Over the next five years, Ateklo aims to create and invest in up to 20 companies, co-founder and CEO Justin Hafner tells Mainebiz in an interview.
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Justin Hafner, founder and former CEO of digital health startup Kinotek, aims to make an even bigger splash in the startup world as the co-founder and CEO of a company called Ateklo Inc. Mainebiz caught up with the Portland-based entrepreneur to find out more about his new venture with Richard Corey, who leads the VEMI Lab at the University of Maine in Orono.
Mainebiz: What is Ateklo?
Justin Hafner: Ateklo is a company that creates companies. Just like a traditional tech company produces and sells products, our products happen to be startups. Specifically, we turn frontier scientific researchers into entrepreneurs who impact industries through venture creation.
MB: What gap are you trying to fill in Maine’s startup ecosystem?
JF: The same commercialization gap we uncovered nationally is visible in Maine. There is support for startups once they exist, but very little that de-risks and catalyzes the inception stage of new ventures. Ateklo intervenes further upstream than incubators and accelerators. This allows us to de-risk a venture before its formal creation at the source of initial ideation. We build a strong foundation from Day Zero, ultimately improving exit timeframe and growth probability.
MB: How does your approach differ from that of a traditional venture capital investor?
JH: Traditional venture capital waits for companies to form and de-risk themselves before investing. We don’t wait, we originate the companies directly at the source of innovation, assemble a team and build from the ground up. That lets us control risk earlier and, from a financial standpoint, create the conditions for outsized returns compared to traditional VC.
MB: How are you matching industry needs with startups that can meet those needs?
JH: We source problems directly from industry partners, primarily Fortune 1000 technology companies and map them against our focus areas. Instead of waiting for founders to appear, we identify graduate researchers with the expertise to solve those problems and then co-create a new venture around both the talent and the need simultaneously. This gets us to what we call “problem-founder-market-solution fit” much earlier than existing models.
MB: What types of companies will you be investing in and what’s your geographic focus?
JH: We’re focused on building and investing in “deep tech” companies. While we started in Maine, our model is built to scale into other regions. The goal is to build a global ecosystem of talent, expertise and industry partners so our companies are competitive at every stage of growth.
MB: How many companies do you aim to invest in?
JH: Over the next five years, our goal is to create and invest in up to 20 companies, which keeps us on track toward our 10-year goal of launching 40 ventures.
MB: As you build Ateklo’s portfolio, how will you keep growth manageable?
JH: We spent a year developing the operational processes, infrastructure and design needed to scale companies efficiently. Together, we refer to these elements as our central operating system. We also built an intelligence engine that collects data on the key components that drive our pipeline and distribution channels. This engine allows us to capture and apply the cumulative IQ of our ecosystem directly into each portfolio company. By combining this system with strong relationships across universities and industry, we can attract top talent and consistently create high-quality new ventures.
MB: What would it take for Maine to produce the next big tech disruptor?
JH: The companies that became major disruptors emerged in moments when their industries were comfortable, talent concentrated, and initial investors behind the founders were willing to take real risks with strong conviction. Maine has elements of that, but we need to evolve our culture around entrepreneurial risk, think bigger in terms of ambition and build deeper collaboration across the ecosystem. If we align around that mindset and operate as a connected system rather than isolated efforts, there’s no reason the next great technology company couldn’t be built here.