In this episode of the AlchemistX Innovators Inside, host Ian Bergman speaks with Hassan Jaferi, a veteran of intellectual property, technology transfer, and startup acceleration. Hassan is currently a Sr. Director at Myant Ventures and has spent over 15 years helping deep tech ventures move from university labs to the marketplace, and he shares hard-won insights every founder, innovator, or corporate leader should hear.
Here are the five key takeaways from their conversation:
One of the most common pitfalls Hassan sees with academic spinouts is failing to define the real-world problem they are solving. About half of the startups he works with raise the “white flag” because their problem isn’t compelling—or it’s already solved. The lesson: before building solutions, validate the problem with industry voices.
Startups succeed when they align with market needs. Hassan emphasizes the importance of engaging industry partners early, not with a “technology push,” but by framing conversations around problems, not solutions. When industry confirms the problem and agrees the solution makes sense, startups gain traction and credibility.
In reflecting on his journey with Bitnobi, a data-sharing startup that took over a decade to exit, Hassan highlights his biggest mistake: chasing too many markets at once. The takeaway is clear: pick a market, commit to it, and learn deeply. Even if it fails, the focused knowledge and relationships will be invaluable.
Government grants and bootstrapping can help startups survive the early years, but they can also delay tough decisions. Hassan advises founders to recognize the moment when venture capital is the rocket fuel needed to scale. Take funding once you have proven recurring revenue and a clear product-market fit, not before.
Many academic founders underestimate the complexity of venture financing. SAFEs, convertible notes, and valuation caps are financial tools, not free money. Hassan urges entrepreneurs to “think like a banker” and understand the trade-offs, risks, and long-term control implications of every funding decision.
Commercializing deep tech isn’t just about patents or breakthroughs—it’s about problem validation, market focus, financial strategy, and building bridges between academia and industry. Hassan’s journey underscores that innovation is a full-contact sport, but with the right mindset, founders can avoid common pitfalls and accelerate real impact.
Have a question for a future guest? Email us at innovators@alchemistaccelerator.com to get in touch!
Timestamps
🎙️ Hassan Jaferi’s background (00:00:00)
🧑⚖️ From Patent Examiner to Commercialization (00:01:10)
🚀 Lightbulb Moment: Space Incubator & Tech Transfer (00:03:59)
🏥 Mentoring Deep-Tech Startups at TIAP & UTEST (00:06:26)
🗣️ The Problem Statement Challenge in Academic Spinouts (00:07:49)
🤝 Voice of the Customer & Industry Engagement (00:09:10)
🧪 Case Study: Bitnobi’s Decade-Long Journey (00:20:07)
📚 Three Hard-Won Lessons for Founders (00:27:10)
🏦 Grants, Bootstrapping, and When to Raise VC (00:29:12)
💡 Advice for Corporates: Speak in the Language of Problems (00:33:01)
⚡ Rapid-Fire & Personal Insights (00:38:09)
00;00;29;02 - 00;00;52;20
Ian Bergman
Welcome to season six of Alchemist x Innovators Inside the podcast, where we explore the world of corporate innovation and dive deep into the minds and stories of innovation. Thought leaders crafting the future. I am your host, Ian Bergmann, and if you're an innovation agitator like me, then this is where you want to be. Listen, I'm happy Friday and welcome to the pod.
00;00;52;23 - 00;00;55;28
Hassan Jaferi
How are you doing? You in? Thanks for joining today. Thanks for the invitation to.
00;00;56;00 - 00;01;08;23
Ian Bergman
Yeah. No, totally. I'm really excited to have you. This is going to be a fun conversation. You know, we're going to get into, IP and R&D and corporate innovation and all of these things that, you know, keep people awake at night.
00;01;08;26 - 00;01;10;23
Hassan Jaferi
Absolutely. I'm looking forward to it.
00;01;10;25 - 00;01;39;28
Ian Bergman
Awesome. Well, for folks who maybe don't know you, haven't met you before. I am really pleased to welcome Hasan Jaffrey to the Innovators Inside podcast, and Hassan has worked in research and commercialization in and around the startup field for over 15 years. And coming from a place of, of a deep academic and IP background. You started with the Canadian intellectual Property Office as a patent examiner, is that right?
00;01;40;00 - 00;01;48;26
Hassan Jaferi
That's true. Right after finishing, computer engineering, it was basically the first job offer that I got, which was not the typical job offer that you would think of that time.
00;01;48;29 - 00;02;01;17
Ian Bergman
No. And not a typical career path. Like, what was what was that like, going straight from kind of school and a degree in computer engineering to what I assume was evaluating other people's ideas?
00;02;01;19 - 00;02;30;13
Hassan Jaferi
You know, it was funny. I was I was finishing up my fourth year. The, the posting kind of came online for the, the Canadian Natural Property Office. And I said to myself, well, why not put an application in there while I'm looking at other activities? Now, keep in mind this is 2003. So the the city that I was living in in Ottawa at that time, the, the tech bubble had burst and the Nortel's and the Cisco's of the world, you know, things that were just took over the complete scene of Ottawa at that time that was starting to go down.
00;02;30;13 - 00;02;47;02
Hassan Jaferi
And everyone was kind of looking at like, what? What's the next path? So given the the activity of technology there, one thing I realized early on in my computer engineering days was IP was always something that was discussed. And so I thought, you know, it might be a worthwhile activity putting in an application as a as a patent examiner.
00;02;47;02 - 00;03;16;16
Hassan Jaferi
Fast forward to when I got the job. What I didn't realize was how detailed the activity was. You know, one thing that I can always say about the patent examination job is you learn something new every single day because you're looking at different technologies on, on a daily basis as they're coming in. And obviously the the ultimate activities for the examiner to either refuse or grant the patent application into a pattern so that this company or this organization can go forward with, you know, a reasonable moat around their invention.
00;03;16;18 - 00;03;37;16
Ian Bergman
It's got to be fascinating. It's also a really interesting kickoff to your career journey. So I'm wondering if really briefly, you could tell us, you know, what you do now, but also like how did you get here? How did you come to be sitting in this chair having this conversation, which is going to get deep into, you know, I think the other side of things, examiner commercialization.
