Hannah Payette Peterson, Co-MD at Nucleate Berlin: Why Europe struggles to turn science into startups

0:00Scaling Europe hosts:Hello and welcome back to the Scaling Europe show presented by Deal. I'm Seb Johnson. Today I'm joined by Hannah. Hannah is an American in Germany who has been organizing a very exciting hackathon. She's also with Unite and some amazing organizations in Germany who are looking to accelerate tech and accelerate scientific tech in the region. So this is super interesting. You're the managing director of Nucleot Germany. You are an acceleration manager at Unite. And you are organizing the next big hackathon with Project Europe. Super exciting times. Thank you for joining me.

0:30Hannah Payette Peterson:Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm super excited to be on Scaling Europe. I've been watching your shows recently, so very happy to be here.

0:40Scaling Europe hosts:That's what we love to hear. Talk to me about this hackathon first. I want to talk about the state of Berlin Tech. I want to talk about scientific tension and kind of bio and AI. But first off, let's talk about the hackathon. It's the end of February. What's going on? What's it about?

0:54Hannah Payette Peterson:Absolutely. So it's a bio and AI hackathon where the goal is to bring together scientific talent, life sciences talent with AI and technical talent. And I mean, a lot of times we see these two worlds of kind of, you know, academic scientists being quite separate from the world of technical people, of builders, of founders. And we really want to bring these two worlds together because there's so much potential nowadays in kind of tech bio, AI and biotech. There's so much that can be built when you really cross over and kind of bring these two elements together. So that's our goal. And we want to bring top talent from Berlin and also Europe wide to build for 24 hours.

1:42Hannah Payette Peterson:There are going to be three challenge tracks, protein design, genome modeling and synthesis, and agentic AI and life sciences. And teams will receive the challenges on the day of, so kind of no head starts. And ideally build something over the course of 24 hours that can be a kickoff point maybe to continue doing further research, developing the project further, and maybe even building a startup out of it.

2:11Scaling Europe hosts:and so you're i think you're assessing you're trying to get 50 participants in who are going to be hacking for 24 hours a mix of scientific talent and technical talent how does that work when you talk about scientific talent what kind of stuff are they going to be hacking is it still going to be on a computer typing away is it going to be something a bit more scientific how's that

2:27Hannah Payette Peterson:going to look yeah aiming for 50 to 80 we're thinking maybe a little more towards 80 um but we'll see kind of how it it shakes out with with all the applications and and you know all the the teams. But yeah, so we're looking for, you know, not every person who joins has to both be a biology expert and a machine learning expert. But we're hoping that kind of each team will have a range of talent. So there will be some people with deep scientific backgrounds and some people with lots of experience in AI, bioinformatics, machine learning. And the so it is going to be, you know, on the computer, but there's so much that you can do with biological data.

3:11Hannah Payette Peterson:There's so much that you can do with AI models now for kind of designing proteins to bind to different targets or designing particular genomic sequences, or, you know, there are companies that are even building sort of agentic processes for scientific discovery. I mean, there's a whole range of things that you can do when you take kind of scientific knowledge and you apply AI to it, essentially. So we're looking for this mix and to bring these talents together.

3:47Scaling Europe hosts:And why are you doing this?

3:49Hannah Payette Peterson:I mean, I think so. I see so much potential in Berlin and Europe in terms of, you know, there's amazing science here. So I come from a life science background, biology and neuroscience. And I mean, Europe has and has for many years had a great academic research, great scientific research. But where there's a bigger gap, and this is not only a challenge in Europe. I mean, there are, you know, there's sort of generally a big cultural gap between academic research and entrepreneurship. But there are certain parts of the U.S. that have done a better job in kind of closing this gap and mixing this culture of science with entrepreneurship and with kind of technical builders.

4:36Hannah Payette Peterson:And Europe has all the building blocks here. So Europe has kind of the hard part, which is this great scientific research, great life sciences, academics. And what's difficult is to kind of get them out of the lab and to get them to mix with the tech founder types, you know, AI experts. And so I think there's a lot that can be done if you bring these worlds together. And our goal is to help facilitate the formation of more companies, of more kind of really innovative, world-changing tech bio, you know, AI and life sciences companies. And on the other hand, I think one thing, I mean, you know this for sure, that Europe isn't great at selling itself.

5:25Like, I think there's so much potential here.

5:29Hannah Payette Peterson:And, you know, I see this as a huge opportunity. But I think one thing that, you know, Americans sort of by instinct do a bit more is put on really hypey events, you know, present things that are really cool and talk about how cool they are. and I think you know Europe needs a little more of that and so this event and also some other events I've done in the past the goal is to you know showcase hey this is really cool like let's bring a lot of hype around this this is also why I'm really excited to collaborate with Project Europe because they've done a great job of this but really just kind of it doesn't have to be empty hype because I think the U.S.

6:13Hannah Payette Peterson:does that some as well which is also not good but it you know when you really have something to show of substance, you know, hyping it a bit is also a good thing.

