Deep Tech Executive Recruitment for Pioneering Leaders

The chairs we appoint are outstanding business leaders who have been successful entrepreneurs or senior executives with experience of travelling the Lab to Market journey.  While their backgrounds are diverse, they do share common qualities, including servant leadership, an appreciation for innovation, real world wisdom, and the desire to win, while also being a coach for the next generation of Deep Tech leaders.

We often recruit Chief Executives that succeed founder CEOs, generally during the Scaling Phase (TRL 5/6/7) of the Lab to Market journey.  Technical by early background, they possess the commercial, strategy and leadership skills to guide the development and commercialisation of world-class solutions.  Perhaps their most important skill, however, is team building, ensuring the onboarding of the right qualities, skills and experience at the right time.

We get asked to recruit Finance Leaders with certain skills.  Fundraising tops the list, including managing the process, identifying prospective investors and/or advisors, building the data room and presentations, etc. Supporting commercial strategy, particularly business modelling, pricing exploration, etc. is also important.  Finally, the roll out of sound financial systems, reporting and procedures rounds out the list.

We recruit Deep Tech Technology Leaders capable of professionalising and industrialising technology development programmes. The kind who can move a programme through the Scaling and Commercialisation phase of the Lab to Market journey. They define technology roadmaps, and understand the balance required between innovation and existing application development. And they appreciate the culture required to do truly outstanding work.

We recruit 2 types of Commercial leaders for Deep Tech companies.  The first gets recruited early (TRL 4/5), when the company is looking for validation and intelligence from prospective partners.  The second type gets recruited once early customer traction has been achieved (typically TRL 7/8). In both cases, the focus of these leaders is to refine value propositions, build out commercial models, target markets, lead engagements, and importantly, define and close early deals.

Going from the bench to a demonstrator unit, and beyond, relies on these critical early-stage engineering leaders tasked with scaling. Often recruited early on (TRL 4), Scaleup & Engineering Leaders are some of the most highly sought-after executives that we recruit, regardless of domain.  They appreciate design, prototyping and setting the foundation for early pilot units. Their contribution prepares the true technology pathway from Lab to Market scale offering.

Operations leaders play a significant role in transforming companies from plucky startups to world-class organisations capable of delivering solutions at scale, with all of the performance, quality, regulatory, safety and price points expected by key customers and partners in their value chain. Generally grounded in engineering and manufacturing, these crucial leaders tend to be recruited at TRL 6/7 with the remit to globally scaleup operations.

The heart and soul of any science and engineering company is its solution, its product.  From our experience, the earlier Product or Application Leaders can be recruited into a Deep Tech business, the more likely the business will be to develop a solution that achieves true product-market fit. Deep Tech Leaders has typically recruited product leaders during the Scaling and Commercialisation phases of the Lab to Market journey.