R&D Skepticism
Vertical peer-review panels and a portable endorsement seal
Investors told the LADP roundtables they discount science from universities they do not recognize. Convene vertical advisory boards that peer-review TRL 3–5 ventures and issue a seal investors can read.
The rationale
Deep tech ventures come out of years of PhD-level research, so at seed the dominant risk is whether the underlying science holds, ahead of any market risk. A partner who cannot place the lab has no cheap way to test that, and the default response is delay rather than a decision. Boston Consulting Group estimated in 2023 that the whole journey, from research and prototyping through validation and commercialization, takes 25% to 40% longer to translate into returns than a conventional software company; diligence that stalls on unfamiliar provenance lengthens an already long clock. The report records that the resulting deliberation is sometimes read as bias.
The proposal is one impartial panel per vertical, pairing senior scientists and technology-transfer officers from institutions such as MIT, Stanford, ETH Zurich and Cambridge with LATAM researchers who have commercialized: USP, Unicamp and UFMG in Brazil, UNAM in Mexico, PUC Chile, CONICET in Argentina. Panels would review experimental design, reproducibility and IP robustness at TRL 3 to 5. Ventures that clear the bar could receive an endorsement seal for investor materials plus tailored expert and policy support, and the boards could publish an annual “State of Deep Tech Science” brief. The design is meant to shorten diligence; nothing yet measures whether it does.
The obvious objection is that a seal issued by the people promoting the ventures is worth nothing. Independence has to be engineered: housing inside a multilateral such as the IDB, an intergovernmental academic body or a consortium of leading LATAM universities rather than inside an investment vehicle, a published methodology, and a financing mix of public-private partnerships, multilateral and philanthropic grants and program-tied sponsorship in which honoraria are balanced against non-financial incentives. It is also worth stating what a panel cannot fix. LAC spends 0.57% of GDP on R&D against a 1.92% world average, and no seal substitutes for that.
The evidence
What it unlocks
Diligence that starts from an independent review of the science instead of from the reputation of the university on the founder’s CV.
It has been done before
The European Innovation Council Seal of Excellence
Under Horizon Europe the EIC has awarded more than 300 Seals of Excellence to proposals its independent expert juries judged fundable but which missed the budget line. The Seal carries no money. It is a portable, third-party verdict on scientific and commercial quality that other funders act on, including regional agencies such as Innoviris in Brussels, which runs a dedicated funding line for Seal holders. A validation label works when the jury is independent of the money.
First moves
- 0–6 months
Stand up two pilot panels with a public charter
Convene one board for biotech and one for advanced materials, six to eight members each, half drawn from LATAM’s top patent-filing institutions and half from foreign labs. Publish the charter covering conflicts of interest, honoraria, recusals and the appeal route before the first review.
LADP coalition secretariat + IDB Lab - 6–18 months
Publish the rubric and review the first 30 ventures
Release the TRL 3–5 rubric covering experimental design, reproducibility and IP robustness as an open document, run 30 reviews, and issue seals with a public record of who reviewed what, when, and what share of applicants failed.
The pilot panels + university TTOs (USP, UNAM, PUC Chile, CONICET) - 18–36 months
Bind the seal to capital and publish the annual brief
Secure written commitments from at least three regional funds and two public grant programs to treat the seal as a diligence input, and publish the first “State of Deep Tech Science” brief listing validated technologies and the review record behind each.
Development banks (IDB, CAF) + national innovation agencies (CORFO, FINEP, ANPCyT)
How we would know it worked
- Ventures reviewed at TRL 3–5 per year, published in the annual brief with the pass rate, reaching 100 reviews by year three.
- Median days from first investor contact to term sheet for seal-holding ventures against a matched cohort of reviewed-but-unsealed ventures, tracked by the CVC × Deep Tech Observatory, falling.
- Funds and public grant programs that formally list the seal in a published diligence checklist, counted on the coalition site, rising above ten.
- Share of seal holders that close an international round within 18 months of review, reported annually by the boards.
What could go wrong
Capture by the parties whose ventures are reviewed
A panel housed or paid by people holding equity in the reviewed companies produces a seal no external investor prices. Containment: house the boards outside any investment vehicle, publish every reviewer’s affiliations and recusals with each seal, and cap program-tied corporate sponsorship as a share of the annual budget.
A seal nobody asks for
International investors have no obligation to read a label from an institution they do not know, and a panel that reviews 30 ventures a year that nobody cites is an expensive newsletter. Containment: obtain recognition from named funds and grant programs before the second review cycle, and publish rejection rates so the bar is visible from outside.
Who acts
Rests on
02 Metrics & Success Stories A deep tech KPI framework
14 Research & Visibility An open data commons and a funding catalogue
15 A Pan-LATAM Forum One flagship, one annual KPI release
The data behind it
Hello Tomorrow’s European dataset finds deep tech ventures fail no more often and exit no slower than regular tech. Whether their exits are larger is still inconclusive.
SourceHello Tomorrow, Deep Tech Investor Mapping (LATAM) & The 2025 European Deep Tech Report
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| Do deep tech companies fail more often? | No |
| Do they need more time to exit? | No |
| Do they have larger exits? | Inconclusive |