ON Translate 2026 - Navigating the support and funding landscape

[Music plays and an image appears of a split circle, and photos move through of CSIRO activities in either side of the circle, and then the circle morphs into the CSIRO logo]

[Image changes to show the CSIRO logo and ON translate top left, and five profile photos in circles across the middle, and text appears above and below the photos: Panel Discussion, Navigating the support and funding landscape, Eike Zeller, Ecosystem Manager, ON Innovation Program, Dr Olga Hogan, Senior Investment Director, Breakthrough Victoria, Hugo LeMessurier, Director, multiple companies, Dr Ruth Park-Jones, Director of Commercialisation, Monash University, Prof Christopher McDevitt, Laboratory Head, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Melbourne]

[Image changes to show Dr Ruth Park-Jones and Prof Christopher McDevitt listening on the left to Eike Zeller talking on the right]

Eike Zeller: Before we kick off, I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land where we gathered here today, and of course, it's the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, and pay my respects to the elders past, present and emerging.

[Image changes to show the panel members Dr Olga Hogan, Hugo LeMessurier, Ruth and Christopher listening on the left to Eike talking on the right]

And yeah, like, as I think David mentioned before, like the Indigenous Australians like were one of the first like storytellers actually here in Australia and this is kind of fitting because when I had a conversation last week with the panel, the two things they wanted this panel to be about was fun and stories. So and yeah, so we're going to have a nice yarn together, but I would yeah, maybe I kick off with the story of my own because Sharath, who was actually on the last panel, Sharath and I like we actually did our PhD together and he finished maybe like a year or two before me. But when I was coming to the end of my PhD and like didn't quite know where to go, he actually introduced me to a deep tech start-up and, yeah, that was like one of the first businesses I worked for coming out of university. And it really paved the way, paved the way for me into the deep tech ecosystem and I haven't looked back since. And yeah, I just wanted to point it out because you never know like, the tiny introduction you make can have a dramatic impact on people's trajectory.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking and pointing up]

All right. So a few things, so we're going to do, you can submit questions as well. So you'll find a QR code that's going to be set up there in a minute.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking]

Yeah, cool. Make sure you scan that and then Slider will pop up. And as we go along, you can put your questions in and they will come up here on my iPad. So, yeah, so the topic of this panel is like support and funding pathways like to create better research translation. And yeah, as I said, it's a really topic really close to my heart, working with so many founders, helping them become entrepreneurs. And we have, yeah, four amazing panellists.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking and pointing at Olga who gives a wave, and then pointing at Hugo]

We have Olga Hogan from Breakthrough Victoria and then Hugo LeMessurier from like serial entrepreneur and like a really long term like ON mentor as well.



[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking and pointing at Ruth who gives a wave ]

And then we have Ruth Park-Jones who's the commercialisation, Director of Commercialisation at Monash.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking and pointing at Christopher]

And then finally Chris McDevitt, who's the founder of Elemental Therapeutics, who is also like an ON alumni.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking]

And I was thinking maybe to kick us off, maybe we're just going to do a round, everyone can introduce yourself quickly and say what your role is and also like just maybe answer in one sentence, what is the biggest hurdle to research translation in Australia at the moment?

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking and pointing at Christopher]

Do you want to start?

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Eike to Christopher talking]

Prof. Christopher McDevitt: Thanks, yeah. No, so as you said, I'm Chris McDevitt. I'm a research academic at the University of Melbourne as well as a founder of Elemental Therapeutics, and, which is a company that's aiming to develop a non-traditional therapeutic for treating community acquired bacterial pneumonia. And so as an academic, one of the things I've experienced in terms of those hurdles is really to try and get a lot of research academics to understand that discovery research and translational research are not in competition with each other, as we heard in that last session, but really they're complementary. And there's a lot we can learn by sort of moving those learnings across those different areas that can only help our research programs.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Christopher and Eike listening to Ruth talking]

Dr Ruth Park-Jones: Oh, great, thanks. So, hi everyone. I'm Ruth Park-Jones, so I'm the current Director of Commercialisation at Monash University. I don't know why I said current. I've moved across to Monash from from Melbourne University and was there for about 18 years in all sorts of different roles in commercialisation so I am very familiar with the setting in Tech Transfer Offices. So understand all the challenges that that academics face as they try to translate their research, whether that's that's through sort of a license to a, to a company or creating a new company of their own.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking]

Eike Zeller: So what is the biggest hurdle?

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Christopher and Eike listening to Ruth talking]

Dr Ruth Park-Jones: Oh, the biggest hurdle, one big hurdle, there are lots of hurdles. So I think we we always hear about talent and capital. So I think for me what I've noticed is, is it’s, it’s, it's the talent there is, so not that researchers aren't talented and founders aren't talented, but I think that there is a, a gap in Australia in, in a nice safe pair of hands to take some of these opportunities forward within a company. So project management support and those sorts of that sort of expertise.

[Image continues to show Olga, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Hugo talking]

Hugo LeMessurier: So Hugo LeMessurier, I was a really bad lab scientist, so I left the bench and got into the commercialisation side. Worked for many years in Europe and the US in corporate biotech, but started my first start-up at the age of 19. I've probably founded six or seven, doing one right now, which has just started. I've been mentoring and coaching on the ON program for the eight years, last eight years. I've been a business advisor for three Federal Government grant programs over a number of years. And I guess for me it's seeing the impact of research or of technology getting into the real world and trying to help the founders to do that, so that's sort of what I do. And I'm also an angel investor, so I've invested in about 20 unlisted sort of tech based companies over the last sort of 15 years.

