Why the World’s Brightest Researchers Need You—Even If You Don’t Write Code
“I don’t have a technical background, so deep tech isn’t for me.”
Let’s kill this thought right now.
The startup world is full of programs where you can “come with just an idea.” But here’s the thing: coming up with a good idea is ridiculously hard. If you’ve ever sat down with a blank page, trying to brainstorm the next world-changing startup, you know exactly what I mean. Ideas don’t just fall from the sky, and most of the time for the ones that do, they’re not ambitious enough.
Deep tech flips this problem on its head. Instead of starting with nothing, you start with something that’s been in the making for years—sometimes decades. Scientific breakthroughs, cutting-edge tech, world-changing discoveries. Imagine how many projects exist in the labs with potential to be game-changers. And the best part is that these are already being worked on by some of the world’s brightest minds, they just need help in finding the right problem to solve.
This transition is anything but easy. That’s why deep tech needs people who can figure out what the product should be, who actually needs it, how to explain it, how to fund it, and how to make it work in the real world. This process is long. It’s messy. It’s unpredictable. And it’s exactly why research commercialization needs people from every background.
If You Want to Build a High-Growth Startup, Science is Where the Black Swans Are
Every startup founder wants to build something huge. But the reality is, most startups are just marginal improvements to existing solutions. They tweak a business model, optimize a process, or slightly improve user experience. The companies that truly change the game—the ones that either create new markets or radically reshape old ones—tend to be built on scientific breakthroughs. These companies don’t just compete—they fundamentally redefine what’s possible. For these kinds of companies, the case for diverse talent is even more important.
Those who are familiar with Nassim Taleb’s work, especially the book Antifragile, know that proper market-morphing startups are Antifragile—they thrive in randomness, uncertainty, and volatility. When real startups embrace the fact that they cannot predict the future, they become more open to listening to outside-the-box ideas, trying non-conventional approaches, and recruiting people based on possibilities, not just past successes. They do this because they understand that they need to maximize their chances of reaping the benefits of black swan events—high-impact shifts that are difficult to predict under normal circumstances but, in hindsight, seem inevitable.
Some of the biggest, most impactful deep tech innovations didn’t reach the market just because of their technical merits. They succeeded because someone outside of the lab saw an opportunity.
Xerox PARC & The Personal Computer Revolution
Xerox PARC invented the mouse, graphical user interface (GUI), and WYSIWYG text editors—but it took a visionary like Steve Jobs (who wasn’t an engineer) to recognize their potential and turn them into the foundation of Apple’s Macintosh and, eventually, all modern computing.
Viagra: From Heart Medication to a Multi-Billion-Dollar Industry
Viagra started as a failed heart disease medication. Scientists dismissed it. But the marketers at Pfizer noticed its unexpected “side effect” and turned it into a blockbuster drug—not by improving the science, but by reframing the market.
Post-it Notes: From Failed Glue to Office Essential
3M scientists accidentally invented an adhesive that was too weak to be useful. Product designers saw potential and reimagined it as a reusable sticky note. Without a business pivot, it would have remained a forgotten research experiment.
GPS: From Military Tech to Everyday Necessity
Originally built as a Cold War military navigation system, GPS was never meant for consumer use. Entrepreneurs and business strategists found new applications—ride-sharing, logistics, fitness tracking—turning it into a daily essential.
The Internet: From Research Project to World-Changing Platform
ARPANET, the precursor to the internet, was a government-funded academic project. It took entrepreneurs like Marc Andreessen (first browser) and Jeff Bezos (e-commerce vision) to turn it into a global business platform.
None of these breakthroughs were obvious at first. In most cases, the market for them didn’t exist yet, and their applications were unclear when they were first discovered. If their inventors had stuck to a narrow view—if they had only relied on conventional thinking or traditional paths—many of these innovations would have remained forgotten research papers instead of billion-dollar industries.
This is why deep tech commercialization needs people who can think beyond the obvious.
It’s not about optimizing existing markets. It’s about creating something so new that people don’t even know how to categorize it yet. And to do that, you don’t just need engineers and scientists. You need entrepreneurs, designers, storytellers, legal minds, strategists, and more.
If you’re someone who thrives in uncertainty and can see possibilities where others see roadblocks, deep tech needs you.
This is precisely the reason we actively look for diverse backgrounds in Deep Dive, and having run the program three times now, we can safely say that it’s the diverse teams that kill it!
