Bootstrapping Deep Tech: 5 Years, No Co-Founders, and a Global Patent
From Give It A Nudge by The Nudge Group
February 25, 2026 · 37 min
About this episode
Dr. Mariam Martin-Mnatsakanyan discusses her journey of bootstrapping AirLabOne and the challenges of developing deep-tech solutions for high-risk industries.
In this episode of Give It A Nudge, Steve sits down with Dr. Mariam Martin-Mnatsakanyan, the Founder and CEO of AirLabOne. They talk about the reality of digitizing physical assets for complex, high-risk industries like healthcare, mining, and space exploration. Mariam explains exactly how her embedded technology takes existing legacy machinery and makes it intelligent and self-regulating. This autonomy is crucial for environments that are harsh or completely isolated, like microgravity, where human intervention just isn't possible. Building deep-tech hardware is notoriously hard. Mariam spent over five years bootstrapping the business entirely on her own, without traditional funding. She explains why she deliberately ignored early investors who didn't understand her vision, choosing instead to follow her own structured path. This resilience paid off when she secured a global patent for remotely accessing real and virtual scientific instrumentations, and later won major validation from tech giants at the Select USA Investor Summit. She also walks through her plans to expand into Southern California while waiting on a major grant that could see her technology manufactured in local…
People in this episode
Host: Steve
Guest: Dr. Mariam Martin-Mnatsakanyan
Topics covered
- bootstrapping
- deep tech
- healthcare technology
- innovation
- entrepreneurship
- patents
Keywords
- bootstrapping
- deep tech
- global patent
- healthcare
- mining
- space exploration
- embedded technology
- autonomy
- analytical chemistry
- pharmacology
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: AirLabOne, University of Geneva, University of Sydney, Select USA Investor Summit
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