[Image continues to show Olga, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Hugo talking]

The one thing holding back, I think, is that researchers don't recognise that they can do this and that they can take the step and you can get out there and you can make your ideas real in the real world. The way for me that is everybody gets to use it. And I think that's probably the biggest challenge when I've worked with people is making that decision to step out. There are plenty of support mechanisms out there for you, but you need to make that decision and you've got to feel like you can do that. And I think the institutions are getting better at making that happen. But I think that's the biggest thing holding it back.

[Image continues to show Eike pointing at Olga and then Hugo, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Olga talking]

Dr Olga Hogan: I am Olga Hogan. I'm a senior investment director at Breakthrough Victoria. I started as a PhD student in electrochemistry and then trained as a chartered accountant. I became a co-founder and then became a professional VC investor. And I think the biggest hurdle in Australia, I think it's the lack of awareness of what's actually possible and what's out there.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking]

Eike Zeller: Cool, thanks so much. I thought maybe the first topic we can dive into a bit is sort of yeah, the processes around research translation and sort of support mechanisms. And my first question is for Ruth and like, yeah, over your career, like you supported many researchers in their spinout process. So what are the biggest mistakes you've seen? Yeah, people like make when they try to spin out their technology.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Christopher and Eike listening to Ruth talking]

Dr Ruth Park-Jones: Great question. And so I think I think there are a number of things that we see, it is, it is tricky, it is difficult, and as much as thank you, Hugo, for saying that universities are getting better at it, I think there is still there is still a lot of room for, room for improvement and lots of areas where where founders or potential founders can make some mistakes. I think the first is, is in the way that they explain their their technology, their discovery. And so particularly when they're having conversations with investors, I think, I think investors aren't funders, they're not funding bodies and so they expect different things to come out of, out of a research or out of a, out of a program of work and so they will have different, different requirements. And so I think that kind of tailoring the pitch, and I know we've got some pictures coming up later on which I think will be, all be wonderful, so and absolutely investor ready, investor focused. The other, the other is around particularly for academic, so, too, Chris and the team will be able to attest to this, the, the ties to the university and kind of wanting to kind of start up a company, but also sort of, you know, ensuring that the ties to the university are severable at some point in time. I think that's a real sort of challenge in kind of that that sort of piece. What else do I have? But really, I think the biggest, the biggest challenge is that founders, academic founders will often fall in love with their technology, so really love the tech and not sort of, in a lot of cases, stop and think about who cares about the tech, what problem is it trying to solve? Who are the customers? How are we going to get it into their hands? So I think, I think, I think that's getting better. I think there's a lot of education and there's people, you know, people like Olga and Hugo and, and the program here that can really help people think about the way that they’re, the way that they're communicating that. But I think that that would be the biggest mistake I think.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking]

Eike Zeller: Yeah, yeah. Thanks so much. That really resonates with me as well. When I was in in the start-up and we went through the Techstars accelerator, really that mindset shift of looking at things from a more customer centric lens was really one of the biggest learnings for us back then. Yeah, maybe, Chris, could you tell us a bit more about your transition with Elemental Therapeutics and yeah, maybe what were some of the mindset, mindset shifts you underwent?

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Eike to Christopher talking]

Prof. Christopher McDevitt: Yeah, no, that's that's a really great question and I guess it builds on sort of what Ruth was saying. So for me as an academic, one of the big challenges was recognising that I needed a completely different skill set to take what was a discovery piece of technology that I loved, but then to, how to get that into ultimately the hands of the consumers. And so that was, as I said, a different, quite a different set of skills and a different knowledge base to sort of move through those phases and it was really recognising that that was very different to what I had in my team. So I'm a traditional academic researcher, so most of my team are postdoctoral researchers or PhD students, people who are very invested in the discovery science and they love that and they're great at that. But discovery scientists are quite happy to normally sit in uncertainty and really explore ideas over a very long period of time and potentially making quite incremental gains in capability and that's not at all what you want for a translational program.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Eike to Christopher talking]

These are milestone driven projects that need to sort of achieve certain outcomes over a period of time, but also be thinking about the business development pieces as well. And so it was really recognising that the team I had in place were not at all the team that I needed in order to try and move that on. And so really, there was only one postdoc in my team, Dr. Bliss Cunningham, who's here somewhere, who was, who was willing to actually go on that journey with me. The rest of my team didn't want to do it. And so Bliss and I had to really assemble an entirely new team to run in parallel with our discovery research program, to sort of really build out that capability in, you know, milestone driven research and preparing for those other activities that we needed to do. And so I guess that was a really interesting and important lesson for us, for me, that the team that got me there to the starting line of this journey with all the knowledge that we had to build and sort of understand, was not the team to come the rest of the way with us, we needed an entirely new team to sort of help facilitate that process.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking and pointing at Hugo]

Eike Zeller: Yeah, yeah. Thanks so much. Yeah, Hugo, have you had similar experiences with some of the companies you have been mentoring?

[Image continues to show Olga, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Hugo talking]

Hugo LeMessurier: In terms of the challenges?

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking]

Eike Zeller: Yeah, yeah.