00;03;37;18 - 00;03;59;08
Hassan Jaferi
Well, so as I was working the patent examiner job, you know, I quickly realized that you're either going to go down this path and either go down the, the, the path of being intellectual property lawyer, an agent or just continuing down, you know, being a patent examiner. And as I was exploring different activities around 2004, I decided I wanted to take like a one year break from the patent office.
00;03;59;10 - 00;04;25;26
Hassan Jaferi
And, I applied to the International Space University in Strasbourg, France, went there for the year. My internship was actually with the European Space Agency's incubator unit called ESA. So it's the I think it's the SABC, it's the business incubation center. And it was there where the light bulb went off in my head because I was working with other innovators that were outside of the European Space Agency, but more working on technologies that they were trying to commercialize in the space sector.
00;04;25;28 - 00;04;45;12
Hassan Jaferi
So as I was working with a couple of different companies, and my first interaction with them was, hey, I'll do an IP review for you, tell you what the competitive landscape looks like, what's out there, how your IP kind of different from from other groups that are out there. And as I was working with them, I got to understand the businesses that they were working on and the technologies that they were building.
00;04;45;14 - 00;05;07;26
Hassan Jaferi
But then I also got to know about the stories that they were they were working on in terms of the 0 to 1 activity where the idea came up, and then they basically turned it into a commercialization activity. It was at that point in time, during the internship with the light bulb went off in my head and I said, you know, examining patents is interesting, but there's a whole other side that I can leverage, you know, my skillset and IP from the perspective of start operations.
00;05;07;26 - 00;05;32;17
Hassan Jaferi
So when I came back to Canada, I finished off my activities with the Canadian Electro property office, and then I joined Queen's University's Technology Transfer Group, which is a nonprofit group at arm's length from Queen's University called Part Tech and Part Tech Innovations, which is where I really that's where I really, you know, took an understanding of and appreciation of how to move academic technologies from the lab to the market.
00;05;32;20 - 00;05;53;19
Hassan Jaferi
So obviously, I leveraged my IP skills, but now I was getting into how do I engage with industry to explain, like this abstract technology that's sitting in the lab, and how do I convert that into a language that industry would understand that led to licensing activities, startup activity. And so there was of these 2 or 3 startups I was involved with in terms of the creation from Queen's University.
00;05;53;22 - 00;06;26;10
Hassan Jaferi
One of them actually got acquired later on by IPG photonics. So really good stories there. And then. Fast forward to today. I've been with the Toronto Innovation Acceleration Partners now for at least a decade or so, working with, you know, medical imaging technologies, digital health technologies, data related technologies. And all of this has brought me to a point where the mentorship of startups, based on my experience, is kind of the core activity that I've been doing for the last couple of years, and just telling them what they don't know because, you know, there's a lot of blind spots that a lot of startups will have.
00;06;26;13 - 00;06;49;09
Hassan Jaferi
And if I can kind of see it ahead of time and let them know about what's potentially going to happen, that adds value, but then also being able to provide funding resources, connecting them to businesses, other industry players. All of these pieces are really important because the startups that are coming out of academia, they need support and they rely on people like you, like myself, to help them navigate this.
00;06;49;09 - 00;06;55;27
Hassan Jaferi
This mixed martial arts arena, as I like to call it, because startups really is a full combat sport.
00;06;55;29 - 00;07;17;16
Ian Bergman
It really is. And, you know, to extend that analogy, like it can be one where you enter the arena not actually understanding any of the rules, right? Especially if you're coming from a completely different background. So you're working with teams with startups that are spinning up out of academia for the most part. Is that right? Correct. Correct. And so, you know, tell me a bit about that.
00;07;17;16 - 00;07;44;03
Ian Bergman
Like, I think those of us who live every day in the world of venture backed startups think of startups as, you know, almost a perfect crucible to, prove out or disprove a bunch of theories around the commercial viability of a solution to a given problem. When you're coming up out of academia, you're coming in with a set of beliefs about what a technology or, you know, a new idea can do.
00;07;44;06 - 00;07;49;14
Ian Bergman
How many of these teams come to you knowing what problem they're actually solving in the world?
00;07;49;16 - 00;08;07;28
Hassan Jaferi
That's a great question. And so I'll answer it in in one way, the incubation program that I help run out of U of T, it's called the U test. And the goal is to help deep tech startups coming out of the university environments. That includes U of T and the research hospitals. It allows them to take their first stepping stone into the world of startups.
00;08;08;00 - 00;08;27;15
Hassan Jaferi
And or I should say, just commercialization in general. Now, every year we'll get anywhere from 80 to 100 applicants coming in, and our intake usually happens around April May. Out of those 80 or 100, we pick anywhere from 20 to 30 to come into the cohort. And they're going basically from June all the way to December with our Investor Day, which just happened last last month.
00;08;27;17 - 00;08;49;07
Hassan Jaferi
Now out of the 20 or 3050% of them, midway through the program, they raise the white flag and they say, we're not ready for this. And it's it's one of two reasons. Either they believe that their technology is too early and they want to take advantage of the resources. The, I would say, the unfair resources that they have through academic institutions, because the garage entrepreneur doesn't have that.
00;08;49;09 - 00;09;09;28
Hassan Jaferi
The other reason to your point is they didn't nail the problem statement. And I would say most of the time when I'm dealing with startups and I'm introducing them to other businesses, the industry will come back and say, this is not a problem. You're not solving the problem that you know you've claimed you have or we've already solved it, or straight up, your baby's ugly.
00;09;10;03 - 00;09;37;19
Hassan Jaferi
You know, this isn't going to work for this. And this reason. And I think that becomes one of the fundamental activities that myself and my teammates at Utah State on is how much time can we spend with them, understand what their problem is, can they articulate it to to me and my and my colleagues so that we can spit it back out to industry and industry can come back and say thumbs up or thumbs down and depending on what that interaction is like, then we can move forward with something further between that startup and industry.
00;09;37;19 - 00;09;46;04
Hassan Jaferi
But you've nailed it on the head. I would say on average, and this is this is based on my experience. I'd say 50% of the teams that we work with don't understand the problem.
