The following interview is a conversation we had with Ashley Montanaro, CEO & Co-Founder of Phasecraft, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: $22 Million Raised to Build the Future of Quantum Software
Ashley Montanaro
Hi, Brett. It’s great to be here.
Brett
Yeah, I’m super excited to have you on. I’d love to just begin with a quick summary of who you are and a bit more about your background.
Ashley Montanaro
Sure. So I’m one of the co founders of Phasecraft, and I’ve been working in the field of quantum computing for about 20 years now. Before that, I used to work in the software industry, so I used to be writing software for smartphones before they were called smartphones, actually. So it’s back in the distant past. And then at some point, I started learning about quantum computing and I started hearing about this amazing new technology. And in fact, I didn’t really believe that it was true. I thought, okay, this must be wrong. I can’t believe that you could do all these amazing things with quantum mechanics. And then I started reading more and more about it and eventually I realized that, in fact, people weren’t making this up. And this really was going to be an incredibly promising and powerful technology.
Ashley Montanaro
Then I jumped into doing a PhD in quantum computing at University of Bristol in the UK. I spent many years working in academia in Bristol and Cambridge, and then back to Bristol as a faculty member in the school of Mathematics there. And then quantum computing was getting to this really exciting stage when it was really leaving academia and becoming actually a sort of really interesting commercial and industrial sort of pursuit, it was clear that this technology was leaving the lab and you could finally do some really exciting things with quantum computers. So that’s when Toby Kubert and John Morton, my co founders, and I got together and we founded Facecraft to try to develop the algorithms and the software that would really enable quantum computers to fulfill true potential.
Ashley Montanaro
And now it’s a bit more than five years on and still with Facecraft, and we’re still pushing towards that point of really making great, groundbreaking progress with quantum computing.
Brett
Let’s go over some basic definitions here. So, in simple terms, can you explain to us quantum computing?
Ashley Montanaro
Yeah. So standard computers come a long way over the years, but they’re still fundamentally based on same physical principles that would have been familiar to Isaac Newton or other scientists that are working hundreds of years ago. They are fundamentally based on classical physics. But we know that, in fact, the universe isn’t based on classical physics, it’s based on quantum mechanics. And quantum mechanics is very mysterious and counterintuitive. It contains these features such as quantum superposition, quantum entanglement, which can lead to very strange effects on the microscopic level. And quantum computers take advantage of these effects to do things that are just not possible for standard computers that don’t use quantum mechanics.
Ashley Montanaro
And as well as being amazing from a sort of fundamental science point of view, this is also very important from a practical point of view, because there are many problems which we would dearly like to solve, where in order to solve them, you actually really need to understand the quantum mechanics occurring within that problem. So, for example, if you want to model or simulate a battery or a solar cell accurately, you really need to understand the quantum mechanics within that battery or solar cell. And that’s one of the things that quantum computers lets you do.
Brett
Amazing. Lets talk about what you’re building today and take us back to those early days when you were first founding the company alongside with your co founders. What were you focused on for those first, lets say, 90 days?
Ashley Montanaro
Yeah. So the start of Facecraft was a time where there was a lot of excitement around about quantum computing, as I mentioned. But this technology was still very much this sort of boundary line between academia and industry. And something that we really spent a lot of time thinking about was, is this something we really want to do industry, or is this something we just want to carry on working on in academia? We’re all academics working in this field have done for a long time. Do we want to just carry on in our sort of professorial lives in universities? But we decided that, okay, this really is something which we could progress much faster and much better in a startup rather than in academia. And so to do that, we founded Facecraft, and we started off the company with some pre seed funding.
Ashley Montanaro
We had some fantastic investors in the UCL technology fund and Parkwalk that invested us in those very early days. And as well as getting that pre seed funding together, it was also critical to start getting a team together. And so to do this, we actually started working with some PhD students at Bristol and at UCL in London and also managed to convince the fantastic postdocs to join us full time. So I think, I guess it’s the thing that’s common maybe to many startup founders, that you’re sort of trying to get some funding, you’re together, you’re trying to get a team together. But I guess were sort of really sort of embedded in this sort of academic culture at this time, which maybe is a little bit different. We were sort of just making this transition from academia to industry.
Brett
What’s that been like, making that change from a lot of the other founders that I’ve spoken with? Sometimes making that change from academia to commercial business can be difficult. What was that transition like for you?