[Image continues to show Olga, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Hugo talking]

Hugo LeMessurier: I guess one of the biggest challenges is when you're in a research team, you're trying to solve a very specific problem. And, and that problem may, you may think you know that there's a value to that in the commercial world, but it's not until you go out and talk to people. And I guess the biggest challenge most people have is going from being a researcher behind in a lab where you can read papers, you can talk to your colleagues, to actually going out and talking to the market to find out if there is a real place for your technology, for your baby. And so the groups that I've worked with over the years that have taken that up and really gone out and continued that constantly have been the most successful, because often what they find is what they thought their idea was they'll pivot into something completely different and that's where they get success. So being able to address or go out to the market really early on and continually doing that is one of the most important things. If you don't do that, then you can often find you've spent years developing something that nobody wants. And then you've got a baby that you love that nobody else loves and it's really hard to get past that.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking and pointing at Hugo]

Eike Zeller: Yeah. And in terms of like support mechanisms, anything you have seen, like how people exceptionally well used some of the support mechanisms maybe to help them in their journey?

[Image continues to show Olga, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Hugo talking]

Hugo LeMessurier: So, look, I mean, I've done, I've worked with the ON program for many years, but I've also worked with a number of other accelerators. Accelerators are a great way to do it. What they do is they help you have a safe space to try and understand or have time to understand whether your opportunity or your technology has a market potential. And I guess the companies that, or the groups that have done the best and have become companies have become successful are the ones that have really jumped into that. They're quite humble, I always find. They know what they don't know and they seek what they seek the answers to the things they don't know. And that can come from people in the network, from experts, from coaches, it can be from people they talk to. So I think the support mechanism is all around you. You do have support from the universities as well and the TTOs can be great support as well, you know, and sometimes you can be at odds with them but if you can come to a good arrangement with them, they can be really useful.

[Image continues to show Olga, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Hugo talking]

I guess the other thing that is, is really important as well is to start talking to investors beyond the grant schemes. Grant schemes are great and they're good support mechanisms for early on but when you get past the grants, you really have to be able to talk to an investor or someone who's going to give you money. So I think anyone who can help you to understand how to present your technology in a, in a way that an investor can understand, as opposed to the way that a grant body will understand, is really important. And you can find them again on the accelerators, you can find them just by using your own networks and everyone has a support network around you. So what I would say is speak to as many people as you can about what you do, because you actually don't know who around you is going to help you. And most people will spend time to help you if you ask. So they're some of the, the best support mechanisms that I find.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking]

Eike Zeller: Cool. And Olga, you've mentioned the lack of the awareness is a big hurdle. Like what are some activities researchers could undertake to become more aware on what's possible and what support is available?

[Image continues to show Hugo, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Olga talking]

Dr Olga Hogan: Yeah, I think like because for example, Breakthrough Victoria, we have, we have partnerships with our universities in Victoria here to create pre-seed funds that, and I'm still seeing an ecosystem, quite a lot of researchers not even aware that these funds exist. They don't know who to talk to and when we meet them somewhere on some other events. But the biggest challenge is actually PhD students, PhD students or early career researchers, they’re not on LinkedIn. This is where we advertise, this is where we create our community, this is where investors see, this is where industry hangs out. And so they, effectively PhD students probably only listen to the supervisors and it kind of creates this little echo chambers. One of our programs is investment and fellowships, which is $150k investment in a recent PhD graduates. Our biggest competitor is a lack of awareness that we exist and we kind of have to do the start-up thing, we have to beg universities to stick up, for example, information about fellowship on scholarship pages. We have to like work with our colleagues in the pre-seed funds to drive the awareness with accelerators on our campuses. But it's just literally that's what I'm talking the lack of awareness, what's possible. Probably the most practical step, sign up for LinkedIn and start following CSIRO ON.

[Laughter can be heard as image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Christopher and Eike listening to Ruth talking]

Dr Ruth Park-Jones: A nice plus.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking]

Eike Zeller: Yeah true, true. Okay, so let's move over like maybe onto the funding side of things a bit. Yeah. like I remember when I was in the start-up, like it was deep tech and like Australia like, like funding from Australia was like, yeah, the people handing out the funding were incredibly risk averse so most of our funding actually came from the US and Korea back then.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking and pointing at Christopher]

I'm just curious, yeah, Chris, maybe you could tell us a bit about your funding journey. I think you have received some non-dilutive funding in the past and maybe like, yeah, how these grants tie in with your funding strategy and yeah, what our future funding opportunities are you're looking to pursue.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Eike to Christopher talking]

Prof. Christopher McDevitt: Yeah, that's a great question. So non-dilutive funding, so you see as an academic, grants have really always been sort of the bedrock of our, in my research, programs. And even as we've been developing our technology and trying to sort of advance it into these more translational phases, we’ve still relied on non-dilutive funding through grants as really one of the key driving components of how we try to progress through our key development phases. And so that's always going to stay a part of it. But what's happened is we've really transitioned from those more discovery type research funding programs to ones that are much more industry aligned or directly translational grants. And that's really required a quite a big shift in how we sort of prepare those grants and the nature of, these have business cases go with them. They have to have the right sort of components around. You know, we understand what our market size looks like.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Eike to Christopher talking]

We understand what people our customers, whether it's a clinician or a patient, what they're seeking with as well. And so non-dilutive funding through grants will stay part of our program. But when we go to talk to VCs or family office representatives or even angel investors, we can show that part of our strategy to keep our development program going has been our capacity to secure these translational funding programs, these grants and that really helps us also make the case that, you know, those were assessed by people with industry expertise as well. And so our therapeutic development programs really been fully assessed and validated by, you know, people with really strong expertise in those areas. So that's helpful and we're going to continue to rely on non-dilutive funding through grants as we try to move our program forward. We're also going to try and seek further investment with venture capital opportunities in the US and Australia as well, angel investors and again, philanthropists. But we're really looking for people who are really strongly aligned with our core mission in terms of trying to get an effective therapeutic into the hands of individuals who have or are at high risk of drug resistant infections.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking]

Eike Zeller: I have a question here that's coming in from the audience and it's basically how have you seen non VC backable but still potentially good, good businesses get funded? And is there a repeatable model for that or is it very ad hoc if that happens?

