Koniku

Hot take. Founder-to-Founder level-up. Everyone else, pls. move along - including non deep tech founders. Deep tech founders often hear the same line from investors: “The science is brilliant but investors will need to be patient.” That’s code for “I don’t see the business model.” The problem isn’t usually the company. It’s. the. frame. Since Silicon Valley has been overrun by finance bros, they are conditioned to see technical founders as scientists not CEOs. Case in point: do you know who made Intel a basket case? - it's "Paul Stevens Otellini" you can quote me any day on that. Anyone who is not a technically strong engineer/scientist has zero - and i really mean *zero* - business leading a technology first/moat company. Their views are almost always shortsighted, though attractive for an irrational casino mindset. That's why Jensen Huang won - that brother had balls of steel to stay the course - IN PUBLIC!! Legend! When it comes to addressing investors, i have a creeping suspicion that logic, data and clearly articulated reasoning doesn’t matter as much as you think it does. It’s all feels. It's this raw basic instinct $$$ feeling, hard for me describe, but i know it. You must learn to channel it. Weird stuff to say I know. I learnt it the hard way. So here’s the shift for deep tech founders: Science is the moat, not the product. If you can, avoid talking about the science at all, get someone else to do it. The finance bro's brain most times cannot comprehend that you realize physics ( or whatever ) and markets are all numbers. Patience is a choice, not physics. Show how contracts compound or how adoption is fast. For your own cash flow, grow your margins, that way you can become self sufficient faster. Numbers retire narratives. Gross margins, renewals, capital efficiency that kills the “science project” label faster than patents or papers. Sales! Sales!! Sales!!! African Savant - that's my response to your post. Own the story. If you don’t pre-empt the “this will take forever” critique, someone else - in fact everyone - will define you that way. As a technical founder, especially fellow dorky PhDs, listen up, your biggest risk isn’t just execution. It’s being framed incorrectly. Build kick-ass products, scale if you can, but above all: control the lens and push your narrative hard. Sales/$$$ will make it stick. #deeptech #hardtech

🚨 Founder Fridays: Meet Osh of Koniku What if machines could smell danger before it arrives? That’s the question Koniku is answering—by turning synthetic neurobiology into real-world defense applications. Founded by Osh Agabi, Koniku builds “smell cyborgs”—biotech processors made of living cells that can detect and interpret odors in the air. From explosives and disease to food safety and agricultural threats, they’re helping define a new frontier in public safety and detection. Recently, Koniku became a founding member of the Oracle Defense Ecosystem—a first-of-its-kind coalition accelerating breakthrough technology into national security and defense missions. Through Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), their platform now has: 🔁 Streamlined acquisition routes ⚡ Faster deployment pathways ✅ Immediate compliance with SCCA and CMMC 🎯 Direct access to DoD and allied opportunities through Oracle channels This is a major unlock—not just for Koniku, but for the broader ecosystem of defense innovators. At Accenture, I’ve had the privilege of helping elevate Koniku’s visibility on the global stage—bringing their work to the World Customs Organization Conference in Brazil and the IBMATA Border Management Summit in Estonia. Because the technologies that shape public safety tomorrow deserve a seat at the table today. Their work is a powerful reminder that cash, contracts, and community are the foundation for giving underrepresented founders real access—and a true shot at long-term success. ✨ Proud to spotlight Osh and the Koniku team as part of #FounderFridays—a series honoring the builders driving impact at the intersection of innovation and inclusion. 🔗 Learn more about Oracle’s Defense Ecosystem: https://lnkd.in/dQ5JnrNy #FounderFridays #BlackBusinessMonth #InclusiveInnovation #Koniku #SyntheticBiotech #DefenseTech #LeadershipInMotion #OracleCloud #NationalSecurity #PublicSafety #SensoryIntelligence #InnovationEconomy #CashContractsCommunity

Most people miss this: voice, vision, and touch are saturated markets. Smell and taste isn’t. And there’s a reason for that it’s hard. f%$king hard. The image below is from seven years ago. Caption it if you like. It’s good detective work and a window into how we build. Or just read the patent - that's already published. I joked with one of our earliest teammates the other day: people say hardware is hard, biotech is hell, synbio is esoteric. We say, “Hold our beer.” We built a system that eats right at the center of all nine circles of hell, fused. Somehow we came out the other side, grinning and shell-shocked. For me, the hardest part wasn’t the tech. It was the people. The so-called “marketplace of ideas” isn’t exactly a free marketplace - bias, cliques, gatekeepers and all sorts of human BS. Of course, anything full of humans is flawed. I underestimated that - by a LOT. But we came here to win everything, and that's precisely what we shall do. What we built back in 2018 is rare. Maybe even magical. Very few teams on earth could replicate it. African Savant post yesterday prompted this. He’s right. We’ve kept our cards close. Still do. But what we’re building now goes beyond “revolutionary.” Revolutionary doesn’t cut it. It’s a new paradigm, forged through failure. And no, you won’t have to wait seven years this time. We’ll be publishing more. Time to move faster. #SmellCyborgs #Smellborgs #SynBio #HardTech #FrontierTech #BiotechInnovation #FutureOfCompute Jos Sebastian Gus Cardenas Mø Momodu Koniku post, post edit: yeah, there is a redaction of lettering on the PCB board for legal and security reasons.