Hello!
Long time no see. January is traditionally a bit of a busy one, but this past month has been more hectic than any so far. As a quick highlight:
I ran three weeks of Masters programs for the University of Bristol training scientists to launch businesses in Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Bioinformatics. Check out either of these great programs if you’re interested in Science + Business.
We launched two new companies; one a medtech spinout of the University of Cambridge taking a novel approach to stopping bacterial infections, and one new co in our corporate structure to support our current ventures building activities.
We raised £1.2m to solve a £35billion problem with refrigeration of medicines into one of our portfolio companies EnsiliTech.
We closed and announced two investments through Science Angel Syndicate, our investment membership, one into EnsiliTech, the second into QVBioElectronics - a company trying to find better ways to tackle the treatments of brain tumours.
We also closed two investments we aren’t quite ready to announce yet.
I hired in Jamie, as our head content producer, to help with video content as I’ve been reliably unreliable for the past couple of months and we shot a movie about ChatGPT (below) inspired by having to sit in a 2hour session on deciding what to do with students caught cheating with ChatGPT 😅
This week’s video
Students are Cheating Using ChatGPT... I tried to catch them…
A good book for the weekend
Good to Great (amazon link) Why Some Companies Make the Leap...and Others Don't Last year, my focus was building things. This year my focus is building things that are good (or hopefully great). This book is a simple by reflective story on how to look at others, whether individuals, products, or companies, and learn the lessons that edged them ahead of the pack.
Core quotes and concepts that I liked:
“Good is the enemy of great...””
“Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and disciplined action.”
“You can accomplish anything in life, provided that you do not mind who gets the credit.”
What’s Next
Usually I drop 3 interesting things I’ve found recently on the internet here, but I wanted instead to take the opportunity to talk at a high level about what’s coming next. With the hiring of Jamie, I’m hoping to spend as much as 1-1.5 days/week on content creation (up from my usual 0.5). Hopefully this should mean, more content more regularly. (And higher quality, as I still have no idea what I’m doing).
We’ve also got a podcast series in the pipeline where we can dive into some topics deeper than we otherwise were in YT channel content, and some really interesting guests lined up.
We are moving much more heavily into building and investing in deep science companies over the course of this year. Not much I can formally announce at the moment, but hopefully some exciting news to come in the next few months.
All these points to my personal goal of creating ventures around (and telling the stories of) breakthroughs in science that I hope will lead to a healthier people and planet.
I hope you’re having a fantastic week!
All the best,
Ben
Hey just found your channel, the video Retrocausality Explained got me shook, I had just explained the exact same concept within a few 1 minute videos but through a wider lens using a mix of specific and vague comparisons to coax the fractured mind into understanding such a brain breaking views of reality. We also use alot of the same b roll haha. I dont wanna post me links here but if you wanna see message me!