[Image continues to show Olga, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Hugo talking]

Hugo LeMessurier: I can take that one. So, every, every company with a good team and a good opportunity that they can present to an investor is investable. It just depends on what you're trying to do and achieve. So as an angel investor, I invest very early, probably companies that are less than $1 million in valuation and I invest on a team, I invest on a technology that looks like it makes sense and the ability for that team to deliver. When you talk to a VC, a VC needs to, you know, their fund may only have ten years, so they need to put money in and then they need to get the money out, they’re looking for really large opportunities because they need to get 20 times their money. So you've got to be able to show that there's a market of $1 billion typically before a VC will say, well, you know, I've got all these other things to look at, I need to invest. And I guess the thing when you think about investment is that as, if you put money in a bank today, you can get 5% interest on it, no risk, just get my 5%. If I put money into a start-up and that start-up might take seven years to get me my money back and maybe half of them get there, all of a sudden my risk has become much higher. So you've already got to present a really good, solid story on how you think you're going to return that money to an investor.

[Image continues to show Olga, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Hugo talking]

So I think there is money available always for good ideas and good teams. You can get, the grants are really good because they're non-dilutive and you know, often I'll invest on the side of a grant where it says you need to have an investor come in on the other side. And so for me, when I invest, that means that I've put my money in, but I've also got some non-dilutive money going in as well, which means that the equity is not being spread out as much. I guess on the other side of that as well, you've got plenty of other sources of investment, you know. People can they can they can use crowdsource funding although I probably wouldn't do so much of that around the equity side because you get a lot of shareholders in your in your business. The R&D tax concession, if anyone's got a business and they're not claiming that, start claiming it because Australia has a really good process whereby if you're not making money, you can get 42.5 cents in the dollar back as a rebate from the government at the end of each financial year on your eligible R&D expenditure. A lot of companies use that to keep themselves going.

[Image continues to show Olga, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Hugo talking]

And I guess the other thing is when you look at getting investors on, always think forward. If someone's put some money in, how far is that going to take the business and how is that going to increase the value of the business? Because an investor is interested in whether the share price is going up. So if I buy a share at a dollar and I can see that that share is going to be worth $10 in two years, and it's been $2 million that's gone in to get that, then it's made sense and it's much easier to convince the the investor to come in. And there's look, there's plenty of other sources of capital as well. You can do, you know, friends, family, some of the most successful ones that I've worked with have put their own money in to start with, and most of them have paid it back within six to nine months or 12 months. But it makes them pretty committed when they do that.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking]

Eike Zeller: Yeah.

[Image continues to show Hugo, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Olga talking]

Dr Olga Hogan: I think the most important part is probably start the conversation. What's common mistake I see in our ecosystem, the moment they see your label investor, people start pitching at you. Rather than saying, tell me more about your fund, what for example, investment mandate like, which areas are you investing? What are you looking for? Have that conversation first rather than let me just straight away pitch it to you. This is what we're doing, are you going to invest? And I was like, I could have stopped you there. I was like, we're not supporting, for example, dating apps.

[Laughter can be heard as image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking]

Eike Zeller: Yeah, yeah, maybe that's a good segue to yeah, one of the the other questions here is that one challenge in translational research is that grants industry funding and start-up capital are often treated as separate pathways. Have you seen examples where these funding sources were deliberately integrated into a coordinated strategy, and what lessons can others learn from those models? And I think it's like that strategy piece. Yeah, maybe? Does anyone want to comment on that?

[Image continues to show Olga, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Hugo talking]

Hugo LeMessurier: So, sorry, I missed a bit of the question.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking]

Eike Zeller: So it's basically the question is like a lot of the funding methods are treated sort of separately. How can they be more integrated into, into like a cohesive strategy and what lessons can be learned for, for others?

[Image continues to show Olga, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Hugo talking]

Hugo LeMessurier: Ok. So I can use an example. I won't use the company, but they were really successful at doing an investment strategy around grants. And so every time they'd go out and raise money, they'd say, we've had this much money back from the R&D tax incentive, we've raised grants from Australian granting bodies. They also went out into Europe, they were a drug company and they set up an office in Denmark, Belgium I think it was, and they accessed money over there as well. Part of their whole strategy was as you invest with us, we're going to find non-dilutive funding. So it means that your shares are going to go up higher in value, hopefully without you being diluted out. So part of the strategy is to show that alignment, but never let grants drive your direction, because grants are there for a specific purpose and they're not always specifically aligned with what you want to do. And the other side of it is, I think with grant funding and a lot of researchers coming out of universities, you get a grant and it gives you two or three years worth of funding, and that's your job. In a business, you've got to move quickly because the market moves around you. So if you get a grant, try to do it faster, try to deliver the work faster because you're adding value to your business and then you can go out and you can raise more money at a higher valuation, which means less dilution and probably more money. And from an investor's perspective, seeing you move and continuing to progress is really important to making that next investment.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking]

Eike Zeller: Okay. I have a question for Olga. I saw her investment into deep tech often requires a bit more longer investment horizons and like bigger risk appetite. How do you evaluate risk and like commercial commercial viability at Breakthrough Victoria? And how is that different from, let's say a traditional like software VC?

[Image continues to show Hugo, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Olga talking]

Dr Olga Hogan: I don't think it's different. It's the same, it’s just the risk profile is slightly different. And actually there is a very good graphic from Boston Consulting Group and Hello Tomorrow report.