Ashley Montanaro
Yeah, I think it was a fascinating process, to be honest, and I think all of us really learned a lot. One thing that I had to not appreciate at that time is actually how many of the skills you have as a faculty member in academia are actually relevant to founding a startup. Because as an academic you do things like leading a team, you obviously communicate the work you’ve done to others, you promote your own research, you have a lot of responsibilities in terms of supporting other people’s careers and bringing them on as well. And so I think a lot of these things do transfer across. There are some things which are new as well. So theres the whole sort of, lets say the language and the sort of landscape of venture funding, which is very sort of alien.
Ashley Montanaro
I think if you’re an academic, even though you may have spent a lot of time applying for grants and getting a lot of funding, its somehow a bit different, the process of fundraising. And thats where its, I think, very valuable to have some sort of mentors or just other people you can talk to who have been through this process before. But I would say that its a very exciting experience, I think, for many people in academia. And so I think it was a lot of fun actually at that time.
Brett
What are those conversations like with investors? Because normally investors are on what, like a seven year timeline with their funds. Do you have to find investors who are on board with much longer timelines because its going to take time to commercialize?
Ashley Montanaro
Yeah. So quantum computing is very much a marathon and not a sprint like other sort of deep technologies. We as a company really think well be able to do exciting things with quantum computers on a shorter timescale than perhaps others do. So we are thinking about doing commercially relevant things in the next few years rather than the next ten years, 20 years or so. But even so, this is still quite a long sort of timescale for some venture. And so I think its important to find that match and to find the investors that are right for you. So this was something that was very important to us early on.
Ashley Montanaro
We were looking for investors that are very comfortable with this deep tech approach, and as well as those investors we’re working with from the early days, we’ve very much followed this approach subsequently, most recently in our series a, which was led by Playground, who are really one of the world’s ultimate deep tech investors.
Brett
This show is brought to you by Front Lines Media podcast production studio that helps B2B founders launch, manage and grow their own podcast. Now, if you’re a founder, you may be thinking, I don’t have time to host a podcast. I’ve got a company to build. Well, that’s exactly what we built our service to do. You show up and host, and we handle literally everything else. To set up a call to discuss launching your own podcast, visit Frontlines.io podcast. Now back today’s episode. What’s on your mind as you think about transitioning into commercializing this technology? What would be keeping you up at night, or what do you think is going to be the greatest challenge that you’re going to face there?
Ashley Montanaro
So for us as a company, and I think for the whole field of quantum computing, ultimately the biggest challenges are technological ones or ones to do with the fact that it is just very difficult to build a quantum computer, and it’s also very difficult to develop quantum algorithms. And the field of quantum computing has made amazing progress over the years on the hardware side. And we’ve also seen that it’s possible to bring down the complexity of algorithms by factors of millions or more by coming up with new ideas. And they really enable you to push the hardware as far as it can possibly go. But ultimately, we are sort of struggling against the universe here and somehow the laws of physics. And this is, I think, the most challenging thing for us as a company, and I think for others as well.
Ashley Montanaro
What we often say is that the field of quantum computing is in the equivalent of the 1940s or the 1950s of classical computing. So these devices, even though they are far more powerful in some ways than the worlds best supercomputers, they’re still very limited compared with what they will ultimately be. So its a massive challenge to get the most out of this hardware today. So for me, thats the thing that keeps me up at night the most, even though its really a very exciting and endlessly enthralling challenge.
Brett
I understand you have some really exciting partnerships as well. Can you talk to us about the partnerships that you have and the approach that you’ve taken to secure those partnerships?
Ashley Montanaro
Yeah. So at the moment, the critical thing for the entire field of quantum computing is getting to this milestone known as quantum advantage, where quantum computing is outperforming classical computing for a problem of genuine practical interest. So not a problem which is just designed to make the quantum computer look good and the classical computer really struggle. And in order to do this, its absolutely essential that we work with companies and people, experts who really understand the problems that they need to solve. They’re struggling to solve at the moment and where quantum computing would be really valuable. And those are the kind of partnerships that we’ve tried to put together. So one example in the early days of Facecraft is we started working with Johnson Massey, which is a massive UK chemicals company, and they have a lot of expertise in batteries, for example.
