In this episode of Lab-to-Market Leadership, Chris sits down with Matt Bedingfield, CEO of Mint Innovation, to explore what happens when deep tech moves beyond the laboratory and starts confronting the realities of industrial scale.

After spending much of his career in senior roles across metals, recycling, finance, commercial strategy, and large-scale industrial development, Matt made the move into a deep tech startup focused on recovering critical minerals from electronic waste. He shares why that transition made sense for him, what founders should look for when bringing experienced corporate executives into a startup, and why the right leadership profile depends heavily on a company’s stage of development.

Matt argues that the journey from lab to market often misses one critical middle stage: industrialization. A technology may be novel and technically proven, but commercial success requires making it repeatable, efficient, scalable, and profitable. That is where manufacturing expertise, commercial judgment, and broader operational leadership become essential.

Chris and Matt also examine the investment challenges facing industrial deep tech, including long capital cycles, policy uncertainty, and the need to educate investors about the very different economics of recycling markets. They discuss why traditional assumptions around contracts and offtake do not always fit the scrap industry, and why companies need to communicate the difference between technology risk, ramp risk, and market risk more clearly.

Finally, Matt makes the case that critical minerals recycling cannot be solved by one technology or one business. Smelters, hydrometallurgy, emerging separation technologies, recyclers, manufacturers, investors, and policymakers all have a role to play. 

Whether you're leading a deep tech company, investing in industrial innovation, or thinking about the future of manufacturing and resource security, this episode offers a practical look at what it takes to move from promising technology to resilient industrial capability.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why industrialization is the crucial middle stage between laboratory success and commercial scale
• Why high-growth startups need leaders who can operate across multiple functions rather than narrow specialists
• How AI, data centers, electrification, and reshoring are increasing demand for critical minerals
• How smelters, hydrometallurgy, battery recycling, and emerging separation technologies can coexist within the same ecosystem
• Why long-term capital and investor education are essential to scaling critical mineral infrastructure
• Why startups need to solve customer problems in the customer’s terms, not simply showcase the technology
• How traceability, closed-loop systems, and vertical integration can create additional commercial value
• Why critical minerals recycling is ultimately an ecosystem challenge rather than a winner-takes-all market

Matt Bedingfield is CEO of Mint Innovation, where he is focused on building domestic critical mineral supply chains by recovering valuable metals from electronic waste. He has spent more than 20 years working across metals, recycling, industrial strategy, commercial operations, finance, procurement, and manufacturing. His career has included senior leadership roles at Novelis, Tri-Arrows Aluminum, and Wieland, where he helped build and scale major recycling operations, deploy significant industrial capital, and lead acquisitions and supply chain initiatives.

Before joining Mint Innovation, Matt built Wieland North America’s recycling business from the ground up, including a $120 million greenfield facility and a major recycling acquisition. Earlier in his career, he worked on global recycling strategy at Novelis and led commercial strategy across large-scale aluminum operations at Tri-Arrows.

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Episode Resources:

• Matt Bedingfield on LinkedIn
• Mint Innovation  Website

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In this episode of Lab-to-Market Leadership, Chris sits down with Antti Vasara, Vice President, Quantum at PostScriptum, former President and CEO of VTT (Technical Research Centre of Finland), and one of Europe's most experienced deep tech leaders, to explore what it really takes to transform scientific breakthroughs into successful companies.

Drawing on decades of experience leading one of Europe's largest research and technology organizations, Antti explains why successful founders are defined less by their technical brilliance than by their willingness to continuously learn, adapt, and evolve. He shares how research organizations can better identify entrepreneurial talent, why supporting founders requires far more than simply transferring intellectual property, and how co-founders, customer validation, and investor readiness dramatically improve a startup's chances of success.

Chris and Antti also examine the governance challenges unique to deep tech startups, including when founders should bring in an independent board chair, how great boards build trust rather than pressure, and why psychological safety is essential for CEOs navigating the uncertainty of company building.

The conversation broadens to Europe's innovation ecosystem, exploring why fragmented markets, inconsistent regulation, and conservative capital continue to limit the commercial success of world-class research.

