Here is something I have observed across three decades of corporate leadership and entrepreneurship: the people best equipped to build deep tech ventures — engineers and technology managers who can navigate complex systems, de-risk technology and orchestrate innovation at scale — are rarely the ones building them. This is not a skills gap. It is an identity gap. And with the world urgently needing deep tech founders who can think long, act decisively, and build for impact, that gap is one we can no longer afford to ignore.

The journey from engineering manager to deep tech founder demands an honest cycle of learning, unlearning and relearning. Unlearning the instinct for consensus and certainty. Relearning what it means to lead when there is no roadmap handed to you. And yet — the tools that great engineering managers use every day, systems thinking, technology road mapping, TRL-based decision-making, turn out to be exactly what deep tech entrepreneurship demands. The discipline is not a barrier to founding. It is a blueprint for it.

This keynote draws on my own journey — from leading technology and innovation at Nokia Siemens Networks to co-founding Numocity, a deep tech venture in energy transition — to make the case that engineering managers are not just capable founders. They may well be the founders the world needs most right now.