00;09;46;04 - 00;10;19;06
Ian Bergman
Stem well, and, you know, I'm not going to lie, actually, that number is a lot lower than I would have guessed, right? I mean, like, I think that probably extends to all teams and all startups around the world, right? Most most don't know their problem statement. But let me let me ask you this. When did you realize the importance of kind of nailing that problem statement and testing early commercial viability when when we're thinking about kind of tech transfer, IP transfer, IP licensing, like, did you kind of have a lightbulb go off at some point in your career on that?
00;10;19;09 - 00;10;39;06
Hassan Jaferi
Actually, you know, my my whole thing has always been trial and error from day one. Like I'll learn from my mistakes. And I remember marketing this very obscure radio frequency technology when I was at Queen's, and I presented it to an industry partner. And, you know, he's like, look, as I'm appreciating 30 as am I like that you're, you know, bringing this to my attention.
00;10;39;06 - 00;11;00;28
Hassan Jaferi
But I just need to let you know that you're completely off the ball here. Whoever's invented this technology, this is not going to work. And it's a cost issue. It's an optimization issue. There's a whole lot of things that are that are incorrect. And what he invited me to, to do was, before engaging on these activities, he's like, come out to one of our conferences and there was a specific conference that he that he had mentioned.
00;11;00;28 - 00;11;25;24
Hassan Jaferi
And what I started doing more of is walking the halls of tradeshow floors and exhibition booths and just absorbing the information that was being presented there. And from there, that actually helped me crystallize the way you need to communicate to industry and being. It will identify the problems at hand. So the light bulb went off when this person kind of relayed to me and said, I'm playing this back to you, this, this technology.
00;11;25;24 - 00;11;46;16
Hassan Jaferi
You're telling me, I'm playing it back to you and I'll tell you why. There's a number of issues. And as he went through it, I realized I can't take the face value of everything that an inventor says. I actually have to do my own due diligence because I. What I appreciate about the inventors are they're sitting in their silo, they're working on their really unique sliver of knowledge, and they're trying to push that academic barrier forward.
00;11;46;22 - 00;11;47;08
Ian Bergman
Yeah, but.
00;11;47;08 - 00;12;10;18
Hassan Jaferi
What they don't do enough of is going out to industry. And I don't blame them. It's not necessarily their job. What's the job of an academic to publish, to do research, to graduate students, collect research funding and kind of continue moving the field of knowledge. On the research side, they don't have time carved out on their portfolio or their schedule to say, well, I'm going to spend 20% of my time in a week reaching out to industry to see what their problems are.
00;12;10;20 - 00;12;14;03
Hassan Jaferi
It's an issue of like what their priorities are at the end of the day.
00;12;14;05 - 00;12;36;16
Ian Bergman
Well, and it also speaks, though, to the importance of creating the environments, like in an incubator, like in other in other programs, but creating an environment where industry can present, discuss or think about their problems, right? Which isn't always easy, like my experience with corporations is most of them can't actually articulate the problems that they face in the world all that well either.
00;12;36;16 - 00;12;54;00
Ian Bergman
Right? But like it speaks to the importance of creating that. So how do you go about thinking about engaging industry? How important is it? What kind of value proposition do you present to them so that you can actually build this environment where both sides can meet and figure out, is there a there there?
00;12;54;02 - 00;13;13;06
Hassan Jaferi
Yeah. One one of the things I love doing working with startups coming out of the university environment is I kind of like taking on that business development lead and saying, I understand what your problem is. I think your solution make sense. Let me reach out to companies in my network that I've already worked with before, or even ones that I'm just kind of cold called outreach.
00;13;13;08 - 00;13;28;21
Hassan Jaferi
And let's just do a short presentation. Let's take 30 minutes. They're valuable time, and let's relate to them one by one. The problem do you agree with the problem solution? Do you agree with the solution and if they're nodding their heads up and down on a regular basis throughout this call, by the end of the call, we at least have the hook in thing to say.
00;13;28;23 - 00;13;47;23
Hassan Jaferi
Can we have a follow on call to see how maybe a potential POC could happen between this industry partner and the company? And I would say doing this, you know, a number of times. The good news is if we get a know quickly, at least I can tell the startup and say, I'm not saying no, these are your potential customers that are saying no.
00;13;47;25 - 00;14;07;07
Hassan Jaferi
But if the answer is that the industry partner is saying, hey, this is interesting and this is how it might fit into our product roadmap or our technology roadmap that that becomes kind of like the the foundation for a new relationship to begin. And a good thing about being in places like Ontario, Canada, is we have a lot of government funding programs that actually encourage this.
00;14;07;12 - 00;14;27;05
Hassan Jaferi
So instead of the companies spending a dollar, you can use $0.50 from, you know, a government program and maybe $0.50 from, you know, the the industry partner and say we can create a our R&D program that last 2 or 3 months. Here are the metrics. And if we hit the metrics, maybe this results in either a license or some other commercial zero.
00;14;27;10 - 00;14;44;18
Hassan Jaferi
We've actually even had instances where the company is big enough to say we're going to invest in this startup, and we're going to kind of help shepherd this opportunity forward as a strategic partner. So I think for me, it's really important from day one to kind of demonstrate to the startup and say, here's the voice of the customer.
00;14;44;18 - 00;15;03;28
Hassan Jaferi
We always hear that the voice of the customer needs to be heard, and you need to hear it now, because if you decide to go and put all of your eggs in this basket, and you and I both know that the startup world is fraught with different challenges and landmines, if you're going to do this, at least know that there's a couple of groups that are saying, yes, we all agree with the problem statement.
00;15;03;28 - 00;15;11;04
Hassan Jaferi
We all agree the solution, as opposed to all of them providing different feedback and saying, we don't really know what you're working on. You know, to find a better way to articulate.
00;15;11;04 - 00;15;41;23
Ian Bergman
Yeah, you need a signal to get through through that initial gate, for sure. And I think that is hard. You know, look, I think one of the challenges that I've always had when I have looked at academic spinouts, when I've looked at tech transfer offices, is I've often felt like the program, the university, whatever it is, is basically presenting a shopping list of IP without any real thought and how it can be applied and you know, what you're doing sounds very different than that.