[Image continues to show Hugo, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Olga talking and drawing a triangle in the air with her hand]

And it's effectively triangle - on one axis you have your science risk or technology risk, will it work, will it not work?

[Image continues to show Hugo, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Olga talking]

And you know, in like, for example, in drug development, there is a very, very high risk. But on the other axis you have your market risk. If it works, will customer buy you? If it's a drug like which cures cancers, of course there's going to be a market so the market risk is very low. On the other hand software low technology risk - if something doesn't work, you throw a bunch of software developers on this or change the platform you're working from but the market risk is very high. How many new software we need for project planning? Apparently quite a lot because they keep popping up. And somewhere in the middle it's something we call deep tech, it’s medium, medium to high technology risk and medium to high market risk. Because sometimes in research, commercialisation at deep tech, what you're building, you don't have the market yet for. So that's why kind of you're looking at this like that.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking]

Eike Zeller: Yeah, yeah. Cool. And like beyond, like, financial incentives, like say, if you invest into like any teams, what other support do you provide to them?

[Image continues to show Hugo, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Olga talking]

Dr Olga Hogan: It again, doesn't matter whether it's a software or hardware or life sciences, it's a team. It's humans. Are they coachable? That's why programs like CSIRO ON, where people actually mentored and supported and coached by, is great because it's also to investors, and I don't know if people participated in a bootcamp, but the mentors and coaches actually can provide feedback to investors saying, look, that was actually a fantastic team. They learned so much. They started doing, knowing nothing, but they were hungry. They leaned in. That's, you know, and that's a great human risk de-risking.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking and pointing at the panel members]

Eike Zeller: Yeah, yeah. Cool. And like, I recognise that we have like a lot of different perspectives sitting here. Like we have founders, we have like tech transfer offices and commercialisation departments, we have VCs and mentors.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking]

I'm just curious, like so often there can be some friction between let's say the uni for example, want to, like, maintain protection about, like, of the IP and, like the VC interests maybe to maximise like the chances of multiplying their investments while the researchers want to just grow their business and make as much impact as possible. That's a question for Ruth maybe to start off with others to, to jump in as well. So how do we structure a spin out that's investor ready from day one?

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Christopher and Eike listening to Ruth talking]

Dr Ruth Park-Jones: Yeah. So that's a really good question. We'll have to ask the investors shortly whether we're getting it right or not. So I think, I think from a, from a university perspective, I think we, there is a decision that's made at some point that the start-up spin out is the right vehicle to take that forward and so that decision doesn't isn't come out lightly. And so there's there's questions there around the severability of IPS so can the IP be packaged up nicely and and put into a start-up. And so I think in terms of getting something, the package ready for for investment, I think that’s, that's a really big part of it, so getting the IP right. I think there's also a piece around the the founding team and how motivated and driven they are. I think Hugo talked about the fact that, you know, you can, you want a team that you can mentor as an investor and you can kind of take forward. And I think one of the areas that we often fall down is that is that really clear business plan like that really clear what is, what funding do we need for what and how is that going to reach the next value inflection point?

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Christopher and Eike listening to Ruth talking]

But I think underlying all of it is, is having really good conversations with some initially some friendly investors, I think, to kind of test, test, the test the water. But I think, yeah, it really is about kind of breaking down those, those barriers. I think I've heard before that it's it's the tenth conversation with investors where they actually start, like they actually go, oh yeah, now I get what you're talking about. So I think communicating more is, is I think the key. And then you, then you can adapt to, to suit. And also don't think that the first investor that you speak to is the right investor for you. Investors have different profiles and different, they have different needs and work differently. And so I think there's, you know, there's a bit of an interview both ways too.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking and pointing at the panel members]

Eike Zeller: Yeah. Anyone else to add or like different perspectives?

[Image continues to show Olga, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Hugo talking]

Hugo LeMessurier: So to be investor ready from day one spin out of uni is pretty hard.

[Laughter can be heard as image continues to show Olga, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Hugo talking]

You know, the ON program is great because that prepares people for this sort of thing and these sorts of programs do that. I think having the IP sorted out very early on is really important guys, because if the IP isn't clear, then there's no value for an investor coming in and putting money in. You know, you've got to know that you've got freedom to use the IP and that the IP is in a, in a format that is, is able to be commercialised. That's really important. So got to work with your university on that and be really clear on that. I guess the other side of it is that if you're really going to be investable, you have to have started the market conversations. You know, you really have to have spoken to people in the market to understand where the value lies. And you've got to be able to clearly, clearly convey in, in a short amount of time what you're doing. So I'm doing one right now, it’s in a very specific space. There's six of us setting it up, and we've spent the last nine months just trying to get supply chain worked out, trying to get our business model worked out. I can probably now say in a, in a few sentences what we did but six months ago it sounded like garble and I, and I, and I didn't know what it was, we hadn't really worked it out.

[Image continues to show Olga, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Hugo talking]

So spend the time working out what it is you think is your, is your product, your market and being able to communicate that to people. And then when you have the conversation with an investor, they're going to throw up lots of different questions, lots of different things to you, but you're ready to have that conversation. So IP first, make sure you have that and then be prepared to say this is a commercial thing. It's not looking for a grant. You're trying to sell something to the marketplace. And in actual fact, when you sell your business, you're actually selling equity, which is a product. You need to understand who the investor is and what makes them tick to your point, you know, different investors, different invest in different things. So you're actually selling a different product to what you think you are and that's a hard thing to get your head around, but it's the reality of it.

