🤖 #39: Vivian's Deeptech Insider: Why your cap table is running your business

Hello and welcome to the #39 edition of the fortnightly Vivian's Deeptech Insider.

I spent 11 years building my second company the wrong way.

Not because I wasn't smart enough, or didn't work hard enough, or lacked technical chops.

I built it the wrong way because I let my cap table define success for me.

And if you're a grant-funded or recently-raised technical founder reading this, there's a decent chance you're doing the same thing right now.

The three-exit trap

In my early days, I did what most founders do when they're desperate for investment: I pitched optionality.

My deck showed three potential exit scenarios. I ended up with an investor who fell in love with Exit scenario A. But then Exit scenario B started getting market traction. Before I could blink, I was building fragmented assets with no cohesive narrative. My cap table was a mix of investors who'd backed different versions of the future. And I was the one trying to deliver on all of them—which meant I was building multiple businesses in one.

Here's the uncomfortable truth: The moment you take investment without defining what success looks like for you, you've outsourced your strategy.

You might be in this trap if:

• Your board meetings feel like performance reviews rather than strategy sessions

• You're tracking 10+ KPIs but none of them map to a clear exit scenario

• Different investors are pushing you in contradictory directions ("focus on revenue" vs "focus on IP value" vs "focus on user growth")

• You can't clearly articulate what you'd say yes to if an acquirer approached you tomorrow

• You're saying "yes" to opportunities because they sound impressive, not because they fit your path

Sound familiar?

You're not alone. In my first Capital Catalyst cohort, all of my technical founders realised they'd never actually defined what success meant to them personally. They'd defined what their investors wanted to see. What would make a great mission statement.

But not what THEY actually wanted their life to look like in three years.

The consciousness trap

Einstein said: "You can't solve a problem from the same level of consciousness that created it."

I've thought about that quote a lot.

When you're in the weeds—juggling burn rate, investor updates, grant reporting, R&D milestones, regulatory hurdles—you can't see what you're optimising for. You're reacting. You're firefighting. You're trying to impress the next round.

But you're not building anything coherent.

I didn't have board advisors who could pull me up a level in those critical first few years. I had well-meaning people who cared about me, but no one who'd walked this exact path and could say: "Vivian, stop. What do YOU actually want?"

So I learned the expensive way.

Three years optimising for revenue growth that didn't matter to the "success" I wanted. So when I was attracting acquisition offers - none of them "felt right". A co-founder relationship that fractured because we were building towards different finish lines without realising it. And burnout that landed me with life-long stress-induced lupus.

But here's what really haunts me: the opportunity cost.

While I was building fragmented assets trying to please everyone on my cap table, my competitors were building coherent businesses with clear strategic narratives. By the time I got clarity on what I was actually building and why, I'd lost my technical advantage. The IP moat I could've built? Gone. The strategic partnerships I should've locked in? Signed with someone else.

The expensive lesson wasn't just about wasted capital. It was about wasted TIME in a market window that doesn't stay open forever.

What changed

When I finally got the right board advisors—people who'd taken companies through exits, who understood the strategic architecture of a defensible business—everything shifted.

They kept asking me the right questions, which is what I ended up distilling into my own framework I now call the Exit Canvas (which I teach in Capital Catalyst): a one-page tool that forces you to work backward from your definition of success, not forward from "let's see what sticks."

Four simple questions:

1. What does "winning" look like for me? (Not what VCs want to hear—what YOU actually want)

2. Who would pay premium prices for this outcome? (Your acquirer, your customers, your strategic partners)

3. What's the moat that makes this defensible? (IP, network effects, regulatory barriers, unfair advantages)

4. What's the minimum viable business that proves this path? (Not the 10-year moonshot—the next 18-month milestone)

Let me show you what this looks like in practice.

When a metabolic device founder came to me last year with $1.8M in Innovate UK funding, they answered Question 1 with: "I want to be acquired by a top-3 medical device company for $40M+ within 5 years, then take 2 years off to travel with my family."

That ONE answer changed everything.

We immediately killed a consumer product line that was generating revenue but would never interest a strategic acquirer. We doubled down on the clinical evidence pathway that corp dev teams actually care about. We restructured the board to include an ex-Medtronic executive who could open doors.

Eighteen months later, they're in active acquisition conversations. Not because they got lucky. Because they knew exactly what winning looked like and built everything around that.

That's the power of working backward from YOUR definition of success, not forward from "let's build something cool and see what happens."

When I started my third business, I filled out this canvas first. Before I wrote a business plan. Before I hired anyone.

My definition of success this time

• Organic growth. No dilutive funding rounds.

• High margin. I charge a premium for my 1:1 board advisory.

• Freedom to work with founders I actually want to work with. Technical founders building deeptech and healthtech who are coachable and exit-focused.

• Time with my daughter. Non-negotiable.

• Peace of mind. I don't wake up anxious about payroll or burn rate.

That's it. That's my finish line.

And because I know what it looks like, I can say "no" to everything that doesn't fit.

Old Vivian would've said yes because it sounded impressive.

New Vivian knows exactly what she's building and why.

The question for you

If you're grant-funded, recently raised, or in the messy middle of building, I want you to do something uncomfortable this week:

Open a blank document and answer this: What does success look like for me?

Not "what does success look like for my startup."

For YOU.

• What do you want your day-to-day to feel like three years from now?

• How much wealth do you need to generate to feel secure/free/accomplished?

• What kind of exit would you actually be proud of? One that aligns with your missions? (A $500M unicorn exit where you're diluted to 3%? Or a $50M strategic acquisition where you walk with $15M and your sanity intact?)

• What are you NOT willing to sacrifice?

Most founders skip this step entirely. They reverse-engineer success from what they think investors or the market wants to hear.

Then they spend years building someone else's dream.

Don't make the same mistake I made.

Define success first. Build the cap table around that.

Not the other way around.

Until next time,
Vivian

P.S. If you're a technical founder who's raised $250K–$5M and realising your board isn't helping you think strategically about exits, let's talk.

I work with a select few of deeptech/healthtech founders per year as a board advisor. We start with the Exit Canvas, then I help you build the board-level strategic architecture to actually get there—the right investors, the right advisors, the right commercial partnerships, the right narrative for acquirers.

Two spots open for 2026. Reply to this email if you want to explore whether we're a fit.

(And if you're earlier stage or want to work through this with a peer cohort instead, Capital Catalyst reopens for applications in March 2026 - check the link.)

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P.S.S.S. Are we connected on LinkedIn? I’m here.

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