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Water and dirt bounce off your car sensors, switches turn on and off bacteria growth, predictive screening of new composites for next-level batteries, drone-delivered groceries. These were just a few exciting high-tech products developed by R&D intensive teams participating in the second edition of Science Base Camp.

Who are the most promising R&D intensive teams in Nordics and Baltics? How to get these great products as fast as possible to mass adoption and benefit our society? These questions are the reason Superangel investment fund has launched Science Base Camp, which has become the biggest investment readiness day in Nordics and Baltics. 

“Science Base Camp is like a gym where your personal trainer will identify your weak points, give you a training plan, and motivate you to power through it.” – Science Base Camp participant

Designed For Technology-Based Teams To Accelerate Commercialisation

Scientific breakthroughs can help solve the most challenging problems in climate change, healthcare, or society’s development. Yet it can take a long time before science-based solutions reach the mass market. 

What Superangel has learned from experience is that having meaningful discussions with investors instead of pitching to them can help teams from universities to find shortcuts and move faster. Investors’ insights into the market can help teams understand the potential use cases of their technology and how to speed up commercialization cycles. 

“Talking to investors and academic audience are like speaking two different languages.” – Science Base Camp participant

Science Base Camp is designed to create the space for meaningful discussions between early-stage R&D-intensive teams and deep tech investors. To prepare the teams for the discussions and beyond, we conducted sessions on key topics:

  • What do investors want from deep tech teams?
  • How to tell the story of your product and startup to people who do not have your background?
  • How to find first paying customers for deep tech products? 
  • What are the best practices for cooperating with corporations? 
  • What are the trends of deep tech investing in Europe?

“You should not try to please all investors.”

“You should not try to please all investors” was feedback from a venture capitalist to a young first-time founder. The investor followed it up with recommendations on which decisions the founders should make to move forward and which type of investors she should seek, and which ones to avoid.

Such honest feedback is infrequent and hard to get. At Science Base Camp, there were over 25 investors present and over 30 sessions delivered in 3-hours. 

In the evening, startup teams got open to feedback from pitch coaches (thank you Wallace Green and Gleb Maltsev) and investors on their 3-minute pitch: what was memorable, confusing, and one friendly piece of advice for the next time.

“It was an excellent fresh outlook to understand what the startup world expects from us and how to orient ourselves there.” – Science Base Camp participant

Even though the main focus is on getting feedback from investors, Science Base Camp works also as a platform for fundraising. Several startups have reported continuing discussions with investors they met at Science Base Camp. One startup was able to get investment commitments already during the mentoring session.

Who Are The 21 Forward-Looking And Innovative Deeptech University Teams From Science Base Camp You Need To Keep An Eye On?

In Science Base Camp 2022, 21 teams from ten universities and science parks from Estonia, Finland, and Sweden got selected to receive insights and feedback from over 25 Pre-Seed to Series B deep tech investors. Here is the list of teams to watch in alphabetical order.

  • Aerit offers sustainable drone delivery as a service.
  • AIVisionEye has a Smart Damage Detection solution for the highly growing Shared Mobility Industry.
  • Better Medicine builds AI-Powered tools for radiologists that enable doctors to diagnose and fight cancer in more efficient and accurate ways.
  • CeLLife develops an overall solution to turn waste Li-ion batteries into stable and reliable energy storage, giving them a second life.
  • Cleandet offers an AI-driven device to detect invisible contaminants, bacteria, and viruses from surfaces.
  • Compular develops an intelligent computational chemistry software for speeding up the development of new batteries by automatically identifying bonds between material structures and technologically relevant properties to enable predictive screening of new compositions. 
  • Dry and Durable offers the world’s most durable self-cleaning super-water-repellent shields for sensors.
  • Measurement Electronics Research Group at Taltech fosters a radical shift from episodic to continuous healthcare using decades of knowledge and experience in discreet and reliable medical data acquisition.
  • FaradaIC Sensors has developed miniaturized breath sensors to gather biometric data and provide patients and athletes alike insight into their respiratory health and metabolism.
  • GARMENT wearable platform turns daily physical activities into in-game rewards for promoting and encouraging wellbeing. 
  • Gearbox Biosciences makes bioproduction of chemicals more efficient and sustainable.
  • Krattworks builds drones with onboard machine vision and GSM connectivity. Our drone provides fast situational awareness for firefighters, security companies, search and rescue teams, and police. 
  • Lightcode Photonics changes how service robots see us with the world’s first software-defined 3D camera.
  • MIRO provides a Mixed Reality-based visual assistance solution for controlling heavy mobile work machines directly and remotely.
  • mTMS provides an automated multi-locus magnetic brain stimulation system.
  • Norgald provides cyber security software to create resilient critical infrastructure. 
  • Nosore develops a smart bed sheet for predicting pressure ulcer risk. 
  • Parkzia revolutionizes the charging of autonomous e-movers by removing fixed charging stations, charging the e-movers on the go, increasing operational time by 30 %, and saving millions in e-mover fleet investments. 
  • REPLICA has developed an IP block that gives CPUs 100x better processing performance in complex, real-time, parallel use cases 
  • Smart Materials makes polyurethane foam production with auxetic features scalable and affordable.
  • Vireamed offers a VR exergame solution for remote motor function rehabilitation.
  • WINSe develops power by light solutions for applications where electrical wires can’t go. 

Take a peek into the Science Base Camp.  

We are making public some of the content that was presented at the second Science Base Camp 2022. 

  1. Get familiar with the trends of deep tech investing in Europe
  2. Port 6 story on how to raise funding for a deep tech startup as a university student
  3. Eyevi Tech story on how to raise €1.8M after you heard 100 times “no.”

We have three more gems for those who are interested:

  • Session: What are investors looking for in R&D-intensive companies? Thank you Heidi Kakko & Sten Tamkivi!
  • Session: How to launch cooperation with corporations? Thank you Matti Härkönen & Innovestor
  • Session: How to find the first paying customers for deep tech products?

If you want to access it, send us a request here.

Organised Together With Leading Universities And VCs

A huge thank you goes out to all of the teams, investors, and partners whose continuous support helps us think bigger and contribute to the development of a better, more impactful society. A special shout out to Aalto Startup Centre and Joel Takala for hosting us in Helsinki. 

Pictures by Eiko Lainjärv.