Written by Our Deep Tech entrepreneurs get access to leading university resources, and fantastic networks of mentors and investors who join them early on their journey.
The Deep Tech Innovation Centre inspires, educates and incubates aspiring deep tech founders, who want to create a sustainable business built on data science, artificial intelligence or emerging technologies.
Learn more about the Deep Tech Innovation Centre and how it can grow your business here: https://warwickinnovationdistrict.com/deep-tech-innovation-centre/
We recently interviewed Petri Lehtonen from Flowtrace to discuss how the Deep Tech Incubator helped his business grow. Watch the interview below.
Interview with Petri Lehtonen from Flowtrace
My name is Petri Lehtonen founder of the company Flowtrace, and I was part of the Deep Tech Incubation centre programme this year.
About Flowtrace
Flowtrace is on a mission to solve the collaboration and information problems in high growth start-ups – We do this by surfacing insights from the data streams to make sure that everybody in the company has the right information available to them, to help solve their daily problems.
About the Incubator
When I joined the incubator, I realised that I came a little ahead of the game compared to other incubator companies – However the value Flowtrace gained was connecting with all the experts and the advisors. They were able to easily change their angle to actually support my business and the problems we were going through at that point.
For me it was a big networking opportunity – I got to know a lot of other deep tech companies and the founders of deep tech companies, understanding what kind of hurdles other people were going through, whilst they grew deeply technical businesses.
Of course having a network of peers is a great opportunity and we did share the connections across our own network, so I felt like I had access to a lot more people than I would have, without it.
Advice to Start-ups
It’s all on us. We founders, when we find a business, we bring our own skill sets, our super strengths, our networks – What we want is to solve the problems we face, this makes the needs of a start-up business as unique as every founding team.
You need to focus externally – validate your problem, is the problem worth solving, maybe you’re an expert, maybe you know it. Really validate that your solution caters to solve the problem, and because we’re running a business not a charity, validate that the financial outcome of solving that problem is worthwhile.
Pitfalls
The pitfall is if you procrastinate and develop your technology but you haven’t made sure that there is a demand for it, you’re just wasting your time.
Get out there, be bold, you know it doesn’t matter if you fail, don’t be afraid of failing, accelerate those failings and learn from them and remember every single business is a learning business – You need to understand your business inside and out.
You don’t need to be a perfectionist and really learn everything. My own personal background is in start-ups and leadership pros. 10 years ago I would say to myself – go with it, you know enough, you’ll figure out rest on the way.
Photo credit: Charles Deluvio