Good science isn't enough.

Alexandra Vidyuk thinks the biggest economy in human history hasn't been built yet — and it won't be on Earth.

"The space economy will eventually be bigger than the Earth economy," she told me. "Logically — we have orbit, the moon, Mars, potentially asteroids." Right now it's still small next to the world's largest economies. But at some point, she argues, it overtakes them all — every economy we have down here. It's the whole reason her fund is called Beyond Earth Ventures.

That's the prize. And deep tech — the hard science behind space, robotics, fusion, advanced materials — is where the smart money is rushing to claim it. "This is the only sector that's happening today," she said. "It's not happening in fintech or crypto or software… now is a unique moment in our history to actually invest in deep tech."

Which raises the question that should keep every ambitious country in Asia up at night: if the prize is that big, and the science is already here — why doesn't our brilliant research turn into brilliant companies?

Alexandra didn't reach for a mystery. She's a physicist who spent a decade in banking across London and Hong Kong, and now runs Beyond Earth Ventures, backing frontier companies in space, robotics and energy. She reached for a checklist.

Boil her answer down, and it's this: good science isn't enough. A country doesn't get a deep-tech industry because it has smart people. It gets one because it builds a machine that turns those people's research into companies — and most places are missing half the parts. Here's the machine, the way she laid it out.

It starts with the university. (1) You need research that actually produces intellectual property — patents worth building on.

But IP sitting in a lab is worth nothing, which is why (2) the technology transfer office matters more than anyone admits. Its job is to file patents and license them out fast. "If you're going to wait for six months or 12 months," Alexandra says, other people file better and faster, and the moment is gone. Speed is the whole game.

Then (3) the terms of that license have to be sane. The global standard, she says, is about 5% equity and 20% royalty to the university — "5/20." She's heard of universities asking for 10% equity and 25% — "which will kill a startup." Get this wrong and nothing survives contact with the market.

Next, (4) venture builders — the part Southeast Asia underrates most. A brilliant scientist is rarely a brilliant CEO. So the best ecosystems run programs that take postdocs and PhDs and pair them with people who know how to build companies — ex-bankers, ex-consultants — and mix them for months until a real founding team forms. The one Alexandra points to in Singapore is ATUM Ventures. "This is the best combination in deep tech," she says — the scientist and the operator, together.

After that, (5) money — but a specific kind: university funds. The great science universities don't just spin companies out, they back them. "In Oxford, you have two university funds, 500 million each," she notes. MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Cambridge — same model. Singapore? "We don't have a university fund yet." That's a real gap.

Then (6) media and role-modelling — something people forget is even part of the machine. "What are we role-modelling for kids?" she asks. When a child pictures a good job, is it the civil service and the bank — or building something? If space and deep tech never show up on TV, in the news, at the dinner table, no one grows up wanting to do it — and no one grows up wanting to fund it. (This, she pointed out, is exactly the job I'm trying to do.)

And (7) talent — specifically, how easily an ambitious outsider can get in. "Fifty percent of entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley are immigrants," she says — people who already took one big risk by moving, and carry that appetite into everything after. Singapore, she notes, has made its entrepreneur visa hard to get — and, from what I've seen, expensive too. "Any country in Southeast Asia should understand that and build this."

Put the seven together and you can see why Singapore leads the region: it has the universities, the venture builders, the government programs, and a deep pool of family-office capital. It's also honest about what it can still work on — a university fund, and a visa that welcomes the founders it should be courting. To my eye, the rest of Southeast Asia is earlier — strong science in patches, with the machine around it only half-built. That's not a verdict; it's a to-do list.

So how do you use this?

Policymakers — this is your build list, not a vibe. Hold it up to your own ecosystem: a fast TTO, sane 5/20 terms, venture builders, a university fund, a founder visa, and a story that makes kids want in. Singapore shows the payoff; your gaps show the order of work.

Founders — this is your map. If you're a scientist, you don't have to become a CEO overnight — find the venture builder that pairs you with an operator, and check your university's licensing terms before you sign anything.

Investors — this is where the opportunity hides. The ecosystems still missing a part or two are exactly where great research is trapped and underpriced. Back the machine — the venture builders, the university funds — and you're early to everything that comes out of it.

Miss a few parts, and the smartest research in the world stays in the lab. Build them all, and — as Singapore is starting to show — the companies come. Good science was never the hard part. The machine is.

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If you missed the last issue, go back and read it: the satellite that's ready for space — and stuck on the ground. Vietnam built a brilliant satellite it can't launch, and a nine-month-old startup found a way around it.

Cheers!

— shirley