Ashley Montanaro
And so were working with them in order to understand how best quantum computing could solve problems relevant to batteries and what the biggest challenges were that they had. And we’re still working with them today on projects involving quantum computing applied to catalysts, for example, which is also a critical technology for clean energy. So it’s this kind of very intense R and D partnership that we’re very much trying to put together. So not something which is just sort of nice relationship on paper, but one where we’re actually working directly with the scientists and the engineers, and we’re understanding what the problems are that they need to solve, and we’re bringing the expertise in quantum computing to help them to solve them.
Brett
What have you learned from building out these partnerships? I think a lot of founders listening in are interested in partnership building, and that’s obviously something that all companies, or most companies need to pursue. What have you learned about partnership building?
Ashley Montanaro
So something that I’ve learned personally is that I always find is incredibly valuable to try to get to talk to people who are sort of on the ground, who are doing the R and D, who are the scientists, who are the engineers, who really understand the technology as soon as possible. And it can sometimes be the case that you get kind of bogged down speaking to people who in the sort of middle layer of perhaps management, who maybe find what you’re doing very interesting, but they perhaps do not understand it on a sort of deep technical level, and they may not necessarily be able to get people, the inside of their organizations, even that excited about the technology.
Ashley Montanaro
I find it very valuable to be speaking with people directly who do understand the technology and are able to understand what you’re offering is so exciting. So id say that. And I think id also say its very important to choose your partners carefully because as a startup, you have limited resources, limited time, and you’re just not able to work with everyone out there. And working with the people who are the most interesting, the most relevant, I think, is very important.
Brett
Lets imagine that a founder comes to you and they say, Ashley, I want to build a quantum computing company here. I want to be in this space. What advice would you have for them based on everything that you’ve learned so far?
Ashley Montanaro
Ash yeah, thats a fantastic question. I would say a few things. Firstly, I would say that your investors, as we’ve discussed, very important, and its worth spending a lot of time selecting them carefully to make sure that they are aligned with what you want to do and that they really understand and get what you’re aiming to do. I would also say that it’s critically important that you don’t over promise and only say things which you believe you actually can deliver. And the field as a whole can deliver, because quantum computing has a bit of a reputation for hype.
Ashley Montanaro
And I think that it’s more and more important that companies coming into this industry actually take a fairly sober look and say, okay, this is an incredibly exciting technology, but we also have to be realistic about what it can do and when it will be able to do it. So I think that’s very important. And I would also say something, I think many founders would say that building up that team in the early days is crucial as well, and making sure that the first people you take on aligned with the ethos of the company. They’re very strong technically, but they’re also people you would like to have on your team and that you would like to work with you. Because in quantum computing especially, it’s an extremely challenging field to hire in.
Ashley Montanaro
There are very few experts in the world who can do this kind of work. I mean, numbers in the hundreds, let’s say, have been like worldwide who have the right expertise in quantum computing at the moment. So hiring can be really tough, but if you get it right, it can be absolutely game changing for you as a company.
Brett
Final question for you. Let’s zoom out. Three to five years from today, what does the company look like?
Ashley Montanaro
So three to five years time, I think, is a really nice timeframe for us to think about, because by that point, we expect that we’ll have achieved quantum advantage. So we expect that we will be using quantum computers to have solved genuinely important problems from elsewhere in science and engineering. And at that point, we will have already started sort of building out the other functions that you expect to see in a growth startup, such as go to market, sort of sales, marketing, all of this kind of thing. And at that point, I think we will really be delivering some significant value to the end users that we’re working with and we’re going to be really solving some genuinely important problems.
Brett
Amazing. I love the vision and I look forward to having you back on in three to five years to talk about everything that you and the team have accomplished. We are up on time, so we’ll have to wrap here before we do. If there’s any founders that are listening in and they want to follow along with this journey, where should they go? Right?
Ashley Montanaro
So our website is Phasecraft.io, so definitely go there. There’s a lot of interesting content there, including articles about technology and obviously all our research papers. You can also follow me on Twitter. I’m Quantum Ashley and we have a LinkedIn presence as well. So there’s a lot of stuff out there if you’d like to learn some more.
Brett
Amazing Quantum Ashley, thank you for joining. It’s been fun. This episode of Category Visionaries is brought to you by Front Lines Media, Silicon Valley’s leading podcast productions studio. If you’re a B2B founder looking for help launching and growing your own podcast, visit frontlines.io podcast. And for the latest episode, search for Category Visionaries on your podcast platform of choice. Thanks for listening and we’ll catch you on the next episode.
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