[Image continues to show Hugo, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Olga talking]

Dr Olga Hogan: Can I disagree with you?

[Image continues to show Olga, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Hugo talking]

Hugo LeMessurier: Yeah, absolutely.

[Image continues to show Hugo, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Olga talking]

Dr Olga Hogan: I think the customer conversations and the market conversation needs to come first before IP conversations. And then run them once you understand that kind of like where it fits because that will also drive what kind of IP it will be. Is it going to be like royalty? Is it going to be like one off of equity and stuff because you kind of know what you're going to be selling.

[Image continues to show Olga, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Hugo talking]

Hugo LeMessurier: So there's another side to that, is that if I go out and show you a huge market, then the conversation can be “This is really big, really valuable. We want a lot of royalties” or “we want a lot of equity.” And you don't know what it is until you've done it. And to have the conversation with the customer before you've got access to it, you're already starting to have conversations with potential investors. You really want to know that you've got the intellectual property in some sort of a format that everyone's happy with before, because I just see the green eyed goblin of greed come out and all of a sudden the conversation changes and it can then get bogged down in it. So there's both perspective, you know, points of, of equal, but I think I've seen the I've seen the other one happen more often.

[Image continues to show Hugo, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Olga talking]

Dr Olga Hogan: Fair enough.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Eike to Christopher talking]

Prof. Christopher McDevitt: Can I disagree with both of you?

[Image continues to show Olga, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Hugo talking]

Hugo LeMessurier: Yes. This is good.

[Laughter can be heard as image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Eike to Christopher talking]

Prof. Christopher McDevitt: Not quite. But if you're coming at it though, obviously there's the the mentor and the investors, but in terms of I guess I come from the the inventor side potentially and really my experience would be in terms of I had no idea what spin out readiness viability would look like. As the academic it was, I've got some, I got a cool idea, I want to see how far I can take it. And then there's an IP position that needs to be secured. And that's where your BD team are really important to say get that invention disclosure in but I'm not even, at that stage we weren't even thinking about a spin out or anything else, but we were thinking we want to keep the money coming in and it was a grant that we would need to get. But those moving into that translational space means you need to start thinking about a business case and as an academic that's not a strength. So that's where getting expertise from your BD team, starting to understand those questions of talking to the market, understanding what that looks like, making sure the IP position is able to be advanced.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Eike to Christopher talking]

I can't remember the cadence, it was probably IP first, but then thinking about sizing up the market and then figuring out what does regulation even look like. And so we're sort of unpacking all this together. And you start with your university’s BD team, in our case, that was how we started to progress it. But again, also bringing in other expertise as necessary to sort of help it. So I think that's, I guess from the inventors side. But again, it depends, I guess, where you are in the ecosystem and sort of how that needs to sort of come together to really support that pathway of progression. But I think they're all linked, it just depends on, I suppose the, the perspectives you're taking from to to look at the problem with.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking]

Eike Zeller: Yeah. Have you seen like any like interesting things that are, that are reoccurring that like some of the researchers have done practically to maximise their chances of getting the deals over the line?

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Eike to Christopher talking]

Prof. Christopher McDevitt: That's a great question. This course would probably be a really good one in terms of yeah, so as an academic trying to move into that space, trying to start thinking about getting deals. I think probably one of the most important things is to recognise what your message is the pitching, pitching, pitching, learning what that message is, how it has to be right for the person you're speaking with. It might be the tenth conversation, it might be the hundredth conversation. You need to keep having them, always pitching, always making it, getting that message really sharpened and refined is really important. But understanding, as I said, you know, what a philanthropist might want to hear is going to be very different from what a venture capital investor is going to be looking for as well. And so all of them are potentially good sources of investment or gift revenue to help progress what you're trying to do. But, again, how you need to speak to them is very different.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Eike to Christopher talking]

And then being patient because there's quite a lot of time where you're having these conversations that can be quite slow and then suddenly things can take off very quickly once people have decided that you actually have shown them what they want to see. And then that's where having a team around you that you've got a lot of high trust in, who can tell you this, this is all looking fine, it’s time to go that you know, that you can pull the trigger on sort of moving forward because all the due diligence has been done in order to enable you to move at speed when it has to happen like that.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking and pointing at Ruth]

Eike Zeller: Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. And I think, I think that I have heard like quite a few times in the past was like, yeah, really that communication piece that you mentioned, Ruth, like keeping everyone in the loop and not like progressing conversations just with one party to, to stay.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Christopher and Eike listening to Ruth talking]

Dr Ruth Park-Jones: And universities are notoriously not great at the communication side. So, so I think that, I think that's really critical, I think. And to the point around sort of how researchers or potential founders can consider position themselves, well, I think I'd like to think that having a really early conversation with their tech transfer team or the, you know, the business development team within their universities to kind of have a bit of a think about what, what's possible and, and sort of make, help them make those connections. I think the good thing about a lot of universities in Australia now is that they've, they've done this multiple times before, not always well, but they have done things multiple times before and so there's lots of lessons learned. And I think that that is a free service to, to academics at universities, to come and hear all the horror stories from their tech transfer office.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking]

Eike Zeller: Yeah. Yeah.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Eike to Christopher talking]

Prof. Christopher McDevitt: Can I add to that? As an academic, getting to know my BD team rep, now Jackie who's here, I speak to him all the time. It's not a one and done conversation. It's an ongoing conversation and it's really sort of a constant process and that's, you know, not part of the team formally, but in no way can we what we've been doing happens without sort of that really strong engagement. And that's been a really important piece because, again, that bridges that gulf that sort of sits between having come through the academy but now trying to move out of it in terms of, you know, trying to progress, develop something into a translational space. It’s been really important to again, recognise that's a skill set that's the TTOs bring that exists outside. You know, it exists there within the institution to help the academics take advantage of that.

