While aboard a plane nosediving into Baghdad, one may be forgiven for pondering how one’s life path could lead from vacuum cleaners to minesweeping robots. Yet, not only does Orin Hoffman, of MIT’s The Engine venture capital firm, share this humbling connection, but also how it advances an overarching narrative of the United States national industrial innovation base, VCs, and the crucial roles served by tough tech entrepreneurs. 

Public-private partnerships may not be what immediately comes to most people’s minds when asked about frontier tech, though government funding for basic scientific research has been commonplace in the United States for a century. “Patient capital” – a class of investors with a temperament to nurture big-bet science and engineering ventures – is helping to bridge gaps in the national “capital stack”, Orin shares on Tough Tech Today. We learn from Orin about how his team at The Engine cultivates their investment thesis, about whether a technical founder should find a business-savvy partner, and work-in-progress ideas for improving the United States as a whole by nurturing deeply technical startups via diversified, trusted capital networks.

Show Notes

• Episode page, transcript, and podcast listening links: https://toughtechtoday.com/investing-in-americas-innovation-engine-featuring-orin-hoffman-of-the-engine/
• Orin Hoffman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/orin-hoffman-a7489230
• The Engine: http://engine.xyz/
• Subscribe with your favorite podcast service: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1169378/5761015
• Watch this show on Youtube: https://youtu.be/WEj-SC5wfpQ

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