Hatch pairs engineering with commercial strategy from the start. Working with researchers, founders and innovators across the UK and US to take deep tech from first concept to fundable, market ready business.
Every decision to back a technology is a decision not to back another. Hatch works with TTOs to assess, prioritise and move IP forward, commercial viability and engineering reality considered together, so the right technologies get the right path.
THE DIFFERENCE
Most deep tech never makes it. Not because the science is wrong, but because nobody with the right engineering and commercial experience was in the room at the right time.
CASE STUDIES
Some of the world's toughest jobs happen where no person can safely go. Our team helped develop a remote handling robotics system that lets one operator work with real feel and precision from up to eight kilometres away, inside fusion reactors, nuclear cleanups and beyond. Here is how it works.
A UK university enterprise office had a novel industrial robotics technology for a circular economy application. Working prototype. Real underlying capability. No defensible answer to the questions that determine whether a technology becomes a business who buys first, at what price, and in what commercial form.
A patented wastewater metal recovery process from the University of Strathclyde. A previous commercialisation assessment had selected the wrong beachhead market. The commercial case to move through the public funding pathway did not yet exist in fundable form.
A UK university TTO had three interrelated patents from a single research group. Technically credible. Commercially uncommitted. Accruing annual prosecution costs. The institutional reflex was to ask whether they could support a spinout. That was the wrong question.
HOW WE WORK
A MESSAGE FROM OUR FOUNDERS
Lesley Blaine & Chris Gregory
Most business consultants handle the commercial case and leave the engineering to someone else. Most engineering consultants do the opposite. Hatch does both in the same room at the same time, because in deep tech the commercial decisions and the engineering decisions are the same decisions.
Hatch works across four commercial models depending on the stage of the technology and what the venture needs. From a fixed-fee market validation through to an embedded leadership role with equity alignment. The right model becomes clear during our conversation. There are no open-ended retainers and no undefined scope every engagement starts with a named set of outcomes and ends with something to act on.
Something to act on. Every engagement produces a defined set of deliverables market validation, commercial strategy, investor materials, engineering roadmap, or a combination built to be taken into the next conversation with a funder, partner, or investor. Not a report that sits in a drawer.
Yes. That is part of what the work is for. Finding out before incorporation, before a funding bid, or before a licensing conversation that the plan will not hold up is significantly better than finding out after. Where the existing plan will not lead somewhere fundable, Hatch will say so and where possible, help build one that will.
The UK has the lowest robot density in the G7. This year the government funds Robotics Adoption Hubs and a Central Convening Body to fix that. The catch: it only works if we build it as air traffic control, not a help desk. Here is how, and where Hatch fits in.
Innovate UK has changed direction. A strong technical story is no longer enough on its own. The new strategy aims to build high-potential UK businesses, not fund isolated projects. Assessors calibrate applications against a portfolio-level view of what Innovate UK wants the UK economy to look like. The commercial case is no longer supporting evidence. It is the case for funding. A defined beachhead market, sized credibly. A named first buyer and a reason they buy. A clear line from the grant-funded phase to the work that follows. The founders who win start this work long before the form opens.
A TRL 7 demonstration is not an investment thesis. Neither is a patent filing, a peer-reviewed paper, or a proof of concept. These are necessary conditions. They are not sufficient ones. Sophisticated deep tech investors evaluate four things in parallel with the technology: market validation, beachhead clarity, IP coherence, and team completeness. The weakest of the four sets the valuation. Most deep tech ventures leave the commercial questions until the technology is ready. That sequencing is the standard failure pattern. The most expensive version of it is discovered at the investor meeting.
If you are not sure where to start that is exactly what the first conversation is for. No pitch, no pressure just a conversation.