Anthony Chong’s Post

Building and scaling deeptech requires team with diverse capabilities and experiences. It's really great to see A*StartCentral shortlist the technologies and the researchers and then organise events like this to identify potential co-founders and assess potential fit! Providing and facilitating such connections is so valuable as the likelihood of the researcher to have their own connections is so slim! Wishing the team and the event great success.

Your next startup needs to start with the right idea AND the right people. Think: high-intensity, pressure-cooker collaboration to test compatibility before the startup journey begins. At the heart of every deeptech venture is a researcher driven not just by discovery but by the ambition to see their work create real-world impact. To better the odds: 65% of startups fail due to founder conflict (HBR), so we created ASPIRE (Aligning Startup Personalities, Innovation and Research Expertise). It brings together scientists and business professionals through a profiling and matching programme. Designed to assemble the right team and idea. Scroll the below innovators' profiles give have a glimpse into motivations, values, and what truly drives them to build. 👥 15 researchers 📅 2-day programme (25-26 May 2026) 🚀 Seeking co-founders and core team members Check them out now: https://lnkd.in/gmniukU8 Don't miss the deadline: 30th April 2026. ✨ Take a scroll. Find the people you might build with. Success isn’t just about ideas. It’s about alignment, trust, and shared vision. #astartupjourney #deeptech #founders #venturebuildwithASTAR #venturebuild

⏳ Last 3 days. Final call. To the 3,000 who've viewed our launch of ASPIRE: if you’ve been thinking about joining a startup, finding a co-founder, or doing something more meaningful with your skills, this is it. Applications for ASPIRE (Aligning Startup Personalities, Innovation and Research Expertise) close 30 April 2026. What we have ready to go: 👥 12 deeptech technologies, pre-spinoff 🚀 Real opportunities for co-founder and core team roles What we don’t have yet are enough of the right people on the other side: operators, builders, and curious minds ready to step in. Because startups don’t fail from lack of ideas. They fail when the right people never meet. ASPIRE is designed to fix that. Intentional matching, profiling, and a 2-day pressure cooker (25-26 May 2026) to test real working chemistry. No fluff. No spectators. Just people serious about building. 👉 Browse the profiles: https://lnkd.in/g-H7GGXG 🗓 Deadline: 30 April 2026 #astartupjourney #deeptech #founders #venturebuildwithASTAR #venturebuild

David Kiewlich just said what almost nobody in biotech will say publicly: the pitch deck has become the primary filter for founder evaluation, and the correlation between deck quality and company outcome is weak at best. He's right. And it gets more interesting when you look at why. The funny part, I actually pitch really well. The harder problem has been getting in front of the right audience. Decks aren't the bottleneck. Audience-fit is. What nobody talks about: AI and Nano Banana are what made it possible for a founder to iterate at speed. I've built 30+ decks in six months; different audiences, different angles. One year ago I'd still be on the first one waiting for a designer. Presentation and building no longer compete for the same calendar. What hasn't changed is what David named, quality of data, speed of iteration, founder resilience, operational competence. Those still predict outcomes. Thirty years of building. Ten independent external validations on under $600K. Architecture filed before the science named the problem. The deck is how I describe it. The work is what compounds. David is sharing a series this week of things most people in biotech won't say publicly. Worth following.

Unpopular opinion: the biotech pitch deck is one of the most destructive inventions in startup culture. Not because storytelling is unimportant. It is. But because the pitch deck has become the primary artifact by which founders are evaluated, which means the system is optimizing for founders who are good at making decks, not founders who are good at science. I have co-incubated alongside more than 100 founders. I have personally reviewed hundreds of decks and followed those companies' outcomes. The correlation between deck quality and company outcome is weak at best. I have seen stunning decks attached to science that never worked. And I have seen rough, barely-designed decks attached to breakthroughs that changed fields. What predicts outcomes? Quality of data. Speed of iteration. Founder resilience. Operational competence. None of those show up cleanly in a pitch deck. The investment community has built an entire infrastructure around a filtering mechanism that selects for presentation skill. Then it wonders why so many funded companies fail to deliver. This week I am going to share a few things I believe about biotech and startups that most people in this industry will not say publicly. Some of it will be uncomfortable. All of it is based on 30 years of watching what actually works. #biotech #founders #startups #venturecapital #pitchdecks

🚀 The wait is finally over. We’re so excited to share 12 A*STAR - Agency for Science, Technology and Research technologies that are ready for commercialisation. They are now looking for the right co‑founders to turn them into deep‑tech startups. 👀 Explore the 12 projects and tell us which ones spark your interest. If you’re ready to step up as a deep‑tech founder and co‑build with world‑class science, register your interest and start the journey. This is your chance to come in early — where it matters most.