00;15;41;29 - 00;15;57;24
Ian Bergman
So let me ask you, how unique has your work been? Right? Is this are you do you feel like you're sort of on the cutting edge of changing how R&D, you know, kind of makes its way into commercialization, or am I just off base? This is what everybody does.
00;15;57;27 - 00;16;17;29
Hassan Jaferi
No. I think you have a really good point here. And I think what I can say is, as a result of working in these organizations since 2007 until now, I've had to build up that knowledge. And I think, you know, in the last 4 or 5 years, especially with a startup that I've been working on and that is now exited, I think now in the last 4 or 5 years, I now have an appreciation.
00;16;18;06 - 00;16;31;00
Hassan Jaferi
You know, the biggest challenge that the universities have with these commercialization offices and the technology transfer groups is you have staff that are experts in a specific piece of knowledge.
00;16;31;00 - 00;16;31;25
Ian Bergman
Yeah.
00;16;31;27 - 00;17;09;15
Hassan Jaferi
Molecular diagnostics, materials chemistry. But then when you look at the background, they may not have been entrepreneurs before. And I think it's high time for all the universities to say we need more ears working alongside of these commercialization professionals so that you can march along the same path, accomplish what the university needs to do. But I think you have a higher success of working along someone that's been there and done that, been through the, as I call it, the May gantlet of startups, because now you actually have potentially someone that's going to be able to guide you, but maybe that person says, I actually like the way the startup is going.
00;17;09;18 - 00;17;32;25
Hassan Jaferi
I'm going to take the reins on this and run it myself with the university equity portion intact, etc., etc.. So my my biggest challenge has been, and I think you can see this across any institution across the world is we need more individuals, we need the existing individuals that are there. But you also need to you need to layer on some entrepreneurship experience so that you can work through these minefields.
00;17;32;25 - 00;17;55;11
Hassan Jaferi
I mean, some of the some of the senior professionals that I work with over the last 10 or 15 years, they now know that because they've been through 15 or 16 deals in either the biotech industry or the physical sciences industry, and they know what pitfalls to go. But that's that's maybe a couple of people with that knowledge across a group of individuals, like 30, 40 individuals that are really experts in their domain.
00;17;55;11 - 00;18;14;28
Hassan Jaferi
They know how to slice and dice the technology. But then the challenge becomes, how do you get this past that, that value of death, not just from a funding perspective, but from an experience perspective. So in my case, I've only been able to build that up as a result of working through all these different types of organizations and learning like I've made a bunch of mistakes.
00;18;14;28 - 00;18;48;01
Hassan Jaferi
I remember a couple of licensing deals where I completely missed the boat on certain classes, and that came back to bite us later on. And that was again a learning experience in in any Exit or let's call it startup financing activity. There's always things you have to deal with. Communication becomes a major thing too. But if I had to kind of make a suggestion to governments that fund these institutions, continue to fund the commercialization groups, so they've got the resources to do it, but also consider how we embed IRS or people with relevant experience to work alongside of these individuals.
00;18;48;01 - 00;18;52;23
Hassan Jaferi
And I think I think you would see you would see more wins in that scenario.
00;18;52;24 - 00;19;09;15
Ian Bergman
Well, like, I want to actually put a point on this because I think this is really important. You know, you made the point that there's in Ontario and elsewhere, there's government funding and grant funding available, which, you know, can be a very powerful accelerator early on, but also can be a little bit of a double edged sword. Right.
00;19;09;15 - 00;19;28;20
Ian Bergman
Like, I have met a lot of companies and ventures that probably should have died a long time ago, but are being, you know, held up by, by grant funding and, and that's that's unfortunate for lots of reasons. But the thing that bothers me the most is you actually have entrepreneurs, innovators, scientists whose time, you know, and energy is being is being kind of sucked away.
00;19;28;20 - 00;19;56;05
Ian Bergman
They should be redirected to their next thing. But you made a really interesting point applying that grant money, that public money to the mechanisms that help quickly prove is this viable? Is it going to move forward along with ideas like embed ideas in the process? That feels to me like an accelerant for the ecosystem, not just something that is going to result in, you know, organizations constantly just requesting more grant funding.
00;19;56;08 - 00;19;56;27
Ian Bergman
Do I have that right?
00;19;57;04 - 00;19;58;06
Hassan Jaferi
Absolutely, absolutely.
00;19;58;06 - 00;20;07;02
Ian Bergman
I think that's really interesting. And you have had some some wins, probably quite a few wins, but one that I saw recently is but nobody. Can you tell us a bit about that story?
00;20;07;04 - 00;20;30;08
Hassan Jaferi
Yeah. So Bitmoji is a startup coming out of York University, out of Doctor Montoya's lab from the idea germination was basically in 2012. He put the team together as a very strong research team. In around 2012, 2013, I came across the technology during my times walking the halls at York University, which is one of the biggest universities here in Ontario and in Canada.
00;20;30;10 - 00;20;52;24
Hassan Jaferi
And I remember listening to his problem statement, which was, you know, this, this whole and Marin's background is from IBM. So he used to work for the seven event studies. That's where, you know, Big Blue used to send all of their complex research problems and have people like Marin tackle them. So when he left Big Blue and set up his own innovation lab at York, he had found this problem of data sharing continuing to be an issue.
00;20;52;26 - 00;21;05;00
Hassan Jaferi
And just at a high level, you know, even till today, you still have individuals that are or institutions or groups or companies that are still sharing data with Excel sheets going over to another individual or a US.
00;21;05;00 - 00;21;06;21
Ian Bergman
Meeting and faxes.
00;21;06;24 - 00;21;22;26
Hassan Jaferi
And faxes, you know, it's a it's crazy. And and we always wonder why do we keep hearing about new data breaches. It's because copies of data continue to be made. And once you make that copy of data available, you don't know what the other user is doing with it. You have no idea what the data sovereignty is like.
