Funding Pre-Permission
We back the scientists and engineers who power, feed and heal.
They build twice: once to make it work, and once to earn permission to sell it. We invest pre-permission, backing founders from Japan, Australia and New Zealand.
What an approval names
The first build proves the product works. The second earns the right to sell it. A regulator records that right against four things: the site, the process, the quality system and the file.
In Japan, adding or changing a device's main assembly site needs a partial-change approval and a new quality-system inspection first. The regulator inspects every approved device again every five years. In Australia, a generator agrees its performance standards for one connection point, and any alteration goes back for assessment.
A buyer who acquires the company keeps all four. A buyer who rebuilds restarts each one on the regulator's clock. A model can shorten the first build. It cannot shorten an inspection.
Necessity is the thesis
Energy, food and care reach us through systems built for another technological era. Their physical foundations are now being rebuilt. In the power plant, the paddock and the clinic, founders are applying advances in intelligence, biology and engineering inside markets whose rules predate those capabilities.
These are systems society cannot afford to fail, so technology enters them by earning permission. Our thesis: value in a necessity moves towards whoever holds its regulated layer, and we invest where that movement is already underway.
Three systems qualify on two conditions: demand that holds through every cycle, and failure counted in blackouts, shortages and untreated disease. We back the companies that need permission to sell into them, not the software that checks compliance.
We meet founders before the round exists.
Source before the first round
These companies reach conventional venture networks late, if at all, and many founders are still working on the technical problem when we first meet them. We map each market, identify the companies inside it and approach the teams before a raise begins.
Work on the second build
The technology usually works. The open questions are commercial: who buys, which budget pays, how large the reachable market is and how the company wins its first customers. We work through them with the founders.
Enter locally, scale internationally
Exit routes differ by market, and thin local capital shapes entry pricing. We invest before international capital sets the price, then help founders build towards the markets where their customers and eventual acquirers operate.