Whether you're a researcher considering entrepreneurship, an innovation leader building commercialization programs, or an investor supporting science-based startups, this episode offers valuable insights into bridging the gap between laboratory discoveries and global businesses.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why a founder's ability to learn and adapt is often a stronger predictor of success than technical expertise alone
• How research organizations can identify which scientists have the greatest entrepreneurial potential
• Why successful spinouts require far more support than simply licensing intellectual property
• The three critical areas where RTOs create the most value: co-founder recruitment, customer validation, and investor preparation
• How effective board chairs build trust, challenge constructively, and help founders grow into CEOs
• Why Europe's fragmented markets and capital ecosystem continue to slow deep tech commercialization
• How policy, regulation, and investment can work together to unlock Europe's innovation potential
• Why shifting from risk avoidance to opportunity thinking is essential for building globally competitive technology companies

Antti Vasara is a technology executive, board chair, venture partner, and one of Europe's foremost leaders in deep tech innovation. He previously served as President and CEO of VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, where he spent a decade leading one of Europe's largest applied research organizations and helping transform scientific research into commercially successful companies.

With a career spanning strategy consulting at McKinsey & Company and senior leadership roles at Nokia, SmartTrust, and Tieto, Antti brings more than 25 years of experience at the intersection of technology, business strategy, and innovation. Today, he is Vice President, Quantum at PostScriptum. He also serves as Venture Partner at Kvanted, chairs several high-growth deep tech companies including QMill and SemiQon, and acts as Finland's Special Envoy for Technology while advising the European Commission on quantum strategy.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe, rate, and review it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube Podcasts. Instructions on how to do so are here.

Episode Resources:

• Antti Vasara on LinkedIn
• PostScriptum  Website

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What if the real innovation engine in Deep Tech is not the spinout, but the lab itself?

Professor Hod Lipson is one of the world’s leading robotics researchers – recently the subject of a major Financial Times feature on the future of robotics. He directs Columbia’s Creative Machines Lab, where breadth beats specialisation, portfolios matter more than grades, and academia’s greatest role is to explore what industry cannot yet touch.

In this episode, Hod explains why he built a lab around possibility rather than narrow focus, why he believes robotics is the real frontier after AI, and why the 2030s could be the decade when physical intelligence begins to scale.

For researchers, founders and Deep Tech leaders interested in how breakthrough labs are built – and how ideas become companies.

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How do you move from novel idea to working prototype in hard tech? And how can you bend the rules of the game to give you a better chance of winning?

Greg Smithies is a finance and operations leader who has worked with some of the world's most ambitious companies. He led finance and operations at Elon Musk's Neuralink and The Boring Company. He's also been an investor with Battery Ventures, BMW iVentures and Fifth Wall. He's helped raise over $2bn for startups, and over $950m for funds.

This episode focusses on TRL 4-5 – the prototype stage where many Deep Tech companies stall.

Greg shares how companies like Twelve (e-SAF / carbon transformation) signed a 14-year offtake agreement with British Airways parent company (IAG) while they were still at TRL 4.

You'll learn:

- Why storytelling starts earlier than most founders think

- The three types of hard tech – and why each needs a different capital strategy

- How Neuralink built teams before the company formally existed

- Why off-the-shelf components can be a major advantage

- The biggest hiring mistake – hiring industry insiders too early

Greg outlines three types of hard tech: fundamental new science (Neuralink), re-engineered systems (Boring Company), and economies of scale (solar, batteries, electrolysers). Each faces a different lab-to-market journey.

Essential listening for anyone navigating TRL 4-6

Chapter Notes:

00:00 Runway Experiments Milestones

01:13 Podcast Mission And Stages

03:12 Meet Greg Smithies

05:22 Operator Vs Investor Tradeoffs

08:06 Storytelling And North Star

11:52 Prototype Stage Communication

13:08 Vision First Neuralink Example

15:22 Building Diverse Technical Teams

18:19 Elon Speed And Timelines

22:51 Three Deep Tech Company Types

27:47 Capital Tools For Each Bucket

33:26 Selling Offtakes Early

36:25 Investor Evidence Vs Story

38:05 Defining Best Bets

38:55 Milestones for Next Round

41:23 Runway Experiments Tradeoffs

42:45 Showmanship and Tangibility

45:29 Hard Tech CEO Duality

49:35 TRL1 vs TRL2 Shift

55:14 TRL as Iterative Loop

57:00 Finding the Real Buyer

01:01:24 Who Should Sell It

01:03:39 When to Replace the CEO

01:06:38 Avoiding Industry Insider Trap

01:10:02 Closing Thoughts

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Ian Temperton became CEO of Plastic Energy in 2021 after five years as Chief Investment Officer.