6:23Scaling Europe hosts:And, you know, you're an American, you're from Boston, you're living in Germany. What else do you see? You're right. Like, I completely agree. Europeans are not great at selling ourselves. We're also not great at that, you know, as you mentioned, that kind of like the scientific to entrepreneur, scientist to entrepreneur journey. What are some of the other differences that you see between the American tech ecosystem and, you know, what you're experiencing in Berlin now?

6:45Hannah Payette Peterson:Yeah, I mean, so my kind of closest point of comparison is Boston, which is where I actually grew up in Cambridge, right near Harvard. My parents still live there. My brother works there, works in a biotech company there. And so for one, I notice specifically Boston as compared to Berlin and Europe more broadly, it's a more mature ecosystem. So it's just, you know, lots of biotech companies have been around, have been scaling, have grown the whole ecosystem for decades. decades. And so what you have, a big difference that I notice is in Boston, you just have more experienced executives. So people who have kind of gone through the whole process, maybe they started as PhD students, postdocs, they spun out a company, and they've learned what it actually is like to scale a company, what it's like to have an exit.

7:42Hannah Payette Peterson:They've founded multiple companies. And so what you have in Berlin is kind of a lot of the building blocks you need, But it's a very young ecosystem, especially in life sciences. And so you have less of this experience talent, which, you know, this experience talent is really important because people will come back and angel invest. They will come back and mentor. They will join as executives to help companies scale. And so it's part of the ecosystem that we just don't have yet because it's young, but it's something that once you start to get it, once the ecosystem, you know, is around for a few years and you start to have this experienced talent come back, it's sort of a feedback loop that really accelerates the growth of the whole ecosystem.

8:28Hannah Payette Peterson:So I think, you know, this is something that we will get with time, but definitely another difference that I noticed.

8:36Scaling Europe hosts:yeah i think yeah you're completely right something that i talk to founders about all the time is that sort of like the european flywheel you know like once you get those successful companies and then they they go off to bring about another 10 companies and 100 angel investors and the capital then gets reinvested from the vcs and the lps and just takes time um but i think berlin has got quite an interest in history in the fact that it does have a very solid history of being a great ecosystem but traditionally more on the software stuff especially looking back at the age of like rocket internet those days munich is often more associated with deep tech where does life science life sciences fit into that you know i think you've got a lot of technical talent because you've got some amazing universities on the munich side berlin has got probably like an older more established ecosystem is there a thrive it is you know berlin where the life sciences ecosystem is going to be built you think you think is there a community and ecosystem in Munich as well.

9:30Scaling Europe hosts:How do you see that playing out?

9:32Hannah Payette Peterson:Yeah, definitely both cities are really important and I think will be the two biggest hubs of Germany in life sciences. And I think they can both play an important role there. It doesn't have to be, it shouldn't be either or. They should also be working together. But I think Berlin has obviously for a lot of reasons a really interesting history where part of the reason that it became, and I mean, I'm not speaking from experience because I've lived in Berlin for six and a half years, but not, you know, I didn't witness the whole history that someone would growing up here. But I think Berlin partly became a hub for these software startups because it was kind of a, you know, in the 90s, 2000s, a strange city where all of this crazy, you know, historical events had happened and that left kind of a vacuum where this is also why a lot of artists came into Berlin and, you know, life was affordable.

10:32Hannah Payette Peterson:There was a lot of space. There was kind of a lot of freedom to do weird stuff. And this is also can be very conducive to founders, especially founders who want to build really cheaply and just kind of, you know, hustle and build their own culture from the ground up, which I think is partly why it was kind of a hub for software startups. This is obviously quite different than the process that is needed for deep tech and scientific startups, where this is much more kind of relies on an established base, you know, universities, but also having pharma companies, big corporates in the ecosystem is helpful.

11:14Hannah Payette Peterson:And Berlin doesn't have as much of, I mean, Berlin has Bayer, for example, but it doesn't have as many of these big pharma companies simply because of the history of the city, because it was really tumultuous. But at the same time, Berlin does have a lot of universities, I mean, a massive amount of students, a lot of really high quality research in the universities. I mean, it's got the biggest medical school in Europe, Charité, and there's a ton of life science research there. There are lots of different institutes throughout the city. So there is actually a lot of academic activity going on.

11:47Hannah Payette Peterson:And it's just because of this strange sort of history that it's taken longer for this sort of deep tech scene to grow in Berlin. But I do think that, I mean, Berlin is, has more room for this like weird, rebellious creativity, I think, than Munich does. I mean, this is why I love Berlin. And this sort of weird, contrarian attitude is super important for for startups especially if you're really want to build kind of revolutionary stuff and it's a big city it's a really international city more so than munich and it's very easy relatively i would say to get international talent to move here which is incredibly important for scientific startups if you really want to kind of get global talent so munich for sure had a head start because of kind of the history and some of the establishments there, but I, and will remain important, but I definitely see sort of Berlin as being really at the beginning of its trajectory.

