I am often ask how others can replicate what we built at Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), a unicorn deep tech startup that's tackling one of the hardest technical problems humanity has attempted: making economic fusion energy. What many do not know is that CFS started because of a government funding crises in our lab at MIT in 2012. Since there are many people out there who are going through similar funding crises, I felt that it would be useful to write up and share lessons from building CFS:

+Community: you are not in this alone, support and seek support from others around you

+Clarity: you can re-align your priorities, use this as an opportunity to re-examine what you are doing and why

+Creation: you can now start something new, find like-minded people to build it with

+Curiosity: your first plan will be wrong, but the only way you will find out is by being curious, getting out there and testing it

+Communication: you will need to change the way you communicate, new stakeholders and funders need new messaging and new narratives

+Collaboration: you will have opportunities to collaborate, new people will be on the market who would not have otherwise been

I've written about these experiences in detail to help others facing similar disruptions today: https://futuretech.partners/lessons-born-at-scale.htm

Let me know your thoughts or experiences. I'd love to hear how you're turning challenges into opportunities!