[Laughter can be heard as image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Christopher and Eike listening to Ruth talking]

Dr Ruth Park-Jones: And Chris lucked out. He got an awesome BD at Melbourne University. He did well - and it wasn't me.

[Image continues to show Olga, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Hugo talking]

Hugo LeMessurier: There’s, there's another thing there, that when you're looking to spin out of a university, go and speak to other companies that have done it. Your tech transfer will tell you who's done it and go and have a chat to the teams, find out what their, you know, what they did, what they thought they did right, what they thought they didn't do so well, how they managed that process, how they manage the understanding of the process because it's something that's not in your normal job. And it is something that's in the normal job with the TTO but, you know, it's it's great to speak to people who have actually done it so that you can understand the process from their perspective as well and that really helps to, to make it easier. I find for, for most founders.

[Image continues to show Hugo, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Olga talking]

Dr Olga Hogan: Or go to the university based pre-seed funds because they're actually interested. They're like your potentially first check and the first believers and they will negotiate with CTOs if you’re investable.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking]

Eike Zeller: Yeah, yeah. Cool. Yeah, I want to quickly touch a bit on like positioning for like impact and investment. Like I, I remember when I was in the start-up and was, we were going through Techstars, I'll never forget one of the mentors said to us, customers are your oxygen, never forget this. And yeah, my question for Hugo, like, yeah, like founders for, like, deep tech start-ups often like pitch more like from the science may be rather than the commercial value. Like could you touch a bit on like how researcher like turning founder should kind of restructure the narrative about what they're pitching?

[Image continues to show Olga, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Hugo talking]

Hugo LeMessurier: Sure, sure. I mean, you know, you can have the best science in the world and you can have the best idea in the world and it can seem like it's just got to have a market but in reality you have to pay to develop that. You need to get funds in to do that, you need to have customers that want to buy that, you need to pay for your staff that you have employed, you need to pay for if you're building a good, your product and the whole requirement to get a product to market is more than just having a great idea. And in fact, having a great idea is just the smallest part of it. I mean, in the biotech game, you know, and I'll use that as an example, you know, it may cost you, you may get five million or seven million in grants just to get to the point where you've got something that looks like it's a good potential drug. You’re going to spend upwards of another 400 million just getting it into the marketplace to the point where you have perhaps an approval from an FDA and then to take it to market it can take another billion dollars for the pharmaceutical company that takes it to market to go out there and sell it to the marketplace.

[Image continues to show Olga, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Hugo talking]

So in reality, that small idea worth five to seven million is a very small part of the total cost. And so when an investor looks at something, they're going to be looking at and going, well, how are we going to get a return on that? And so it's really important to understand that when you're communicating to people that you're talking about, how am I going to get it to market, not just how good is my science. And that's a difficult thing to do. But you know, again, accelerator programs and things like that help you to look at all the different aspects. And I'm sure Chris could say that, you know, that's the important bit to understand when you're talking to investors in that respect.

[Image continues to show Hugo, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Olga talking]

Dr Olga Hogan: Yeah, 100% agree. One of our like founder and fellowship program, started talking to investors and saying, look, you're going to be working, solving very hard problems for very small market. Find a bigger market first and then if you want to be solving that problem for that specific market, you can do that later. But start with the larger problem and larger market because it's going to take you ten years and many, many millions to get there. And the second revelation was like, nobody cares when I get into like meeting with surgeons, nobody cares about my technology. People asking, how is it going to fit into my operational workflows? How do I dispose it? How much does it cost it? How do we clean it? How does it attach to my instruments? Everyone assumes, especially if you’re a researcher, that the science will eventually work at some point, especially if it's a hardware, not a lot of science. But if people are just more customers again interested in like, how is that going to fit into my daily life?

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking and pointing to Christopher]

Eike Zeller: Yeah. Do you want to maybe add some of your, like, commercialisation journey on what. Were there some points where you had to pivot or some moments?

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Eike to Christopher talking]

Prof. Christopher McDevitt: Well, I think probably the hardest moments have largely been through understanding, I guess, the speed at which your industry sort of partners really want you to move to address some of the key technical challenges. And in our case, we've been developing a non-traditional therapeutic. And so in many cases, the models that exist there for traditional therapeutics aren't the right ones. And so we've had to take our scientific expertise to sort of make the case that we need to do things in a different way to a traditional development program. But again, this is where they come to us with scientific expertise.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Eike to Christopher talking]

But that said, what we're trying to do is de-risk that development pathway in order to show that, you know, this is a product that has the potential to reach the market because we've done that 0.1% inspiration and the 99.9%, you know, perspiration and investment still needs to come from somewhere. And so we have to sort of just work with our partners to sort of try and sort of manage that risk environment in order to keep supporting the scale of investment that's going to take. But again, also having a view towards, you're right, how big a phase three clinical trial, how big a phase two clinical trial, what does it look like? What's going to cost to get through each one of those development phases? You know, and again, that's not something that in your, in our traditional academic environment we're trained to do. And this is where courses like this, working with your TTOs becomes really important to understand, how do you develop, how do you get those answers in order to have those conversations? And you know, again, how do you have them in a way that shows that you've done that work to have strong and compelling answers to the, how you're going to get your product out there into ultimately the hands of the consumer or in our case, patients.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking]

Eike Zeller: Yeah.

