For a deep tech founder, the pool of investors who understand what you’re building is small. Brendan Cornthwaite explains.
The air above us is full of things worth having, and Universal Atmosphere Processing is building the machine to capture and reuse them.
UAP’s atmospheric processor selectively captures greenhouse gases and turns them into usable resources. The part with the clearest commercial pull right now is a group of noble gases: xenon, neon and krypton. All three go into advanced manufacturing, and demand is being driven from two directions at once.
“These gases are used in advanced manufacturing processes, particularly semiconductor, aerospace and defence. We see AI driving the market because of chip manufacturing, and then aerospace, particularly the space industry. These gases are used in space propulsion, particularly satellite positioning propulsion.”
Founder and CEO Brendan Cornthwaite’s problem was never the market. It was finding the small number of investors who could look at a hardware roadmap and understand why it takes as long as it does.
Brendan raised a pre-seed in summer 2025, from a Northwest angel group and a regional VC whose accelerator he’d been through. Then the thing that happens to most hardware companies happened.
“Especially when you’re developing hardware like we’re doing, and it’s a new technology as well, it’s very hard to estimate how much you’re going to need exactly.”
So he went looking for a top-up. A bridge, a pre-seed plus, whichever name you prefer. Enough to keep the team funded to the end of the year and finish the Mark 1 prototype unit.
He wasn’t starting from zero, and he’s the first to say the pre-seed had given him a leg up. What he didn’t have was an obvious next set of people to talk to.
“I’ve tried a few other platforms in the past, with varying results. We’ve had plenty of meetings, but nothing’s come off the back of them.”
Brendan had seen ThatRound around the Northwest startup scene and at various events, but what prompted him to sign up was looking at the platform itself.
“Especially as a startup founder, you want something that’s intuitive, that you’re not going to spend a lot of time on, and that also presents your information professionally. That’s what seemed to come across.”
The part of the setup he singled out was the review before anything goes live.
“One of the things I did like about the process is that you get personal feedback on how to improve the pitch page before it goes live to the investor members.”
It didn’t change what UAP does or how they’d describe it, and he’s clear about that. What it changed though was the presentation, shaped by what ThatRound’s investor members are actually looking for.
Brendan is realistic about the size of the pool for a company like his, and he thinks other hardware founders should be too.
“For us, and this is the same with all deep tech or hardware startups, you’re only going to attract certain groups. Whether that’s particular VCs or angel groups that actually invest in that. You have to understand that as a starting boundary going into it.”
That’s the honest version of what a matching platform can do for a deep tech founder. It can’t manufacture investors who don’t exist, but it can shorten the part where you work out who they are.
“We connected very quickly with the people that would be interested. Some of them didn’t work out, and that’s understandable, but the ones that did moved through quickly.”
Two syndicate conversations came out of it. DeepChecks was one, and it didn’t go further. The other was Cambridge Capital Group.
Cambridge Capital Group invited Brendan down to pitch to their members in person, around two dozen people in the room.
“It was a really good experience, very professional. They were very receptive, very understanding. You can tell they’re an experienced group.”
Then the line that matters most for any founder building something technical:
“I’ve not had positive experience with other angel groups, because they’re not understanding of the road map. Whereas Cambridge Capital Group were.”
Several Cambridge Capital Group members invested, £20,000 in total. One of them has kept topping up since, and Brendan is going back to pitch the group again in October for the seed.
The amount is modest, but what it bought wasn’t.
“There are a lot of literal bits and pieces that go into this, and a huge amount of learning. I’m of the opinion that if you’re going to do something, then you need to do it properly. Getting this little bit of extra funding enables us to open up a few more avenues, which is then ultimately very important to raising our seed.”
The Mark 1 prototype is now built and complete. That’s the milestone that made the seed round possible, and it’s the reason a bridge round made sense for both sides. Investors came in at a reasonable share price immediately before the company hit its stride.
“It’s sort of a win-win situation. The investors get to come in at a reasonable share price, and that helps us move to the next phase.”
“What we’re doing at Universal Atmosphere Processing is vitally important for the UK. Being a hardware startup, there are challenges. I want other hardware startup founders to know that there are options out there, and just to keep going, and to keep looking at everything that’s available to you.”
For anyone building something technical, the pool of investors who can properly evaluate your business is smaller than the market as a whole. The work is finding them rather than working the whole list. For UAP it turned out to be two syndicate conversations introduced by ThatRound, one pitch, and a room in Cambridge where nobody needed the roadmap explaining.
One place to find, compare and engage with the right early-stage investors by using intelligent matching and warm introductions.
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