🤖 #44: Vivian's Deeptech Insider: I froze in my own board meeting

Hello and welcome to the #44 edition of the fortnightly Vivian's Deeptech Insider.

I lost control of my company… one board meeting at a time.

That's how it felt. Not in a single dramatic moment, but slowly, quietly, over months and years.

At first, everything looked like progress. Revenue ticking up. Product development on track. Capital behind us. On paper, we were moving. We were doing the things founders are supposed to do.

But inside? I was exhausted. Drained in a way I couldn't quite explain to anyone around me. Constantly second-guessing decisions I should have been able to make in my sleep.

Everything felt fragmented. I was pitching different narratives to different investors depending on what I thought they wanted to hear. I was chasing multiple markets and revenue models because I hadn't been honest with myself about which one actually made sense. I was saying yes to opportunities that looked exciting on the surface but had nothing to do with where we were actually trying to go.

I told myself it was just the nature of early-stage. That this was what building felt like.

But then I'd sit in a board meeting — listening to three different investors give three different pieces of conflicting advice — and they'd turn to me to weigh in on which direction to lead.

And I completely froze.

Not because the advice was bad. Some of it was brilliant. But I had no anchor. No clear point of view of my own to filter it through. So instead of leading the conversation, I was just… reacting. Letting the momentum of everyone else steer the company while I sat at the head of the table pretending I was in control.

It wasn't a product problem. It wasn't a market problem. It wasn't even really a board problem.

It was me. My lack of clarity.

The moment I knew something had shifted

The first sign things were changing wasn't a headline number or a funding round. It was subtler than that.

I stopped dreading board meetings.

Not because they got easier — boards never really get easy. But because I finally knew what I thought before I walked in. I had a point of view. I could hold the tension of conflicting opinions without being pulled apart by them. I could hear difficult feedback and filter it through a clear strategic lens instead of just absorbing it and spiralling.

Once that changed, everything else followed.

We hit 90,000 subscribers in 18 months. Investor conversations became cleaner and faster because I wasn't hedging or shapeshifting depending on the room. Decisions that used to take weeks started resolving in days — not because they were simpler, but because I was clearer.

But the metric I cared about most? I started sleeping through the night again.

That calm — that sense of being in the driver's seat of your own company — isn't something you can put in a deck. But any founder who's experienced the opposite knows exactly what I'm talking about.

What this taught me about the difference between good founders and great ones

I've now spent years working with deeptech and healthtech founders across seven boards, and I see the same pattern repeat itself constantly. Founders who are technically brilliant, genuinely building something important, but quietly losing the plot in the boardroom. Not because they lack intelligence or commitment — but because nobody has helped them develop the strategic clarity to lead confidently at this stage.

Clarity isn't a personality trait. It's a skill. And it's one that most technical founders are never explicitly taught.

It's what lets you stay in the driver's seat even when your board, your investors, and a dozen incoming opportunities are all pulling in different directions. It's what makes decision-making feel lighter and faster. It's what turns board meetings from something you brace for into something you actually lead.

And perhaps most importantly — it makes the whole thing feel less lonely.

So I built the thing I wish had existed for me

Capital Catalyst was designed for deeptech and healthtech founders who are already in motion — funded or revenue-generating — and facing the kind of strategic decisions that compound quickly if you get them wrong. Before the decisions you're getting wrong today start stacking up into problems you can't easily undo.

This isn't a course. It's not a coaching programme with generic frameworks. It's a structured cohort where I work directly with a small group of founders on the decisions that are actually live for them right now: positioning, equity structure, board dynamics, partnership decisions, exit strategy. The things that keep you up at night and that you can't always talk through openly with your own investors.

The founders who get the most out of it are the ones who are already moving — already building, already feeling the tension — but who sense that something in their strategic foundation isn't quite right. They're smart enough to know what they don't know. And they're ready to fix it.

The next cohort kicks off on 9th March. This is the last newsletter before it opens, and seats are deliberately limited — so if you've been on the fence, now is the time to have the conversation rather than after it fills.

If any of this resonates — if you recognised yourself somewhere in that board meeting I described — reply to this email to book a 20-minute call with me.

I'll tell you honestly whether it's a fit. No pressure, no pitch. Just a straight conversation. This is a small, focused cohort — I can only take a handful of founders at this level of depth.

One question to sit with this week:

If your ideal acquirer looked at your company today, would they see focus — or fragmentation?

If you hesitated, that’s the work.

Until then,

Vivian

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