an overestimate. It has actually built closer to more than 150 reactors. Her team contacted us after her appearance to correct the record.

Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap News.

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Here is an excerpt from their conversation:

Robinson Meyer: So this category of technologies, you guys call it tough tech. Sometimes you hear deep tech. What is different about investing in it from, let’s say, the classic VC playbook? And how is the engine ventures like built for that? What do you even kind of consider under tough tech, let’s say?

Katie Rae: Yeah, such a great question. First of all, this is the original form of venture capital, right? Which is that you are investing into things that have substantial intellectual property that took probably a long time to develop in academic or national labs and that are true breakthroughs. So a substantial leap forward in how we know things to work, which then can develop entire industries. Right. This is a very pure sense of venture capital. Over the years, you, in the generation you come from, think of it as software investing, where there’s very little technical risk and it’s all market risk.

So what tough tech is, is that you are taking on, I wouldn’t say in general scientific risk, but you are taking on the engineering risk of building something of physical instantiation. And that kind of risk is very different than software marketing risk. But it doesn’t mean it’s different forms of venture capital. One is taking the risk that a thousand other startups could do exactly the same thing and you’re going to be the one to break through and win. And the kind of venture capital in tough tech is that you really do understand the engineering and how to scale it up and how to get it to market and partner. But it is that engineering risk phase that we’ll call tough tech.

And that is more capital intensive in the beginning because it’s physical. But maybe not more capital intensive over time, but they’re just different forms of venture risk. One is you’re competing with a thousand people. And the other is there are probably one or two teams in the world with the knowledge base and ability to build this thing. And so your likelihood to win if you can gather the capital and the people and the expertise is actually pretty high, but very few people could make that happen. So that’s why a place like MIT, where you have this incredible group of humans who know how to collaborate globally on the cutting edge, is an incredible place to start something like the Engine Ventures, where you have a higher likelihood of being able to form these teams and get them out to market, and therefore a higher likelihood to win.

You can find a full transcript of the episode here.

Mentioned:

From Heatmap: Commonwealth Fusion Systems Wins Over New Class of Investors With $1 Billion Raise

Previously on Shift Key: Why John Arnold Is ‘Very Optimistic’ Permitting Reform Will Pass This Year

This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by ...

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Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.