Case Studies

A UK university research group had a novel power-electronics technology for the electricity distribution sector and a national innovation funding bid to write. The funding programme required answers to two questions the team did not yet have evidence to answer. What is the market opportunity? And the route to commercial deployment?

Hatch doesn't just advise founders on how to build deep tech companies. The co-founders have done it themselves. In August 2022 Lesley Blaine and Chris Gregory co-founded KYMA Battery Technologies, a US grid storage company built around repurposed EV battery modules. Two years later the demonstrator cascade was complete, the products were certified for commercial use, and the founders exited cleanly.

A UK university TTO had three interrelated patents from a single research group. Technically credible. Commercially uncommitted. Accruing annual prosecution costs. The institutional reflex was to ask whether they could support a spinout. That was the wrong question.

Rooftop wind has a credibility problem. A first generation of products over-promised on siting flexibility, underdelivered on energy yields, and in many cases never reached certification.

A UK university enterprise office had a novel industrial robotics technology for a circular economy application. Working prototype. Real underlying capability. No defensible answer to the questions that determine whether a technology becomes a business who buys first, at what price, and in what commercial form.

A patented wastewater metal recovery process from the University of Strathclyde. A previous commercialisation assessment had selected the wrong beachhead market. The commercial case to move through the public funding pathway did not yet exist in fundable form.

Wrong market. Right technology. £5M. A UK university had developed a novel process for the recovery of battery anode and cathode materials. Technically credible. No market validation. No commercialisation path. No industrial partners.

A UK university research group had two adjacent thermal-energy technologies from the same lead researcher. Both technically credible. Both with a plausible commercial future. The institutional instinct was to commercialise them together as a single spinout. That was the wrong call.