[Image continues to show Olga, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Hugo talking]

Hugo LeMessurier: And I think there’s a real value to finding support on that, finding people in the domain who've done it before. Get an advisory group around you. Go out and speak to them. As researchers, you have a massive number of people you can speak to, but talk to people who've done it before. Talk to people who understand the industry, understand the nuances and you'll get there much faster because you won't go down the dead end, dead ends that they've gone down in the past. And don't be afraid to do it, people are really happy to help you out. So try to bring, try to bring in and you know, if you're in Australia, get some people from the US if your market's going to be the US. If it's Europe, go to Europe, you know. And get them engaged with you because they really will help you shortcut everything and find a faster way to do what you're doing, which means probably cost you less to do and makes you more investable.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking]

Eike Zeller: Yeah. And yeah, you'll find a lot of people in the ecosystem are more than happy to help if you just reach out, you often like, run in open doors. Just one, maybe we have time for one more question from the audience which is, yeah, can we talk a bit more about building a commercial commercialisation strategy as early as possible, and what would that be require from a whole of the uni perspective? Maybe that's a question for you Ruth.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Christopher and Eike listening to Ruth talking]

Dr Ruth Park-Jones: Yeah. No, I think, and I think kind of just to, I guess, kind of leans back into what we've been saying around sort of having lots of conversations. So I think a good commercialisation strategy covers all sorts of different things. So it covers you know, we've talked about IP a little bit, but really about sort of how you're going to get whatever this great idea is, how are you going to get it into the hands of the person that's going to take it to market and what that looks like. So I think, I think having conversations with people that can help fill those gaps for you because no one has all the answers to all of those questions. And so I think, I really like Hugo's idea of having an advisory group built around. And I've seen some really great pictures where the team slide has an advisory group kind of and some really great pictures of people that are KOL’s in different areas.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Christopher and Eike listening to Ruth talking]

So I think I think when you're developing commercial strategy, commercialisation strategy, I mean don't don't do it alone. Certainly don't do it, you know, at a desk like I think you need to be out having some conversations with people about who needs it. I mean, we, we always talk about sort of the, the, the could we/should we kind of questions. The could we is the easy bit, that’s the university Tech Transfer Office can do due diligence and work out whether there's encumbrances and can the IP be carved out and all those sorts of things. I think the should we is the fun bit, right? That's the bit where it's is this something that is going to make a difference? Is this something that someone else is going to care about and want to invest in enough to get it to market? So I think, I think for me, you need to cover off on those things in your commercialisation strategy.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking]

Eike Zeller: Yeah. Cool. Thanks so much. Yeah, maybe, maybe like I see the timer ticking down here in front of us, but like maybe to like wrap up, we can do like just a quick round for everyone basically just to share like what's one practical thing a researcher could do tomorrow to get themselves moving forward on their commercialisation journey.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Eike to Christopher talking]

Prof. Christopher McDevitt: So as a researcher, contact your TTO, talk to your BD team. Start there. They're the first place, an amazing font of knowledge. That's what they can do tomorrow or today even.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Christopher and Eike listening to Ruth talking]

Dr Ruth Park-Jones: Oh awesome. Chris has drank the Kool-Aid. That’s so good.

[Laughter can be heard as image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Eike to Christopher talking]

Prof. Christopher McDevitt: Definitely.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Christopher and Eike listening to Ruth talking]

Dr Ruth Park-Jones: So, so for me, it's actually having, having those conversations. So find some people that, that have done it before, some other founders, and start to have a conversation because it might, it might sway you to, to do things a little differently.

[Image continues to show Olga, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Hugo talking]

Hugo LeMessurier: I think probably take the leap in your mind. Remember your family comes with this as well. So make sure you communicate this to others. And I guess the thing that I always say to people, and maybe it's right or wrong, what's the worst thing that can ever happen? You can go and get another job, and you're all employable. You can do it again. I do have one example of one researcher who was really good, and she was able to manage to get her institution to give her a year's leave to go off and do it and if she decided she wanted to come back at the end, she could come back to her job. And that was the thing that gave her the leap of faith to go and do it. And she called me on the last day and said, I'm not sure if I want to do it. And I said, do you really want to go back to that? She said, no, and I said, well, then you've made your choice, haven't you? And she did. And she now has 30 people working for her and it's going really well, you know.

[Image continues to show Hugo, Ruth, Christopher and Eike listening to Olga talking]

Dr Olga Hogan: And before you do that leap of faith and I can say that, I don't work for CSIRO, I suggest strongly encourage everyone to go through ON Prime, ON Accelerate. This is probably in terms of access to mentors who've done it, who have lived experience and advice actually you can rely on, it's because people actually walked in their shoes. It's unprecedented. There's like humble mentors like Hugo. There is Sherman I can see at the back in the white t shirt who literally introduced one of the start-ups who is pitching today to the global healthcare provider, and that's completely unlocks it. So that's the kind of the calibre of mentors you have here.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking]

Eike Zeller: Oh, thank you so much. Before we go, can I just see a quick show of hands? Who's actually a researcher in the room?

[Image continues to show Chris raising his hand as Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking]

Yeah.

[Image continues to show Olga, Hugo, Ruth and Christopher listening to Eike talking]

So there's one thing you can actually do today and don't even have to wait till tomorrow. Yeah. Just make sure, strike up a conversation in the break, get to know the other people that are here as well, because you never know where it will take you and what potential doors it will open for you. Could I just get like a massive random applause, round of applause for our panel?

[Applause can be heard as the image continues to show the panel member clapping, and then the image changes to show the CSIRO logo with text: CSIRO, Australia’s National Science Agency]