00;21;22;26 - 00;21;44;11
Hassan Jaferi
There's a lot of issues in tracking copy data. And so Marin kind of flipped the equation on its head and said, well, and this is a bad time. Now this is a much more popular concept. Move the queries, move the questions to where the data is that that question or that complex query or whatever it may be, run on the infrastructure that the data owner has it just send the answer back to the end user.
00;21;44;11 - 00;22;08;00
Hassan Jaferi
So if you want an analogy, this is like mainframes back in the 60s. Punch cards go in the machine process it, and you get an answer back. Well, that's basically the analogy that I give for a bit Novi in that sense, which is it's a data sharing platform that's 100% of the control of a data owner, and it allows data consumers to be able to query against this data with only a preview of the information or the or the the data that's made available to them.
00;22;08;00 - 00;22;20;05
Hassan Jaferi
And that allows this data consumer to be able to run queries. You can run visualizations. And then downstream, in today's day and age, you can do all the machine learning activities that you need to do with all the amazing tools that are out there.
00;22;20;05 - 00;22;30;20
Ian Bergman
And so critical. I mean, this is like this is important in a lot of verticals, but like health care is, I think, the obvious one that everyone is going to look at, and that is where they're operating. Is that right?
00;22;30;22 - 00;22;57;28
Hassan Jaferi
Yeah. And so the big project that I know he's working on right now is with the Digital Health Discovery platform, which is run by the Terry Fox Research Institute. That's basically a pan-Canadian data cancer sharing network. And we're one of three partners in that solution. And our solution is very simple. If the data is going to stay at the data owners location, allow the data consumer to be able to use some type of interface, some type of software appliance to be able to query against that data instead of just getting all this raw data.
00;22;57;28 - 00;23;12;22
Hassan Jaferi
Because the biggest problem we have in Canada is that when it does come to accessing data, you don't wait months. You could potentially wait years. So imagine if you're a company or a researcher and you're trying to execute some kind of work. You're just waiting. You have to move on to the next house to do something.
00;23;12;27 - 00;23;33;29
Ian Bergman
Yeah, I mean, it's it's on the face of it and saying, and you get into why, you know, you get into why it exists and all that. And there's good reasons, but it's it's insane. We live in a world where the expectation is that this should be instant and seamless, right? And so that you know, the second you set that expectation and then reality down here, you actually have a really interesting commercial opportunity.
00;23;33;29 - 00;23;53;20
Ian Bergman
And when you have the IP you're in, you're in good shape. So that, you know, I think the dates you gave though are really important because we're sitting here in early 2025 recording this, this episode. And so this was a decade plus journey. And it's a journey that's not over, but a decade plus journey from kind of like ideation and problem discovery.
00;23;53;22 - 00;23;59;17
Ian Bergman
Yep. To acquisition and integration into a bigger company that has more resources and scale.
00;23;59;19 - 00;24;00;27
Hassan Jaferi
Exactly.
00;24;00;29 - 00;24;14;25
Ian Bergman
What is it about this sort of I don't know if you would call this a deep tech play or not, but what is it about this sort of deeply IP based commercialization that takes so long? And is that a good or a bad thing?
00;24;14;27 - 00;24;36;16
Hassan Jaferi
So I think in my case, because I had never run a software company, a lot of this timeline was basically my own doing figuring out, hey, we've got a platform technology that can operate pretty much in any sector. In the first two years, all I was doing was, and I think I was pitched, but nobody in the first two years, at least 3 to 400 times like and I'm not even exaggerating there, maybe more.
00;24;36;24 - 00;25;00;05
Hassan Jaferi
But we were doing this across defense, finance, healthcare and even government. And what I didn't appreciate at that time was the sales cycle for government and healthcare. Brutal. You know, it takes a lot of time. But then fintech was very interesting because we were able to move a little bit quicker. But then we ran into bottlenecks where in the cases, in the case of one customer, we were having a conversation.
00;25;00;05 - 00;25;31;12
Hassan Jaferi
We're almost there. But one of the people around around the decision table said, no, we can't take this on because we've already invested $20 million in a data encryption technology. Fast forward to today that data encryption technology is no longer relevant, nor is it even used. So you run up against these hurdles that you just don't know. And I think the other thing that, you know, in terms of that long timeline, but nobody was bootstrapped from day one like we only took about, let's say, 125 to $130,000 Canadian of private investment.
00;25;31;15 - 00;25;53;22
Hassan Jaferi
Everything else was bootstrapping, whether it was contracts, government grants, whatever it is. And we knew we were we were getting there. Now, I think if I look back at it, there was a period of time and was between 2019 and 2020, where we knew what we were working on was working. And it was at that point in time where we should have taken the venture capital money to really get this thing scaled and kind of give it the rocket fuel that it needed.
00;25;53;24 - 00;26;07;14
Hassan Jaferi
You don't know what you don't know. We continued bootstrapping, and, you know, it got to a point where the revenues started stagnating and kind of stayed at the same level. And it was at that point in time where I said, well, the only way for us to grow now is going to be at least looking at a strategic partner.
00;26;07;16 - 00;26;26;05
Hassan Jaferi
And that's where we started talking to my aunt. And just for, you know, for your knowledge, my aunt's like this multi-purpose technology company that has tentacles and advanced materials and health care. And they saw this and said, this fits, you know, one of our pillars, which is the ability of sharing our health care data or advanced materials data with third parties and vice versa.
00;26;26;07 - 00;26;58;23
Hassan Jaferi
So all that to say is late last year the company got acquired, you know, things are being moved over to the company in terms of onboarding. But that timeline is basically what I'm telling you, what that timeline is. It was a combination of bootstrapping and testing out what was going to stick to the wall. And the reason why we ended up picking health care was we were we were picking up steam in that industry with different partners and those partners had the funding that we needed to continue adding the bells and whistles that were required for the platform to kind of grow.
00;26;58;26 - 00;27;10;20
Ian Bergman
And if you had to pull out like three really important lessons, there could be things you would have done differently. They could have just been observations you want to share based on the journey, based on that nobody's journey, what would they be?
00;27;10;23 - 00;27;24;19
Hassan Jaferi
I think the first one would have been pick a market on it, and if you burn up in flames, that's okay. But just go down that path because the first mistake that I made was it was like a machine gun. I was spraying everywhere.
