By taking a momentary pause in reading, you will have lost a business model or sector vocabulary, these days. The world is changing at a pace never been seen before. It is just needed to have a glance at what is referred to as deep tech. The overall amount of deep tech investment in the years 2015-2018 amounted to more than 20 percent per annum of the total, equivalent to almost two-thirds of a billion dollars at the termination of the period. Should you not know what deep tech involves, we are behind you. You might know the ins and outs of deep tech, but you might be interested in knowing what is being sold in this category by CEE startups.
What is Deep Tech?
Deep tech is a portmanteau of deep tech, originally coined by the founders and CEO of online investment firm Propel(x) that pairs early-stage Deep Tech startups with investors. Deep tech or deep technology is a term that is used to describe a type of companies whose business model is based on the high-tech engineering or amazing scientific discoveries.
It is differentiated using deep tech as compared to its counterpart, shallow tech. A shallow tech is a relatively primitive technology transformation that turns into a digital one a business that was not that digital. Superficial tech development can easily be duplicated by competitors and it is not likely to change the market significantly. To provide a few examples, a phone-based delivery service that now exists in the digital form on an app on the phone, or on the same note, a bookshop that now offers e-books to be downloaded digitally, would also be both a case of shallow tech.
Uber, though it has entirely redefined the taxi market, cannot be termed deep tech, since it borrowed an existing idea (the sharing economy) and developed a platform on a platform using readily available digital technologies.
In the case of deep tech, the company focuses on and revolves around actual innovative technology. It is implemented to resolve nearly unsolvable real-life issues. Deep tech startups are founded on artificial intelligence, machine learning, or other novel applications of emerging technologies, new or existing. Similar to blockchain, computer imaging, and VR. Deep tech could include AI to forecast natural disasters, or even the use of molecular imaging to detect disease or the predisposition to disease long before any other existing test could.
What Is So Different about Deep Tech?
Artificial intelligence (AI), life sciences, agriculture, aerospace, chemistry, industry, and clean energy are the key spheres of deep tech startups. Deep tech hardly ever exists in isolation. At its essence, it is a game-changer, and, therefore, aerospace technologies could be used to track crop conditions, or AI development could be directed toward creating clean energy or tracking a patient.
Deep tech is different in a number of ways compared to shallow tech and other startups. The startups that are deep tech are likely to have a board of advisors that includes CTOs rather than CEOs as the basis of the whole business is technology. They will often be the holder of patents or other IP, and they will have years in a lab or other research testing before trying to establish the technology to the market.
Deep technology startups demand extensive funding, more timelines, and research. It will be also slower in the commercialization process, as this is disruptive technologies, which might require more time to make a real presence in the market.
The advantage is that by the time they are entering the market, other competitors can hardly replicate what they have done. They will reinvent the regulations and make the other businesses outdated. Take a hypothetical fintech, a blockchain that makes its clients infinitely secure, and allows them to bank on their phone, everywhere in the world and with low overheads. They are also able to destroy the old business model of the uncompetitive local banks that are characterized by slow bureaucracy and high charges that are on the rise today.
Where’s It Headed?
The deep tech startups, including AI, advanced materials, blockchain, biotechnology, robotics, drones, photonics, and quantum computing, are increasingly moving to the market sooner with the help of initial innovations. It is a new industrial revolution, where new platform technologies and infrastructures are creating colossal change in our lifestyles and modes of work. After you think about the way the previous generation of new technologies of platform, like the internet, mobile technologies, PC, and even silicon chips transformed the world, you begin to think how much deep tech can transform the entire vast industries, how the world problems like global warming, disease, feeding a growing world population, and managing ageing populations is solved or diminished.
The test and prototype phases are more readily available and faster than ever before, thanks to technologies such as 3D printing, DNA sequencing, and computer-aided design. In some sectors, the further these deep tech platforms develop, the more possibilities they have and the faster they will be deployed in the market.
Deep Tech Startups in CEE
These are just a few examples of CEE deep tech we want to present to you, but by no means a comprehensive list. In case you want to have the complete picture of the most exciting deep tech startups in the CEE region, the answer is simple:
Come to Wolves Summit and see them with your own eyes.
Arlabion
A fledgling company in the agri-tech industry, which is designing new-generation agrochemicals that are to be used to make intensified crops more sustainable.
Conelum
A biotech start-up established late in 2012, developing rapid microbiological diagnostics for food and beverage firms.
Even tech
Precise timings, or 2-3 picoseconds, of unique high-tech events.
Koatum
Modern medtech bioactive surfaces are applied to medical implants such as orthopedics, reconstructive surgery, and dental implants to promote the highest level of biocompatibility.
Conclusion
In the case of Deep Tech Startups in the CEE Region, Get to Wolves Summit.
That is, now you know what deep tech is, and some of the numerous deep tech startups in CEE. The only thing you have to do is go out and see them. The next Wolves Summit will take place in Warsaw, Poland, in a few weeks. This is the element where companies, investors, and startups meet. Book your ticket now to plan your busy B2B matchmaking schedule.
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