Dear all,

Have you heard of "failure parties"?

They were popularised by the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly to honour teams whose experiments failed. The logic was brilliant: by celebrating the quality of the scientific question and the rigour of the attempt, they removed the stigma of bad outcomes.

They understood that if people were too afraid to fail, they would stop trying to do difficult things.

I learned about this in Amy Edmondson’s book Right Kind of Wrong (FT Business Book of the Year, 2023). She dismantles the idea that "all failure is bad" and explains why "Intelligent Failure" is the engine of progress.

This resonates because Europe’s stagnation is not a crisis of talent. It is a structural allergy to failure. The root cause is cultural; decades of comfort have cost many of us the willingness to take personal risk.

At DTM, we are pushing back against this. Inspired by Collins and Porras’ Built to Last, we are intentionally creating strong internal pressure around a clear set of values. We anchor this in Paul Graham’s concept of Founder Mode.

Our culture manifesto starts like this:

We live in a system designed to create permission-seekers, not problem-solvers. It rewards obedience over imagination, turns explorers into passengers, dreamers into test-takers, and question-askers into rule-memorisers. We have become experts at explaining why things won’t work. We traded moonshots for meeting minutes, creation for consensus.

Yet some refuse to be tamed. They are paper planes in a drone-controlled sky. The glitch in the matrix. Jazz players in a marching band. Many of us have watched great ideas die in meetings because “that’s not how we do things here.” This is why Founder Mode is our operating system—where courage beats compliance and curiosity replaces fear.

So how do you actually build such a culture? We focus on three things, and we make it clear in our values. One is “Don’t ask for permission, but for forgiveness”. Second, we celebrate the act of taking risks, just like the "failure parties“ mentioned above. Every month, we run a “fuck-up” session, where senior leaders openly share mistakes and lessons learned. Finally, we run individualised coaching sessions at least once per quarter to help people navigate their own growth.

Still, courage can be fostered, but it can’t be taught. Everyone has to discover it for themselves. It’s not in the organisation you work for—it’s in you.

Wishing you a week where you don’t reward compliance—but courage,
Martin

➔ LuxQuanta was created as a spin-off from the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) in Barcelona 

➔ PQShield’s team actively contributes to academic work and published more than 100 research publications

They often frame it as Europe’s weakness: Europe is great at research and innovation, at laying the theoretical groundwork, but struggles to turn breakthrough research into globally scaled companies.

But what if that is actually our advantage?

The challenge isn’t a lack of ideas or talent; it’s about moving this brilliance decisively into the business world.

This isn’t new — and it’s already happening. A strong signal is the launch of U2V (University-to-Venture), a new fund founded by former Earlybird investors, built specifically to turn Europe’s academic excellence into venture-scale companies by backing spin-outs at the moment they leave the lab.

Together with leading investors, Dealroom’s latest report on European university spinouts shows that this translation gap is narrowing — and that Europe’s research base is increasingly becoming a competitive asset, not a liability.

Here are the five key takeaways:

Quantum is the ultimate example of innovation that rarely starts in a garage. It requires the deep resources of a university lab to germinate—and the ambition of a spin-off to scale.

QuantumDiamonds is a perfect example. A TUM spin-off, is investing €152 million to build the world’s first production facility for quantum-based chip inspection systems. The new site in eastern Munich will combine sensor manufacturing, cleanrooms, and application labs, supported by public funding under the European Chips Act.

“This investment marks our transition from research to global production. We’re building the tools the chip industry needs to inspect what was previously invisible — and doing it in Germany, with European IP and talent.”
Kevin Berghoff, Co-Founder & CEO

Munich beat out international alternatives thanks to its semiconductor ecosystem, talent base, and public-private innovation networks.

“Our tools give fabs layer-specific insight into current paths without opening the package — a capability that’s no longer optional but essential as heterogeneous integration becomes the norm.”
Dr. Fleming Bruckmaier, Co-Founder & CTO

With this move, QuantumDiamonds is positioning itself as a critical infrastructure player for next-generation chip manufacturing — and another signal that Europe is serious about scaling quantum hardware beyond the lab.

In this festive season, we are bringing back the most sought-after ecosystem gift we have ever featured.

Yes, you can put the ironic (and admittedly ugly) Christmas sweater aside, if you’re fast enough to grab one of our iconic, collector-edition “Deep Tech Renaissance” hoodies.

➔ We’re giving away a Deep Tech Renaissance hoodie on a first-come, first-served basis — just reply “CHRISTMAS” to this newsletter as quickly as you can!

Last Week’s Winner: Congratulations to Charlie Weise and Cecilia Giunta, who have won copies of the book The Confident Communicator. We’ll be in touch to send these to you. Happy reading!

DTM will be hosting Europe’s premier defence innovation marketplace SPARTA. An invite-only side event at the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference 2026 on February 12, 2026, co-hosted by DTM and TUM Venture Labs.

➔ Request an invitation for SPARTA.

DEEP Pioneers is a highly selective program by ESMT Berlin, a European business school for technology, leadership, and entrepreneurship, supported by the Joachim Herz Foundation. It’s bringing world-class research together with world-class execution.

The first cohort set the bar high. With applicants from Max Planck, Fraunhofer, and TUM, and engagement from investors like Earlybird and Planet A, 63% of matches progressed to Phase 2—successfully going from minimum viable teams to high-performing founding teams.

And now it's your turn. They are looking for ~10 top DACH projects: research-born teams (≤18 months from spin-off) with strong IP and breakthrough research.

What you get:

➔ Apply here and become part of DEEP Pioneers.

Deadline: January 7th, 2026 - for any questions, get in touch with [email protected]