12:53Hannah Payette Peterson:And I think the ceiling for what Berlin can become is very high and sort of overall potential, I would say, is probably higher than Munich. I think Munich is probably closer. I mean, it's an amazing ecosystem. I'm not trying to, you know, deny that, But I think it's probably closer to its capacity than Berlin is. Berlin is really just beginning, which is why I think it's a very exciting time to be building here and kind of building up that ecosystem.

13:20Scaling Europe hosts:Yeah, and it makes complete sense. It's interesting that Munich has done so well, given that it's not the major city in Germany. And, you know, when I've been there, it doesn't have the same sort of atmosphere and vibe as Berlin does. And, you know, the same thing like Paris has become the city in France and London and Stockholm. countries generally have one city and it's generally the capital it's interesting that Munich has done so well but I think you're right I think Berlin is is where it's going to be what's the what's the hardest thing about building in Germany or Berlin specifically

13:54Hannah Payette Peterson:it's a good question so I mean Germany has a lot of positives for sure I mean there's a lot of the science is great there's a lot of um funding for scientific research for translational research which is a huge positive but at the same time there is still a culture not among kind of the young ambitious founders but among a lot of the establishment a lot of universities a culture of sort of risk aversion um and this is not only something that you see in germany it's something that you see in Europe more broadly. It's something you also see in a lot of academic cultures in the US that aren't in kind of the hubs, the hotspots, but definitely something that you see in Germany.

14:41A lot of bureaucracy, a lot of fragmentation as well of ecosystems.

14:48Hannah Payette Peterson:I am a huge fan of EU Inc. for a lot of reasons. Obviously, they're addressing kind of one, just one small sort of discrete challenge, which is the, you know, proposing a Europe-wide company structure to reduce the fragmentation of kind of different company structures in each country. But this is, I think, a really amazing example of a step towards making Europe able to operate as one large unit or to allow companies to really operate more freely across Europe. Also a step in the right direction of kind of reducing bureaucracy. I also just love it as an example of what you can do if you are just really audacious and you just start trying to do stuff.

15:38Hannah Payette Peterson:I know some of the EU Inc team and I'm very inspired by them as well. So, you know, doing things to sort of reduce this fragmentation, reduce the bureaucracy, and just to kind of insert more of this culture of innovation, excitement, risk taking, I think will move things in the right direction. I would say those are the, yeah, some of the challenges that I see and Germany, which are not exclusive to Germany, but definitely present. Yeah.

16:16Scaling Europe hosts:And I think you're right about the EU and stuff. It has been inspiring. What they've done in such a short space of time in a world that is very slow moving is being just insane.

16:28Hannah Payette Peterson:Absolutely. And I mean, I'm very much inspired by kind of that attitude and a lot of the stuff that I try to work on. And, you know, I try to think just, you know, how much you can do if you are just determined and persistent. I mean, Nucleate, the sort of the Berlin chapter I have built up along with some other PhD students, postdocs, and we kind of built this from nothing over the past three years. And this has been also a cool lesson in kind of what can you do if you just decide to do stuff. And EU Inc. has obviously taken this sort of much further and in a very impressive way.

17:14Scaling Europe hosts:Yeah, it's amazing. And look, I'm conscious we're running out of time. Final question. What would you like to see come out of or be built at or happen as a result of the hackathon in a few weeks?

17:24Hannah Payette Peterson:I would love to see teams that maybe, maybe they form at the hackathon, maybe they're preformed, but that they build something that is maybe really cool, really impressive after the 24 hours, but is the beginning of something that they can actually take further. So what I'm trying to do is set it up so that the prizes that the winning team receive enable them to continue building their projects and kind of eventually, you know, keep working on the research and eventually potentially build it into a company. So I would love to see kind of real ventures coming out of this. That would be like the ultimate goal.

18:07Scaling Europe hosts:I mean, that'd be amazing. I went to hackathon at the end of last year, organized by the onstage team here in London, and they won the hackathon. And then part of that was as they won, one of the prizes for winning was being able to pitch at a demo day. And they got accepted into Antler. And it was like, wow, these three people who'd never met before they met at the event. It was only like a three hour hackathon or something. And then they had this opportunity to actually like start Antler, pitch to funds and just run with it. And it was amazing. You know, it was just like one evening that had just been organized by the on-stage team.

18:39Scaling Europe hosts:It was a fairly small hackathon. They just opened these doors for what could be a really cool business. So I don't think that's apt. Yeah, I think that could very reasonably happen. It would be amazing to see. But look, I had the best of luck with it. I've loved chatting. I think it's going to be super fun. I've been to a bunch of the Project Europe hackathons before and it is, it's a slog. The 24-hour thing is not, it's not easy. But the atmosphere is always amazing. So you're going to have a great time.

19:07Thank you.