Dear Readers, Brilliant Minds and Game-Changers,
Hope you are doing great!
There is a moment that almost every deep-tech founder eventually encounters. Someone important is interested.
An investor.
A prospective customer.
A potential industrial partner.
Perhaps an audience full of all three.
The founder begins explaining the technology. The first slides are easy.
The problem. The opportunity. The performance. The vision.
Then the questions become more precise.
- “How exactly did you achieve that?”
- “What is different in your architecture?”
- “Can you show us the calibration process?”
- “What happens inside this part of the system?”
And suddenly the conversation changes.
Because the very information that can make the company credible may also be the information that makes the company difficult to reproduce.
This week I will be in Basel with QAI Ventures , culminating on Thursday with its Quantum Global Summit.
Working with QAI Ventures and companies in its startup ecosystem puts this tension very close to my daily work.
Deep-tech companies must be visible.
They need capital. Customers. Partners. Talent. Scientific credibility.
But they also need to preserve the technological and informational asymmetries on which future competitive advantage may depend.
This creates what I call the disclosure paradox:
You need to reveal enough to create opportunity, but not so much that the opportunity destroys the advantage on which it is based.
A presentation is an IP event
We usually associate intellectual-property decisions with patent applications, contracts or licensing negotiations.
But a presentation is an IP event too.
For example, under the European Patent Convention, information made available to the public before filing may form part of the state of the art. Public disclosure therefore matters directly to patent strategy.
That means a technical slide, a conference paper, an online demonstration or even an answer given publicly to a detailed question can have consequences extending far beyond communication.
And this becomes particularly relevant in quantum.
The global quantum ecosystem is expanding rapidly. The joint EPO/OECD work identifies more than 4,600 firms active in the ecosystem, including around 830 core quantum companies, while quantum international patent families have grown at approximately 20% per year since 2014.
Quantum-computing patent applications at the EPO increased by 37.9% in 2025, although from a comparatively small base.
More people are watching. More competitors are filing. More companies are entering adjacent parts of the stack.
Information therefore matters.
But secrecy is not a strategy either
The opposite reaction can be just as dangerous.
Some deep-tech companies protect themselves so aggressively that nobody can understand what they do.
The pitch becomes generic. The technical differentiation disappears behind phrases such as:
- “proprietary technology,”
- “unique architecture,”
- “advanced algorithms,”
or
- “patent-pending solution.”
An investor cannot assess it. A prospective customer cannot understand the advantage. A partner cannot see where collaboration might exist.
The company has preserved confidentiality while simultaneously eliminating curiosity.
That is not sophisticated protection. It is strategic invisibility of the wrong kind.
The objective is not to disclose as little as possible. The objective is to disclose intelligently.
Start with the decision you want
One of the most useful questions before an external interaction is: What decision do I want this person to make?
An investor may need to decide whether the company deserves deeper diligence.
A customer may need to decide whether to explore a proof of concept.
A technical partner may need to determine whether two architectures can integrate.
A scientist may need to evaluate a technical claim.
Those decisions require different levels of information.
Yet founders frequently use essentially the same deck with everyone.
That is where disclosure becomes uncontrolled.
Instead of organising information around what we know, organise it around what the audience needs to know next.
Three disclosure zones
I often find it useful to think about three information zones.
1. The public zone
Information you should be comfortable seeing repeated publicly.
The problem. The market. The customer benefit.
High-level architecture. Published results. Already-public patent information.
High-level performance. Strategic ambition.
The public layer answers: Why should I care?
This is where communication should be strongest.
A company should be capable of explaining clearly why it matters without revealing how every advantage is produced.
2. The controlled zone
Then comes information required for serious evaluation.
Selected technical architecture. Integration requirements. More detailed performance data.
Interfaces. Development assumptions. Certain testing methodologies.
Selected technical limitations.
This may belong in an NDA-governed discussion, a controlled data room or a proper diligence process.
Its purpose is to answer: Can this actually work for us?
Controlled does not mean secret forever. It means disclosure occurs in the right context.
3. The strategic-secret zone
Finally there is information whose value may partially derive from the fact that others do not possess it.
Calibration sequences. Manufacturing parameters. Negative experimental results.
Internal optimisation methods. Supplier qualification knowledge. Unpublished process improvements.