00;27;24;26 - 00;27;25;15
Ian Bergman
Yeah.
00;27;25;17 - 00;27;45;05
Hassan Jaferi
And I was hoping for something to stick on the wall and in some cases different things stuck on the wall. So I think lesson number one for me was research the market that you're going to go into and then just own it regardless of what happens. Just own it. That way you build knowledge along that vertical, you build relationships and maybe the spin off can pivot into something else.
00;27;45;05 - 00;28;06;22
Hassan Jaferi
So that's lesson number one. Lesson number two, do not turn your hopes up on strategic partners and assume that they're going to drive you to revenue generation, strategic play a very important role in terms of guiding you on the technology road. But you can't expect them to sell your solution and help you generate revenue. I think that was a mistake that I made kind of midway through.
00;28;06;26 - 00;28;12;03
Hassan Jaferi
There were a couple strategic opportunities. And I basically, you know, I tend the cart to those horses.
00;28;12;03 - 00;28;20;00
Ian Bergman
You thought you thought it was channel. You were like, oh, they're going to pull me through. They've got distribution. That siren song. Yeah, that's a tough 100%.
00;28;20;04 - 00;28;42;07
Hassan Jaferi
And then the third one is you can bootstrap and run a business. And I think you hear it in the in the news these days with all the tools that are out there, these SaaS companies that have, you know, 5000 employees now, that same software could be built with a team of ten, etc., etc.. Having said that, I think there's always a there's always a time for venture capital money.
00;28;42;10 - 00;29;00;10
Hassan Jaferi
And I think you have to know, once the recurring revenue is coming in and you figured out the nuts and bolts on how users are using your platform, that's the point where all or ideally a little bit before that, that's when you need the rocket fuel to grab a couple million bucks and say, I need people that are excellent sales and marketing.
00;29;00;17 - 00;29;12;04
Hassan Jaferi
I need to beef up my tech, my team, customer success, whatever I might be. And now turn this into, you know, the SaaS that hits 5 to 10 million IRR. And then you go down that path of, you know, venture capital activities.
00;29;12;11 - 00;29;33;17
Ian Bergman
So I think I want to hit on that. Like that's really important because I think a lot of people conflate venture capital with things like grant funding, if that's their background or you know, secured loans, if that's their background, whatever it is. But it's a very, very different mechanism and it's very, very expensive. And it is designed for for hyperscale.
00;29;33;22 - 00;29;44;20
Ian Bergman
So like that's a great lesson. But how do you teach that? How do you embed that in a team that, you know, maybe has received most of their funding from some combination of salary and grants before?
00;29;44;22 - 00;30;08;13
Hassan Jaferi
I remember having this conversation with the current Chief Operating officer, Rose rocket Mike. That, and I remember he was sitting down with me one day and he's telling me, if you're going to take venture capital money, you need to think like a banker. And the moment he said that phrase, it clicked. These tools, convertible notes, safes. You know, these are all financial tools that investors use to engage with you.
00;30;08;15 - 00;30;28;27
Hassan Jaferi
You have to understand the nuances and how it impacts your decision making down the road. And let's face it, between you and me and the audience today, creative control becomes a part of this because at some point in time, you will lose control if you keep going down this path of venture capital funding. And if it keeps the rocket moving and you know everything is hitting on all cylinders, great.
00;30;28;27 - 00;30;41;01
Hassan Jaferi
That works out. But there are situations where the new investors that come on board physically, the board of directors, they may tell you to go one way. When originally your idea was I got to go in this direction, right.
00;30;41;01 - 00;30;42;29
Ian Bergman
And so and you're not going to win at that point.
00;30;42;29 - 00;31;00;05
Hassan Jaferi
Yeah. Thinking like a banker is actually a phrase that I use with a lot of the startups because they're like, well, so you test offers anywhere from 50 to $150,000 Canadian. The form of the safe and our safe is like very similar to Y Combinator saying we've got a valuation cap and maturity date and a discount. That's it.
00;31;00;07 - 00;31;15;24
Hassan Jaferi
Those are the terms. And they're like, yeah, well, we'll take this and you know, we'll run with it. And then the maturity date hits and they come back and they say, well we need six months. We need a six more months or 12 more months to raise the funding. And what I would typically tell them as I look, when you needed the money, you came to us.
00;31;15;24 - 00;31;38;24
Hassan Jaferi
These were the terms. Did you not understand the terms that you were signing? Because it does convert to equity at a later time, once that maturity date is passed. So that that's a really good point. You're bringing you up in. And it's something that the financial literacy aspect of running a startup from a venture capital perspective, I think that's got to be curriculum that's just taught in universities or schools or just offered for free in general.
00;31;38;24 - 00;31;42;13
Hassan Jaferi
To any entrepreneur that jumps into this because it can make or break you. You know this.
00;31;42;16 - 00;31;59;21
Ian Bergman
Well, it does. You know, I will say I have struggled with this because, you know, you say it should be offered for free. Honestly, it is like you can go. Y Combinator has published a bunch of stuff online, says we have a bunch of people have you can go to YouTube and learn all this, but you actually like you actually still have to know what you're looking for.
00;31;59;21 - 00;32;31;06
Ian Bergman
You have to have a framework. And I will say, I have rarely come across someone who has actually internalized the relationship between different types of capitalization and funding and their startup until they've tried to do it. And if somebody solves that problem, I will like, go give them a giant hug because it's this huge knowledge gap. But almost everybody I know has learned, either by being burnt or by growing up in an environment where, you know, this is just like in the air.
00;32;31;09 - 00;32;37;29
Hassan Jaferi
And I think 90% of them are the people that have been burnt once and then their next startup, they know how to play the game.
00;32;38;02 - 00;33;00;27
Ian Bergman
That's right. Well, okay, so I have one more question for you on this. And then we're going to we're going to kind of move on to our closing segment. But I think this is a really important one. And I kind of wish we'd gotten to it earlier actually. Industry engagement seems so critical for helping teams and entrepreneurs and scientists understand the potential of their technology and their ideas.
