Work with Dr Ben
Mission Media Ventures SpeakingNews Work with Dr Ben
The mission

the fundamental reordering of science, scientists, and society.

Everything Dr Ben builds points at one idea: the people who make the discoveries should be the ones who carry them into the world. Science is how humanity steers, and the engine of the economy still to come. His work is to put scientists at the centre of building that future.

The world has never had more scientists, and science has never moved faster. Yet the gap between what we discover and what actually changes remains enormous. Not because the science is not good enough. Because most scientists are never taught what comes next.

The gap between discovery and saving the world
Dr Ben Miles
why he does this.

Dr Ben did his PhD in physics at Bristol, then with no postdoc positions available but still wanting to use his science, made the jump and joined Ziylo, a university spin-out working to build the world's first smart insulin. In 2018, that company was acquired by Novo Nordisk in a deal worth up to $800m. Everyone doubted it could happen. Partly because the science was impossibly hard, but mostly because everyone's been told "Scientists can't do Business."

But he saw first-hand that a brilliant discovery is only the beginning. The hard part, the part nobody trains scientists for, is everything that comes after. And it turns out scientists are the best positioned to launch those impossible ideas.

So he got stuck on one question: why is it such a rarity that a scientist becomes an entrepreneur? And how do you change that?

He decided no single company could solve it, but a consortium of them could, each one plugging a gap as it surfaced. That thesis is the reason everything he builds looks different on the outside and shares the same engine underneath. And why he doesn't sleep much.

First came Spin Up Science, to raise the entrepreneurial skill and ambition of the typical PhD and give them the commercial capabilities their technical training left out. Around 5,000 scientists and 20-plus university partnerships later, they started coming back to him and saying: "Thanks for the training. I have found an idea in my research, help me build the company."

But that was a different company. So he built it: a venture studio that acts as a scientifically literate co-founder, roughly 200 companies in. And when he kept hitting the same wall, that there was almost no science-sophisticated investor confidently deploying at the earliest stage, he built that too. First as Science Angel Syndicate that became Empirical Ventures.

The channel came alongside all of it out of a burning curiosity for new ideas and a need to share them with the world. Today it reaches millions and takes a camera inside the labs of the most advanced companies on Earth. It is how he finds the problems worth solving, and how he makes sure the world can actually see the work.

the machine, built one gap at a time.

PhD · Bristol

The scientist

A doctorate in experimental nano-physics. A lesson in learning how to learn.

Ziylo

Up to $800m exit

Early team at the glucose-sensing biotech acquired by Novo Nordisk. Where Dr Ben learned the skills alongside great entrepreneurial scientists that move discovery into possibility.

2018 →

Spin Up Science

Teaching scientists the commercial skills the lab never taught them. Around 5,000 trained, 20-plus university partnerships.

The studio

The venture builder

A scientifically literate co-founder for scientists going from lab to company. Roughly 200 companies built.

Now

Empirical Ventures

A deep-tech fund run by scientists, backing the earliest, most ambitious teams. 40 companies and counting.

Now

The channel

3.2M followers, 50M+ views a month. The proof that a society champions science and the good that it can bring.

in the field.

Where the work happens
Dr Ben Miles working
Heads down · Between labs and boardrooms
Dr Ben Miles holding deep-tech hardware at a conference
On the floor · Deep-tech marketplace
Dr Ben Miles at the IEEE Symposium in Shanghai
Shanghai · IEEE Symposium

Science is how humanity steers, and the engine of the economy and the jobs still to come. The people who drive it must be active stewards and leaders in the future it creates.

The end state is simple. A world where the scientists capable of changing it are equipped to lead, to build, to fund, and to be heard: the stewards of humanity's future and the engine of the economy to come, with the next generation of globally defining ventures founded by the people who understood the science first. That is what Dr Ben is building toward.

Work with Dr Ben →See the work