Proprietary datasets. Implementation details that cannot easily be observed from the final product.
This layer answers: How exactly do we create the advantage?
And that is precisely the question you may not want to answer.
In quantum, the visible technology may not be the real moat
Imagine a quantum startup demonstrating an impressive performance improvement.
From outside, the differentiator appears to be the device.
But perhaps that result actually depends on:
- a calibration procedure developed over three years,
- an internal control model,
- a particular sequence of operations,
- a proprietary dataset,
- a manufacturing tolerance, and
- dozens of failed configurations the team has already eliminated.
The patent may protect one part. The know-how may protect another.
Software may protect another. Contracts and access controls may protect still others.
The competitive position exists in the combination.
That is why I increasingly prefer to think about an intangible-asset architecture rather than a patent portfolio alone.
Failure can be an asset
Research-intensive organisations naturally communicate successes.
But failures contain knowledge too.
Suppose a team has tested 80 configurations and discovered that 74 fail under particular conditions.
A competitor beginning from zero may need months—or years—to reproduce that map.
The six successful configurations are valuable. But so is knowing where the 74 dead ends are.
That is negative knowledge.
It rarely appears on a balance sheet. It may never appear in a patent.
But strategically it can represent accumulated time.
And time is one of the most important competitive advantages in deep tech.
There is another disclosure risk: internal disappearance
Protection should not focus only on competitors.
Suppose the critical calibration process remains secret.
Excellent.
But only one engineer knows it.
If that person leaves, the company has protected the knowledge externally while failing to preserve it internally.
This is a paradox I encounter repeatedly in intangible-asset management.
A secret that nobody outside the company knows may be extraordinarily valuable.
A secret that only one person inside the company knows may also be extraordinarily fragile.
Trade-secret strategy therefore intersects with:
- knowledge management,
- HR,
- cybersecurity,
- contracting,
- AI governance, and
- business continuity.
That is one reason the subject cannot be left to a patent portfolio alone.
Collaboration changes the information boundary
Now imagine meeting a potential industrial partner this week.
The conversation is excellent. There is a credible application.
Someone says: “We should explore this together.”
The disclosure architecture now changes.
The next conversation may legitimately require information that was inappropriate for the public presentation.
That is fine.
But the boundary should move intentionally:
- What information is necessary to evaluate feasibility?
- What background technology already belongs to each side?
- What confidential information will be exchanged?
- What data might be shared?
- What should remain outside the project?
- What happens if the collaboration creates an improvement?
- Who can use what afterwards?
A strong confidentiality architecture does not prevent collaboration.
It makes deeper collaboration possible.
The same applies to investors
Investors need technical evidence.
Serious diligence cannot be conducted through marketing slides alone.
But diligence can be staged.
The first meeting establishes relevance.
The second may establish credibility.
Technical diligence goes deeper.
A data room goes deeper still.
Disclosure expands as seriousness increases.
The company does not need to place its entire technological memory on the table simply because someone has shown interest.
This is not obstruction. It is governance.
Five questions before an important external conversation
Before presenting or entering an important discussion, I would ask:
1. What decision am I trying to obtain?
A meeting? Investment? Pilot? Partnership? Technical diligence?
2. What information is genuinely necessary for that decision?
Not what is impressive. What is necessary.
3. Is anything about to be disclosed that may still require protection?
If yes, resolve that first.
4. What information creates value partly because others do not know it?
That information needs a different treatment.
5. What happens after this conversation?
Does the information travel? Who receives the slides?
Will a technical meeting follow? Should an NDA now exist?
Disclosure is a process.
Why this matters this week
The QAI Ventures Quantum Global Summit is explicitly designed to bring together people across quantum entrepreneurship, investment, science and industry for high-level exchange and collaboration.
Ideas need to circulate. Founders need customers.
Scientists need industry. Industry needs emerging technologies.
Investors need credible opportunities. The answer cannot be to stop talking.
But sophisticated ecosystems require intelligent openness.
Reveal the ambition. Demonstrate the value. Create trust.
Make collaboration possible.
But know precisely where your narrative ends and your strategic knowledge begins.
Because the objective is not to keep innovation invisible.
The objective is to make the innovation visible without making the advantage disappear.
