Founders’
Field Notes

Watch us build the world.

Inside the laboratories, factories, workshops and test sites where the physical future is being built.

We go where things are built.

Explore the field notes Show us what you’re building

Illustration: a robot arm drawn as an engineering sketch Pencilled notes around the arm ask: what’s harder than people realize, what’s still done by hand, what failed, and show me version one. H = ? what’s harder than people realize? still done by hand? what failed? show me version one

FOUNDERS’ FIELD NOTESSubject: whatever you’re building

SHEET 1Illustration

Builders, not fundraising.

Founders’ Field Notes follows the people building difficult technology in the physical world: founders, scientists and engineers, and their laboratories, factories, prototypes, manufacturing lines and failures. We document the work of turning hard technology into real companies.

Is someone actually building something difficult?

That is the whole editorial test. If the answer is yes, it belongs here.

Founders’ Field Notes is new. Everything below is what we are building, starting now, and the first stories come from the builders who write in.

What this will never be

  • Generic startup news
  • VCs talking to other VCs
  • AI-generated SEO sludge
  • Pay-to-play awards
  • A conference full of booths and generic panels

Instead: access, original reporting, physical reality and relationships. We go there, we see the prototype, we ask the engineer how it works.

The field notes

Not one endless podcast. A set of recurring formats we are building, each a different way into the work.

  1. Founders’ Field Notes

    The flagship founder interviews. Hosted by Nisha.

  2. Field Visit

    A day inside a company building something hard: the floor, the people and the machines.

  3. Factory Floor

    How difficult things actually get manufactured.

  4. Lab Notes

    University and industrial research, from the bench.

  5. Build Log

    One company or product, followed over time.

    1. prototype
    2. pilot
    3. first 100
    4. scale

  6. Failure Analysis

    What went wrong, and what it taught. Real engineering lessons instead of founder mythology.

  7. How It Works

    The engineering and the science, explained so anyone can follow it.

  8. Young Builders

    Students and early-career builders, and the things they have made.

  9. Nisha’s Field Notes

    Short observations from things Nisha has seen along the way.

Show me what you’re building.

Every flagship interview opens with that line. Then come the questions that usually get left out of the story.

  • What’s harder about this than people realize?
  • Show me version one.
  • What failed?
  • What nearly killed the company?
  • What’s the hardest engineering problem?
  • What’s surprisingly expensive?
  • What still has to be done manually?
  • What’s preventing you from building ten times faster?
  • Who is unusually good at this problem?
  • What do you believe about this industry that most people don’t?
  • If I came back in five years, what would I see?

Where software meets the physical world.

  • Biotechnologydiagnostics, sequencing, synthetic biology, lab automation, biomanufacturing, instruments
  • Robotics and autonomy
  • Aerospace and space
  • Defence technology
  • Advanced manufacturingCNC, additive, molding, automation, electronics, composites
  • Energynuclear, batteries, grid, fusion
  • Advanced materials
  • Semiconductors
  • Quantum
  • Climate and infrastructure
  • AI in physical systems

Written for the people doing the work.

Founders, scientists and engineers. Technical executives and university researchers. Government and defence. Manufacturers and the corporations that buy from them. Investors in hard technology. Students and young builders.

And anyone who simply loves seeing extraordinary things get built.

Field Notes, Friday

A weekly newsletter, readable in five minutes. Every edition will have the same shape, so you know exactly what you are getting.

Send me Field Notes, Friday

Opens an email to nisha@wren-labs.com. We’ll add you before the first edition.

Field Notes, Fridaythe shape of every edition
One builder
A person worth knowing.
One build
A piece of technology worth understanding.
One failure
A useful lesson, paid for by someone else.
One idea
Something that is changing.
One question
Something the community should be thinking about.
sometimesOne introduction
Someone looking for a collaborator, a manufacturer or a scientist.

Field Day. Bring something you built.

Our gathering for the hard-tech community, now in planning. No booths. The things people built are the exhibition, and every stage is named after a real problem.

The Build Floor

What attendees bring, set out on the floor:

  • robots
  • engines
  • scientific instruments
  • space hardware
  • sensors
  • materials
  • machines
  • drones
  • biotech equipment
  • prototype vehicles
  • manufactured components

Build Stage

Live demonstrations.

Frontier Stage

Major emerging technologies.

Factory Stage

Manufacturing and scaling.

Failure Stage

What went wrong, told by the people it went wrong for.

Capital Stage

Hard-tech capital: venture, government, strategic and family offices. Here to support the builders, not to be the story.

Plan, not to scale. Dashed: the Build Floor.

Panels named after problems.

The kind of panel we’ll run:

Never a panel called The Future of Innovation.

  • Why is hardware still so hard to manufacture in Canada?
  • What actually breaks between units 10 and 1,000?
  • Can Canada build defence hardware at scale?
  • Why do university spinouts die?
  • Why does biology still require so much manual labour?
Tell us what you’d bring

Opens an email to nisha@wren-labs.com

Illustration of a possible cover: a builder standing beside a rocket engine they built, under the title The Builders Issue FIELD NOTES THE BUILDERS ISSUE Show me what you’re building.
Illustration of a possible cover

In print, with builders on the cover.

A print magazine we are making, for keeping, with premium photography and design. On the cover: the founder standing with what they built, whether that’s the robot, the engine, the instrument, the satellite or the reactor. Never just a portrait.

Possible issues:

  • The Builders Issue
  • The Factory Issue
  • The Biology Issue
  • The Space Issue
  • The Machines Issue
  • The Materials Issue

The FFN Build Challenge

For university students and very early startups.

A competition we are setting up: build something in one of eight categories. Finalists will exhibit what they built at Field Day.

  • Machines
  • Biology
  • Space
  • Energy
  • Materials
  • Manufacturing
  • AI × Physical World
  • Wild Card

Young Builders

Show us what you built. Not your GPA.

A yearly cohort we are starting, of students and early-career builders chosen on what they have made. Applicants will send what they built, photos or video of it, what failed, what they learned, and what they want to build next.

Campus Correspondents

Find extraordinary things being built before everyone else knows about them.

A network we are recruiting: students on Canadian campuses first, then further afield, who send us the research, spinouts, student teams, PhD projects, professors and new laboratories worth a visit.

Hydra Open Science Network

Science anyone can take part in.

A separate citizen-science programme: participatory projects such as 100 Rivers, 100 Beaches, environmental DNA and community biosurveillance. We cover the science, people and technology that come out of it. hydraosn.org

Who’s behind it.

Founders’ Field Notes is supported by Falcon Ridge Technologies, and we say so up front.

Editorially, Falcon Ridge is not Founders’ Field Notes. Most of what we cover is companies Falcon Ridge does not own and may never own. When we feature a company Falcon Ridge owns or has invested in, the story says so, prominently. Sponsors cannot buy coverage.

Give before asking.

Our one network rule. Make the introduction. Help someone hire. Find the manufacturer. Connect the scientist. Point a founder to the right capital. Promote work that is genuinely interesting. If we keep creating value between other people, the network is worth being part of.

Show us what you’re building.

A lab, a factory floor, a prototype, a spinout, a student team. Tell us what it is, where it is, and what’s hard about it. Photos help.

Show us what you’re building

or write to nisha@wren-labs.com