The era of startups growing in isolation is fading. In today’s landscape, the most resilient and scalable companies are built through collaboration, not silos. Especially in the gaming industry — where development, analytics, distribution, and community all intersect — no single team can optimize everything alone. The edge comes from shared expertise, faster iteration, and aligned ecosystems. At CoconutGamers, we strongly believe in growing together: - Collaborating with studios, founders, and tech teams - Sharing knowledge across development and data - Building products that are stronger because they’re not built alone The next wave of successful startups won’t just compete — they’ll co-create. We’re open to discussions, partnerships, and ideas. Let’s build something meaningful together. #StartupEcosystem #Collaboration #GamingIndustry #BuildInPublic #GameDevelopment #TechStartups

𝐈𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮’𝐫𝐞 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐩 𝐢𝐧 2026, 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬. The startup landscape has shifted. The "old" playbook of raising millions to hire dozens of people before finding product-market fit is officially dead. At 𝐖𝐡𝐨 𝐖𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐌𝐕𝐏, we see it every day: Success in 2026 isn't about who has the most resources; it’s about who has the most leverage. 𝐘��𝐮 𝐝𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝:  ❌ 𝐀 𝐛𝐢𝐠 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐦: In the age of AI and modular development, a massive headcount is often just communication debt. ❌ 𝐇𝐮𝐠𝐞 𝐟𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠: Capital is a tool, not a milestone. It won't fix a broken product-market fit. 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝: ✅ 𝐅𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐞𝐱𝐞𝐜𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: If you aren't shipping, you aren't learning. ✅ 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐡 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐧𝐞𝐫: Your tech isn't an expense—it’s the leverage that determines your speed of innovation. ✅𝐂𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠: As we showed in our 21-day MVP build, you win by cutting 60% of the noise and focusing on the core user flow -------------------------------------------------------------------------------  𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲: 𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐞𝐝 > 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 Founders often think they have to choose between "Fast" and "Scalable." That is a false choice. You can launch rapidly without creating the "fix it later" code that kills your velocity in 12 months. The secret isn't doing more work—it's having the discipline to do less, but build it on an architecture that lasts. 𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐚𝐝𝐯𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐞, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐢𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮’𝐫𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧. #WhoWantsTheMVP #StartupFounder #TechStrategy #MVP #BuildInPublic #Entrepreneurship2026 #Innovation #ceo #founders #cto #CTO #technicalpartner

What is a startup, exactly? Italy says under five years old with 15% R&D spend. India sets a $24 million revenue cap. The European Commission's first formal definition, published in March, lands at under 100 employees, €10 million in turnover and less than 10 years old. Y Combinator's Paul Graham asserts that a startup is "a company designed to grow fast". In the lastest Dealroom webinar, Head of Ecosystem Growth Aoife Morrin and Head of Insights Orla Browne argue that the hunt for one universal definition is the wrong fight, and that the most advanced ecosystems have already moved past it. The conversation explores what they measure instead. The discussion covers the metrics usually measured by mature ecosystems across the world: venture capital by stage, the source-of-capital mix, graduation rates between funding rounds, combined enterprise value, unicorns and billion-dollar exits, thoroughbreds, bootstrapped success stories and sector-specific deep dives. A live walkthrough of the Dealroom platform shows how to slice these metrics by HQ, founding location, alumni networks and investor type. Audience questions push into university spinouts versus alumni-founded companies, the flywheel effect from successful exits, limited partner data, and the pitfalls of treating revenue growth as a defining metric for deep tech. Worth a watch 👀 Full video here: https://lnkd.in/egaPmtfE

Growth shouldn’t be limited by geography. The future of incubation is global, connected, and accessible from anywhere. Solutionerz virtual incubation model helps founders access the right ecosystem without being restricted by location or expensive operational structures. We connect startups to: • Global mentors with real industry experience • Pre-vetted investors and funding networks • Trusted partners across tech, design, legal, marketing & finance • Strategic collaborations that accelerate startup growth No unnecessary overhead. No full-time hires needed. Just the right expertise, at the right stage, at the right time. Because startups today don’t just need local support. They need access to global opportunities, smarter systems, and scalable networks. Innovation can come from anywhere. The ecosystem supporting it should too. #VirtualIncubation #GlobalStartups #StartupEcosystem #Innovation #StartupGrowth #FounderSupport #Solutionerz