Since 2002, Tim and his team at Touchstone Group have been at the forefront of raising capital for buyout, growth, and venture funds. With decades of hands-on experience working alongside private equity and venture LPs and GPs, Tim brings deep industry insight and expertise to every conversation.
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Deep tech investing focuses on companies built around fundamental technical breakthroughs rather than incremental software improvements. These businesses tend to emerge from research labs, require longer development cycles, and carry real technical and regulatory risk. The tradeoff is defensibility. If the technology works, it’s difficult to replicate.
I’m joined by Areg Alimian and Ashot Arzumanyan, co-founders and partners at SmartGate VC, to discuss how they approach that tradeoff in practice. SmartGate’s strategy is deliberately positioned ahead of the hype cycle. Rather than pursuing software-only or “AI wrapper” startups, the firm concentrates on physical AI, secure edge infrastructure, and neurotechnology, including brain-computer interfaces with medically grounded use cases and defined regulatory paths.
We discuss how that thesis shapes investment decisions, from early sourcing through follow-on capital, and why security and governance have become gating factors for enterprise AI adoption. Areg draws on his experience as an operator who has built and exited hardware companies and led major product and M&A efforts, while Ashot brings a background in investment advisory, management consulting, and long-term deep-tech investing. The conversation also covers what tends to break when science leaves the lab, how companies are positioned for acquisition, and how technically ambitious ideas are turned into durable businesses.
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Few investors can say they’ve moved from the clinic to the boardroom to the trading floor, but Chen Yu has done exactly that. He left medical school to build a tech startup that went public and was acquired, then returned to biotech by joining Vivo Capital, where he helped grow the fund from $60 million to $5 billion. After nearly two decades, he struck out on his own to launch TCGX, a crossover fund designed to invest in both public and private biotech companies. (more…)
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What does it take to guide one of the world’s longest-standing private equity firms through constant change while still delivering steady results? That’s the perspective we get today from Paul Newsome, someone I’ve known for years and always admired for his clear thinking and good judgment.
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What does it take to build a private equity firm from the ground up in a sector as complex and competitive as agribusiness? That’s the story we’re diving into today with my longtime friend, Sebastian Popik. We’ve known each other for years. I even helped him raise his very first fund, and it’s been great to watch the path he’s carved since then.