00;33;01;00 - 00;33;19;22
Ian Bergman
What advice are you going to give to people who are sitting in the industry and in corporations today, who are listening to this podcast and are saying like, of course, I want to engage with university sourced R&D, what advice are you going to give them to make that as effective as possible?
00;33;19;24 - 00;33;50;23
Hassan Jaferi
That's a good one because it's something that I've had to do for the last 15 years in order to move a lot of the technology that I work with. It's always a technology push. But, you know, one of the things that I do appreciate is when you go to trade shows or conferences and you meet some of these individuals that work for companies and you build kind of like a one on one relationship in a lot of cases, even to this day, I get emails from some of these guys, some of these individuals, and they say, this is our problem, you know, can you help us identify a technology that is in your network?
00;33;50;23 - 00;34;15;14
Hassan Jaferi
And for me, it's almost like a gift because for industry to disclose what their problem is, that, you know, going the other way around and doing the technology push, I could be going up against a wall consistently. But when industry comes back to me and so what I end up doing is I try to encapsulate that problem in a very generic term, and I'll just send out emails to colleagues across, you know, different jurisdictions that I know, and I'll say, do you have anything?
00;34;15;20 - 00;34;40;10
Hassan Jaferi
And I'll connect them together. But I think a lot of this has to do with industry relaying and being comfortable in explaining what the problem is, because as you can imagine, it's very competitive out there. Industry doesn't necessarily want to broadcast what their problems are, but we know that their R&D teams internally may be struggling with something. On the flip side, what I always tell researchers that I work with out of academia is, please communicate this effectively.
00;34;40;12 - 00;34;56;20
Hassan Jaferi
And I do this when I meet with, you know, research based or deep tech startups for the first time, walk into the lab or I'm sitting down with them. I'm like, I'm five years old. Explain this to me. And you can see them struggling because now they can't use the jargon there. They really have to bring it down to a level where it's layman's terms.
00;34;56;21 - 00;35;15;27
Hassan Jaferi
Yeah, because if I can get it at that point in time, then I can at least communicate this technology, push the industry and maybe get a yes, but vice versa. And I think there are, you know, you'd know this better, but there are job functions within these big corporates where their job is to distill all of those ideas and kind of communicate that to the public at large.
00;35;16;00 - 00;35;19;12
Hassan Jaferi
And it's people like me that are waiting to see what those problem statements are.
00;35;19;12 - 00;35;29;19
Ian Bergman
But I got to tell you, like I got to tell you, those jobs are few and far between. And I think you're hitting on something incredibly important. Like, I kind of want to, like, reach through the screen and give you a high five, because I didn't mean to tell you.
00;35;29;19 - 00;35;34;22
Hassan Jaferi
What do you do you think do you think the big corporates don't have this job function, you know, available?
00;35;34;24 - 00;35;56;09
Ian Bergman
I think many don't. Here's the thing I want to reinforce something you just said. I think this is so important. The most effective way for a corporation to engage with innovation from multiple sources is to speak in the language of problems. And to not be precious about things like confidentiality, because the reality is, like, I've been in big corporations, like you've been around the like on the inside, it's like, oh, this is our secret thing.
00;35;56;09 - 00;36;26;08
Ian Bergman
We don't want the competitors to know. It's honestly, it's never a secret. But speaking in languages of the problems is really hard, right? In my experience, there are a lot of people with titles in innovation, in venture creation, venture investing, new business incubation, new business creation, corporate development. Like there's a bunch of titles, right, that can and should lead to an organization being able to articulate problems that are meaningful and matter and that they can't solve themselves.
00;36;26;10 - 00;36;50;27
Ian Bergman
But all of the forces, the incentives for those jobs, the action they, they often leave lead to shopping for solutions, in my experience. Correct. And, you know, like, I don't know what I heard you say is the most effective engagement is when someone sends me a problem. And I actually think that's very poignant because what I often see is people sending out a communication of, I'm looking for this solution.
00;36;50;29 - 00;36;56;14
Ian Bergman
Yeah. And that right there closes out the ability to maybe come up with a different solution for the same problem. Right.
00;36;56;19 - 00;37;02;22
Hassan Jaferi
And to your point, it's a lot easier just talking about the problem because you're not disclosing anything confidential. You're just saying that's right.
00;37;02;25 - 00;37;13;10
Ian Bergman
Nobody's nobody's going to be surprised that you're having, you know, trouble, communicating proprietary or confidential patient information in a secure way. Right? Yeah.
00;37;13;13 - 00;37;14;05
Hassan Jaferi
Absolutely.
00;37;14;07 - 00;37;31;22
Ian Bergman
So I love hearing you say that. And I also, I actually I appreciated your comment on the advice on the entrepreneur or the innovator, the researcher side as well, which is to speak in layperson's terms against the problem. That's really hard because like, you know, you're an expert, right? You're a deep expert in the space at that point.
00;37;31;28 - 00;37;40;20
Ian Bergman
Sometimes it's hard to remember that the person who needs your expertise doesn't have any idea what you're talking about. They just know.
00;37;40;20 - 00;37;54;13
Hassan Jaferi
And I do that a lot. Like I walk in there saying, I don't know anything about your field. Maybe I do, but I think that that's the perfect way to level set, and it actually disarms them because they're like, okay, well, I got to explain this to, like, I'm teaching a first year student almost back to first principles.
00;37;54;16 - 00;38;09;26
Ian Bergman
Such a good idea. Okay, well, okay. This is super fun. You are in a very exciting role and I think have a lot to share. Well, I want to get to know you as a person just a little bit, a little bit more as we start to wrap up here. So we're going to play a little game. I'm going to ask you some rapid fire questions.
00;38;09;26 - 00;38;13;13
Ian Bergman
Sure. Don't think about them too much. Just give me an answer. So I'm good.
00;38;13;16 - 00;38;14;07
Hassan Jaferi
Yeah.
00;38;14;09 - 00;38;17;28
Ian Bergman
You need to go somewhere. You a road trip person or do you prefer a flight?
00;38;18;01 - 00;38;20;26
Hassan Jaferi
All flight? Because I can go somewhere further then.