He stepped in as the company moved from pilot to industrial scale – executing multi‑million euro projects with SABIC and TotalEnergies.

This is what happens when the external CEO works.

Ian spent five years learning the business before taking over. The shift came mid-deployment, when execution discipline and governance became critical.

The team stayed. The focus changed: from raising capital to deploying it.

The core challenge: delivering complex projects on petrochemical sites while scaling the organisation to match.

The proof: nearly a decade of continuous operations in Spain.

The lesson: separate innovation from deployment, and rebalance rigour as you scale.

Essential listening for anyone moving from pilot to industrial scale in climate hardware.

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Dr Simon Thomas never expected to be a founder. After 12 years inside TSMC, Samsung and LG, he was ready for a break from the pressure of the world’s biggest fabs. Then Professor Sir Colin Humphreys set him a challenge: could he make graphene at wafer scale – the same problem Samsung had spent $2.2 billion trying, and failing, to crack?

Five weeks of experiments later, Simon saw the first promising result. A short time after that, Paragraf was born, and by December 2024 the company had switched on the world’s first graphene electronics foundry.

In this episode of Lab to Market Leadership, Simon explains how a decade‑plus in Asian fabs gave him a process‑engineering lens no one else brought to graphene, how a chance train journey with Colin Humphreys became the turning point, and why copper‑free, transfer‑free graphene was essential to escape the industry’s 'trough of disillusionment.'

He also talks candidly about the hardest part of scaling a Deep Tech company: people. From hiring the first team to recognising when someone’s journey with the company is over, and from open‑door collaboration to faster, tougher CEO calls, this is essential listening for technical founders learning to lead as CEOs.

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Dr Jan Goetz never planned to be a CEO. He wanted to be a professor. But when co-founder Professor Mikko Möttönen asked about starting a company, Jan followed his gut.

Seven years later, IQM is Europe's largest quantum computing company, heading towards US public listing, and has just secured €50M from BlackRock.

This is a rare, personal look at the founder CEO journey – not just the company wins, but the internal transitions, the moments of doubt, and how Jan learned to lead whilst staying true to himself.

Jan reveals the journey: spinning out of VTT and Aalto University (April 2018), the four co-founders dividing roles (Mikko stayed in academia, Kuan became CTO, Juha became COO, Jan became CEO), the early decision to sell complete systems not chips, convincing governments to buy 5-qubit machines when engineers questioned it, using the SpaceX analogy to de-risk early sales, and how COVID rescue budgets opened doors.

Finland's EU presidency rotation (July 2019) put IQM in front of Brussels decision-makers. COVID created quantum procurement budgets – Germany allocated €2B. Founders can't plan these things. What matters is being agile enough to see everything as an opportunity.

Jan's advice: Know your strengths. His strength was storytelling – winning grants, pitching vision, being the ‘foreign minister’ of the company. He found others to cover weaknesses. Don't waste time trying to do everything you're not good at.

The vulnerable moment: Lying in bed in Canada, Jan realised he wasn't coping well. He signed up for a marathon that day. Now he runs daily into the woods – no headphones, no phone, just him and his thoughts.

On following your heart: People said he was crazy to choose Finland over Barcelona or US opportunities. But it felt right. Do you follow your plan or follow your heart? Jan followed his gut.

Essential for scientific founders transitioning to CEO.

Chapter notes:

0:00 Investor Pitch Dialogue

00:49 Podcast Mission Intro

01:23 Founder CEO Archetypes

03:04 Meet Jan Goetz

04:33 IQM Scale and IPO

06:52 From PhD to Finland

08:37 Choosing Aalto by Gut

10:07 Early Lab Leadership

12:07 Decision to Spin Out

12:51 Co-Founders and Vision

15:06 Incorporation and IP Talks

16:28 Full Stack Strategy Pivot

18:31 Why Jan Became CEO

20:35 Grant Writing vs Fundraising

23:52 What Investors Want in Deck

25:43 First Customers Governments

28:18 Timing EU and COVID Tailwinds

33:10 Evolving Founder CEO Role

37:11 Stepping Up as CEO

39:48 Fundraising Gets Tough

41:12 Co-CEO in Practice

43:53 Preparing for IPO Life

48:33 Public CEO Communication

52:53 Building a No-Hype Culture

56:05 Managing Global Subcultures

58:13 Hiring Senior Leaders

01:00:37 Avoiding Founder Burnout

01:04:50 Closing Reflections

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Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) are the universal language of Deep Tech – used by NASA, the DoD, VCs, corporations and startups to measure innovation progress. But where did they come from? 

