Five Key Innovation Areas at Hello Tomorrow
A summary of the innovation on show at this year’s Hello Tomorrow.
Dr Alisa Molotova joins Bloc Ventures as Investment Manager
We’re so excited to welcome Dr Alisa Molotova to the Bloc Ventures investment team. She is based in Cambridge and will help us discover new deep tech entrepreneurs looking for a specialist investor with Arm and computing as a core part of its DNA.
Alisa has been working in deep science and technology since studying genetics at University of Glasgow (placement as an engineer at GSK) and then completing her PhD (sponsored by Wellcome Trust) in Stem Cell Neuroscience at University of Cambridge, researching at the intersection of biology and physics.
Whilst studying, Alisa became Head of Commercial Strategy at a deep tech startup named Labstep, where she led their business development strategy on their mission to simplify and accelerate scientific discovery. Following her time at Labstep, Alisa moved into the investment world, looking for early-stage technology companies to back on behalf of the investment arm of the University of Cambridge (Cambridge Enterprise).
She focused primarily on Pre-seed and Seed stage investment opportunities, working on all stages of the investment process (including technical due diligence, legal negotiation and board governance), whilst building a strong network in the Cambridge ecosystem. She also organised and judged startup competitions, represented the University in raising a new social innovation fund and mentored underrepresented venture capital candidates to create a fairer and more diverse industry, through Diversity VC.
Alisa then joined Marshall Aerospace and Defence and their newly established in-house accelerator called Marshall Futureworx as a Business Development Executive. As part of the senior management team, she worked on strategic innovation projects and took the lead in developing business cases for investment into emerging technologies across space, air, land and sea for both civilian and military applications. Primarily she focused on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), sustainable aviation and energy management.
With experience in business building, world-leading academia, early-stage investing and corporate development, Alisa possesses skills and experience that are core the Bloc DNA and fundamental to the way we operate. Her role at Bloc will be to work alongside our research team to find deep tech investment opportunities and help us grow the Bloc portfolio as we scale.
Alisa commented: “It’s an exciting time for deep tech investing and an equally exciting time to be joining Bloc Ventures on their growth journey. I have always enjoyed working with technologists who are not content with the status quo, and I have found this determination to create change in the Bloc team and the entrepreneurs we back. I’m very excited to get started and start meeting some deep tech companies!”
Outside of her career, Alisa is a registered beekeeper, a keen photographer, long distance runner and speaks four languages. You can meet Alisa and the rest of the Bloc team on 19th May in Cambridge where we’ll be hosting an event titled ‘From PoC to IPO: the journey of a deep tech company’. Sign up here.
