Q: What drew you to early-stage deep tech investing?

Charles: In Canada, the VC landscape is still dominated by traditional B2B SaaS, e-commerce, and social media platforms—great businesses, but I struggled to get excited about them because they didn't seem to meaningfully move the needle in terms of human progress.

Deep tech, especially areas like machine learning and quantum computing, fascinated me because these technologies were reaching an inflection point—moving from pure science to actionable technology. The founders within deep tech dedicate their lives to very specific, challenging problems. They're not interested in failing fast and pivoting. They want to create genuine breakthroughs and that passion resonated deeply with me.

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Q: As an investor based in Canada, what do you see as the Canadian opportunity within deep tech?

Charles: Canada has historically punched above its weight in research. Our universities consistently rank among the world’s best, producing around 5% of the world's most-cited research despite comprising less than 1% of the global population. Public funding enables researchers to explore ambitious, blue-sky ideas without immediate commercial pressure.

The flip side of that is we've struggled to commercialize this research due to our smaller domestic market and limited local customer base. Startups here must internationalize immediately, which is difficult for talented scientists without business experience or the right networks.

Smart capital, with established connections and trusted international relationships, is critical for bridging this gap. I believe Celesta can be a big part of building that bridge, enabling Canada's ecosystem to unlock its full commercial potential.

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Q: Deep tech investing is becoming increasingly in demand within venture. Do you think there are specialized skills or knowledge necessary to succeed in this sector?

Charles: The interesting thing about deep tech is there's a lot more that is knowable upfront about whether a technology can deliver on its promises. With sufficient technical and market knowledge, you can understand if the technology can actually be built, whether it is likely to deliver the promised performance, and, if so, if that performance will be impactful enough that customers will actually buy it.  

Compare this to something like a dating app, where you are making bets on market trends and user preferences that can change very quickly and be difficult to gauge. Even then, your cost to acquire the customer will tend to go up through time as you saturate your market, and your economics will marginally get worse.

So deep tech is interesting because you can meaningfully de-risk investments at an early stage. But the catch is you need the right technical acumen to be able to evaluate complex technologies that exist within commercial ecosystems that are often very specialized.

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Q: How do you approach building a successful partnership with founders?

Charles: Fundamentally, the most important factor is building a trusted relationship with the CEO where they understand we are on the same team, creating an environment where we are both comfortable sharing openly.

Once you have that partnership, investors can add tremendous value by virtue of their experience working with such a high volume of startups. We can help create a lot of clarity for founding teams and help them avoid the pitfalls of the “unknown unknowns” for a startup over time. These are lessons that can help accelerate their path to success dramatically.