Professor John Mankins co-invented TRLs and wrote the 1995 white paper that gave them to the world. In this Season 2 premiere, he reveals the origin story: from Apollo-era NASA research centres, through Stan Sadin's combination of 'technology readiness' and 'levels' in the mid-1970s, to John adding TRL 8–9 in the late 1980s, to publishing the framework on the early internet in 1995 ('nobody even knew what the internet was'), to a 1997 Government Accountability Office (GAO) briefing that led the Pentagon to adopt TRLs across DoD. 

John explains why TRLs are a 'contact sport', not a calculation tool–you need constant negotiation between technology developers and end users to assess readiness meaningfully. The hardest transition isn't the famous TRL 4–6 'valley of death' – it's TRL 1–2, the spark of innovation itself. He introduces two complementary frameworks: R&D³ (degree of difficulty – how hard to reach the next level) and Technology Need Value (how strategically important the innovation is). Together with TRL, these formed the foundation for managing NASA's $800M+ exploration portfolio. 

His advice for founders at TRL5: validate your market, test for scalability and double-check your foundations before scaling up. Essential listening for anyone navigating lab to market. 

Learn more about Deep Tech Leaders at www.deeptechleaders.com

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Why do 55% of Deep Tech companies fail within five years? Hailey Eustace, founder of Commplicated, argues the answer isn't bad technology - it's bad communication.

Product-market fit failures? That's a listening and messaging problem. Can't raise capital? Your story isn't resonating. Struggling to win customers? Trust breakdown. Can't build the right culture? Your messages aren't landing.

Hailey's unique background as an analyst at Texas's $500M Deep Tech fund before founding the UK's leading Deep Tech comms agency gives her rare insight into why brilliant founders lose millions because they can't explain what they're doing. She's also an active angel investor, Venture Scout at Ada Ventures, and mentor at Founders (Cambridge) and Deeptech Labs.

She reveals the difference between American founders (20%+ budget to comms) and Europeans (resistant to investing), why 'explain it like I'm 5' fails for Deep Tech, and how to develop a core message that works for investors, customers, and your team simultaneously.

Her starting point: Define your one thing for 2026. What single message do you want everyone to know? Build from there.

This episode challenges the assumption that communications is fluffy. It's strategy. It's product. It's everything. And getting it right could be the difference between the 55% that fails and the 45% that survives.

Essential for Deep Tech founders struggling to translate science into business success.

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What's the value of a ridiculously audacious goal if you never reach it? Josh Western, CEO of Space Forge, argues the question misses the point - because the innovations accelerated along the journey often matter more than the destination itself.

Space Forge manufactures advanced semiconductor substrates in microgravity conditions, returns them via reusable satellites, then grows them terrestrially using a ‘sourdough starter’ approach. It's technically audacious, operationally complex, and solves a critical problem: producing higher-purity compound semiconductors for AI, EVs, 5G, and energy infrastructure without Earth's gravitational constraints.

Josh reveals why Space Forge could be five different startups (in-space manufacturing, reentry vehicles, heat shields, landing software, crystal growth), but integration creates the real multiplier. He explains the regulatory nightmare of manufacturing in international waters, why payload economics now matter more than launch costs, and how recruiting for passion beats technical pedigree when no one has ‘10 years experience making semiconductors in space.’

His North Star: making space manufacturing so ubiquitous and boring that people don't realise the chip in their kettle came from orbit. Until then, every innovation along the journey - from sovereign supply chain contributions to regulatory frameworks - creates substantial value independent of the ultimate goal.

Essential listening for Deep Tech founders navigating vertical integration, novel regulatory challenges, and the tension between moonshot ambitions and incremental

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