-
5 Sep 2023
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Hear from Australian tech investors reinventing how researchers become entrepreneurs
Join us to hear from Alezeia Brown (Main Sequence Ventures) and Clare Birch (Blackbird Ventures) about two exciting new ways for researchers in deep tech to become entrepreneurs and commercialise their research.
Main Sequence Ventures have pioneered Venture Science – a repeatable way to grow the next generation of impactful companies with science at the core. Venture Science combines the mindset and tactics of venturing with the problem-solving depth of science to make giant leaps of progress.
Foundry is Blackbird’s flagship deep/bio-tech founder product. Blackbird says that research-led companies will cornerstone the solutions to humanity’s greatest problems. Foundry is their invitation to PhD students, EMCRs, and established researchers to imagine a better future and learn how to build it.
We will leave plenty of time for questions and discussion.
Presented in cooperation with the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems (EQUS).
Alezeia Brown is a senior associate at Main Sequence
Alezeia Brown is a senior associate at Main Sequence helping startups, researchers and entrepreneurs in the ecosystem build product strategies to deliver products that solve customer problems, delight users and drive profitable growth. Alezeia works across all six challenge areas with an emerging focus in “Decarbonise the Planet” challenge, and sits as a board observer for various deep tech companies such as Endua, Advanced Navigation and FiveCast, and is a member of Greenpeace Australian Pacific General Assembly.
Previously, as Head of Product at CSIRO’s Data61, she led a team of product managers partnering with science and engineering teams to translate applied research into products and early stage companies. Prior to CSIRO, Alezeia had 15 years of experience in scaling international companies.
Alezeia is passionate about supporting founders, and mentors at a number of incubators and accelerators including INCUBATE Start Up program, ON and D.Start. Apart from bringing deep operational experience, Alezeia also helps companies create beautifully diverse and inclusive workplaces through her experience as a Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging champion. Alezeia holds a Bachelor degree in Information Systems from Queensland University of Technology and is a lifelong learner.
Clare Birch is an Investment Associate and Scientist in Residence at Blackbird
Clare Birch is an Investment Associate and Scientist in Residence at Blackbird.
Some of the things Clare does at work:
- Finds (and is often found by) scientists and engineers looking to build very ambitious things, and help them out or connect them on to someone who can
- Supports investments end-to-end with Principals and Partners for wildheart founders with rare ideas
- Works with existing portfolio founders (“who are just…wow”)
- Runs technical due diligence end-to-end on early + later stage frontier tech investments.
Clare works with a small group of early-stage founders, running the gauntlet on a couple of deals, and thinking about how to be the best frontier tech investor in the world. For many early-stage frontier tech companies, technical (and technical operational) advantage is the line of sight to business advantage. Clare brings that lens to Blackbird’s investments.
Clare has worked on investments and portfolio management across quantum computing (PsiQuantum), medical devices (Vexev, interventional surgical robotics), nuclear fusion, synthetic biology, space tech (Gilmour), hardcore photonics (Baraja), next-gen media (Soul Æther), and gaming.