One Activate Fellow’s Journey From Scientist to Founder to Venture Capitalist
By Jenna Jablonski
(Photo courtesy of Josué López)
Josué López (Cohort 2020) is modeling a new kind of success story as the first Activate Fellow alum to become a venture capitalist. An MIT-trained electrical engineer and nanoscientist, López founded Kyber Photonics, a chip-scale semiconductor company building sensors for autonomy, which he led for two-and-a-half years. Now he’s enriching the innovation ecosystem in a new way, bringing his experience as a technologist, science entrepreneur, and diversity and equity leader to venture capital.
The Call to Science
Shaped by his experiences as a Latino and son of immigrants with limited opportunities, López knew he wanted to make an impact with his career. But college was not easy for López as a first-generation student who didn’t have a support network like many of his peers.
At the same time, López was forever changed when he learned about climate change. “I learned back in ‘05 how bad it was going to get,” he says. His personal mission sharpened as he set his sights on using technology to tackle humanity’s biggest problems.
López decided he would start by learning everything he could about the fundamentals of science and technology. He attended East Los Angeles Community College and went on to earn a B.S. in physics from Rice University.
(Photo courtesy of Josué López)
“I wasn't a straight-A, 4.0, genius student in college,” he says. “But I was really good at building things and motivated by [the question], ‘How do we translate science out into the real world?’ And that's what motivated me all the way to my Ph.D. at MIT.”
Indeed, López earned an M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT, completing his 15-year-long educational journey in 2022.
From Scientist to Founder
López had delved into entrepreneurship and applied technology at MIT, spending the last four years of his Ph.D. working with his research group and MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory on a promising new technology: “a new kind of on-chip 3D sensing platform for autonomous vehicles and machines—specifically developing a novel, nanophotonic architecture for lidar-on-a-chip sensors.” López became co-founder and CEO of Kyber Photonics, a spin-out company poised to influence the future of autonomy.
“Our goal was to become a multibillion-dollar company… to take a big swing,” says López. DARPA backed Kyber, and López became an Activate Fellow, joining Cohort 2020 in the Activate Boston Community.
But just as momentum was building, the COVID-19 pandemic upended López’ plans. “My entrepreneurship experience was inextricably linked to COVID and my family being impacted by COVID,” says López. “My Ph.D. was delayed, our technical roadmap was delayed, and fundraising was delayed.”
It was also the beginning of a very interesting time in the autonomy and lidar space. “The autonomy market was not growing the way everybody thought, and lidar became a super fragmented market when six startups went public during the SPAC craze in 2020 and 2021,” López recounts. “We also fully recognized it was going to take a significant amount of resources to commercialize the Kyber technology. We realized it was going to be a slog, and it was going to be a brutal fight with all our competition that had gone public and were recently backed by hundreds of millions of dollars.”
In 2022, after two-and-a-half years in operation, the Kyber Photonics team made the difficult decision to shut down. López credits Activate for helping him and his team navigate this challenging process with “eyes wide open.”
“We hadn't taken on significant dilutive funding—90 percent of it was from the Activate Fellowship and other non-dilutive sources—so we were able to make that choice with minimal damage done,” he reflects. “I think it could have been a lot tougher and it could have felt a lot more disappointing had we not had folks around the table helping us think through not only this round, or the next round funding, but the long-term goal of the company.”
López presenting on his career journey at the 2022 Activate Summit.
“In my new venture role, I am able to become the investor that I hoped I would interact with as a founder.”
“The last place I expected to go”
After Kyber Photonics, López explored his options with support from the Activate team. At this point, he had gained nearly 15 years of research and development experience in advanced materials, semiconductors, and photonics; an equivalent number of years working on diversity and equity; and the invaluable recent experience of being a hard-tech founder.
Once again, López’ lifelong determination to expand his horizons won out. “I thought about joining another startup, an Activate company, or being in the nonprofit space at the intersection of entrepreneurship, climate, and diversity and equity,” he says. “But after talking to a whole bunch of folks, I realized that the place where I wanted to learn the most and had the most opportunity to grow was venture capital, and specifically investing in science.”
“I did not expect to go into VC,” he says. “Actually, that was the last place I expected to go.”
Through a series of fortuitous “collisions”—an Activate networking philosophy López says he’ll carry with him forever—the ideal opportunity came up with Fine Structure Ventures (FSV), a Boston-based venture capital fund dedicated to investing in early-stage disruptive science. López became a senior associate in January 2023, enthusiastically joining FSV’s small but growing mission-driven team.
For López, this new chapter is more of a culmination than a departure from his previous path as he deepens his roots and grows his impact in the innovation ecosystem. “It is an opportunity to hopefully work with some subset of the awesome entrepreneurs and scientists I know,” he says. Most importantly, López says, “In my new venture role, I am able to become the investor that I hoped I would interact with as a founder.”
“I hope I'll always have the founder-first mentality—I'm here for you as a fellow entrepreneur, scientist, person, but I can put on the VC hat and help you through navigating fundraising and what comes next,” he says. “It just adds another dimension—it doesn't have to completely change the relationship that I have with folks.”
“I realized that the place where I wanted to learn the most and had the most opportunity to grow was venture capital, and specifically investing in science.”
A Fellow-First Definition of Success
Even though a vast majority—86 percent—of Activate Fellows continue with their companies after the fellowship, that is not the measure of success for an Activate Fellow. As a fellow-first organization, Activate prioritizes investing in people—developing fellows’ knowledge, skills, and mindsets—rather than cultivating the highest-return companies. “Focusing on the individual is still ecosystem work,” says Sarah Morrill, program continuum director at Activate.
As a VC, López says he will draw on his experience as an Activate Fellow, especially the lessons he learned about derisking, avoiding analysis paralysis, and leading teams through good and bad times.
He is also determined to be an agent of change, not just within VC but the entrepreneurial ecosystem as a whole, advancing diversity and equity so innovation can benefit from having more people at the table.
“I think Josué’s story is a testament to Activate’s fellow-first commitment and a recognition that if we can support people to be in this space, in whatever capacity makes sense for them, that's a win, “ says Morrill. “The more scientists we have in the entrepreneurial world who have really strong technical backgrounds, that is part of our theory of change.”