00;38;20;29 - 00;38;31;25
Ian Bergman
Yeah. You just get. Oh, you can go far. That's true. It takes a long time to to drive to, you know, North Africa or wherever you may want to go. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Amazing. How do you celebrate wins.
00;38;31;27 - 00;38;39;11
Hassan Jaferi
With family and friends but also with the people that were involved? I think it's as simple as, you know, going out for coffee or dinner as an example.
00;38;39;13 - 00;38;58;15
Ian Bergman
Okay, I love that. But you take a moment and you get to family and friends and you're like, we might go in, correct? I sometimes forget that. Actually, I always forget that. I forget to celebrate when. So I like being grounded by, you know, people saying, yeah, go spend time with family and friends, okay. Android or iOS, iOS.
00;38;58;15 - 00;39;18;04
Hassan Jaferi
But you know what? Like everyone in my family, especially my wife, she works in a semiconductor business. It's, it's Android, and I'm. I'm starting to see the value of Android. Now, having said that, you know, you're mentioning you're at Microsoft before. I'm exclusively a MacBook person, but I've been playing around with some of these windows machines.
00;39;18;06 - 00;39;22;09
Hassan Jaferi
They're just as good. I may just go back to windows now, like a windows, laptop.
00;39;22;11 - 00;39;56;28
Ian Bergman
Yeah. Well, you know, I'll put in a shell for my my many years ago, former employer and especially the Qualcomm powered surfaces are pretty incredible machines. Yeah. But I will tell you on that note. So like there was a period of my career is about a three year period of my career. And it was fascinating where my job and the job of a lot of the people I was working with basically boiled down to one simple problem statement, and that's that we worked at Microsoft, and all of our customers were comparing a $500 windows machine to a $2,000 Mac and saying the Mac was better.
00;39;57;03 - 00;39;57;18
Hassan Jaferi
Unfair.
00;39;57;18 - 00;40;15;17
Ian Bergman
And or sitting. We're sitting there and we're like, but when you start comparing apples to apples, the different that's cool. Okay. Yeah. So you're, you're I don't know what the opposite of the green bubble is in your in your network, but you're the you're the lone iOS user. I enjoy that a lot, actually. Yeah.
00;40;15;20 - 00;40;26;07
Hassan Jaferi
They're still easy to use. I mean, it's still it's straightforward and it's never I don't have to deal with blue screens of death. I think that was the issue of the 90s and early 2000. I think we're past that now with the windows platforms.
00;40;26;07 - 00;40;53;05
Ian Bergman
I think. I think we're past that with most computing at this point. My, I will tell you, I mean, we're of a very, a very similar generation. I graduated undergrad in 2003, and my level of patience with dealing with technology has dropped precipitously over the last ten years, because I remember the days in the 90s, like I would be troubleshooting like, you know, auto exact files and happily, like digging around in code.
00;40;53;07 - 00;40;58;08
Ian Bergman
And now I just kind of assume it's going to work. And my level of corrections when it doesn't is just not there.
00;40;58;10 - 00;40;59;20
Hassan Jaferi
Yeah, yeah.
00;40;59;22 - 00;41;06;00
Ian Bergman
It's kind of amazing. All right. One more question. Go to productivity hack. Do you have one.
00;41;06;02 - 00;41;06;12
Hassan Jaferi
Pen and.
00;41;06;12 - 00;41;07;14
Ian Bergman
Paper. Pen and paper.
00;41;07;18 - 00;41;21;15
Hassan Jaferi
Yeah. If I can write it down and I see it I'll get it done. If it's all in all these different apps, I may not look at the app. And, you know, the other thing about pen and paper is it activates a part of your brain that I think we're starting to lose very quickly because of the digital aspects of it.
00;41;21;15 - 00;41;33;27
Hassan Jaferi
But for me, pen and paper still like I'm not. I'm looking on my side of my desk here. I've got post-it notes all over the place, but I know that those are post-it notes that I've got to take care of. And once they're done, I physically, you know, put them in the recycle box and I'm good to go.
00;41;33;29 - 00;41;45;22
Ian Bergman
And it's out of your brain space. It's done. And oh, I love it. Pen and paper. As somebody who has struggled with handwriting his entire life, I both agree with you, but also cringe cause I can only write so much.
00;41;45;22 - 00;41;49;17
Hassan Jaferi
Well, I still have chicken scratch, but I can. I can decipher the chicken scratch.
00;41;49;20 - 00;42;07;24
Ian Bergman
That's what. That's what matters. Well, amazing. Well, that's. I'm. Thank you for joining us on Innovators Inside. I just have one more question for you. And that is, you know, for folks who are interested in following your work in following Toronto Innovation Acceleration partners work, where should they go? Are you on LinkedIn? Do you have a website?
00;42;07;26 - 00;42;29;03
Hassan Jaferi
Yeah. So Toronto eviction celebration partners. The URL is top tips. Yeah. You learn about all of the amazing health science commercialization work that they do in the Toronto region. You. Testo is the URL for the incubator that I run jointly between top and the University of Toronto, and I'm also on LinkedIn, my full name. If you find it, feel free to connect.
00;42;29;03 - 00;42;35;26
Hassan Jaferi
And yeah, yeah, thanks for the opportunity. I think this is great. This is an opportunity to really kind of talk about stuff that I've learned over the last 20 years.
00;42;35;29 - 00;42;47;06
Ian Bergman
Well, I really appreciate you joining us. We'll get all those links in the show notes. It was an absolute pleasure. Thank you for coming on. The innovators inside and it is Friday as we're recording this. So I hope you have a wonderful weekend.
00;42;47;09 - 00;42;51;19
Hassan Jaferi
Absolutely. You too. Thank you. In. Here's
00;42;51;22 - 00;43;12;13
Ian Bergman
And that's a wrap for today's episode of alchemists Dax innovators inside. Thanks for listening. If you found value in today's discussion, be sure to subscribe to our podcast and check out our segments on YouTube. Links and follow ups are in the show notes, and if you have questions you want us to feature in future episodes, email innovators at Alchemists accelerator.com.
00;43;12;15 - 00;43;17;05
Ian Bergman
Stay tuned for more insider stories and practical insights from leaders. Crafting our future.