Keynote & conference talk
We take one argument and develop it at length, pitched at the decision the audience is weighing. Engineers present get the detail and everybody else still follows it.
Speaking and training
The engineer who did the work gives the talk.
We teach the technical side of building products, from due diligence and intellectual property through to regulated development and the engineering decisions that set what a product can become. Sessions run from a single conference keynote to a training series for an in-house team.
Booked by accelerators, universities, investor communities and engineering teams. The founders deliver the sessions themselves.
Formats
Pick the format that fits your event.
Tell us who is attending and what they need to understand by the end. We build the session around the answer.
Masterclass
Structured teaching with a pre-session pack, a worked example, and an activity each attendee runs on their own business. It suits accelerator cohorts, investor portfolios and professional bodies.
Workshop
Your team spends the day on your own product. Everyone leaves with a document, usually a risk register, a technical roadmap or a decision record.
Technical training
A short course built around your stack and the gaps your team has. Mechanical, electronic, firmware, software and regulatory, taught by the engineers who work in those disciplines every week.
Webinar & panel
Slides are designed for a remote audience, and the recording stays useful to your community afterwards. We run these as one-offs or as a series.
Guest lecture
Departments, student societies and careers evenings. The usual subjects are what industry expects of a graduate engineer, and how a research output becomes a product.
Subjects
What we talk about.
Every subject below comes out of a job we have done, whether that was a due diligence, a CE certification, a patent filing or a production ramp.
Technical due diligence
How to open the black boxes in a product before somebody writes a cheque against it. Written for founders preparing to raise, and for the investors and boards reviewing them. Can include a live risk analysis run on our own due diligence tooling.
- Elastic Design™
- Risk registers
- IP packaging
- AI-assisted DD
Minimum viable and evolvable products
Most MVPs get thrown away once they meet a real customer. This session covers what to build first so the second version can be an extension of the first.
- MVEP
- Engineering vs R&D
- Core tech vs integration
- Technical debt
Intellectual property and moats
Filing timing and what is worth protecting. Also how much commercial value a patent carries on its own, which is usually less than founders expect. Covers IP structure in vendor relationships, where founders most often lose ground.
- Filing timing
- Protecting the right thing
- IP in vendor deals
- PCT experience
Designing for the scale you will reach
Every innovation works commercially over a range of volumes. The design, manufacturing, supplier and funding choices that widen that range also take risk off the technology.
- Design for manufacture
- Supplier selection
- Cost at volume
- Funding milestones
Medical devices and regulated products
What CE, FDA and ISO 13485 ask of your engineering from the first sketch, and the cost of retrofitting it later. Drawn from devices we have taken through certification and into clinical use.
- CE & UKCA
- FDA
- ISO 13485
- SAHPRA
- Clinical trials
AI in engineering practice
Agentic tooling has changed how a consultancy like ours works, and it has failure modes worth understanding before you commit a team to it. Bring it into an engineering team without losing accountability for the output.
- Agentic workflows
- Engineering judgement
- Verification
- What breaks
Other subjects we cover
- Engineering leadership for non-technical founders
- Build versus buy
- Deep tech commercialisation
- Academia and industry
- Multidisciplinary teams
- Choosing an engineering partner
- Careers in engineering
Selected engagements
Recent sessions.
Earlier hosts are listed underneath.
Savant Foundry Webinar Series
Building a Minimum Viable & Evolvable Product
For the Savant Foundry community, on understanding the technology under your own product, building IP on purpose, and choosing the volume range you design for. The recording is public.
Watch the recording ↗
Savant Build
Elastic Design™ & Technical Due Diligence
Two hours for the Build accelerator cohort on managing technical risk and getting a product ready for somebody else to inspect. The 2026 run adds a live risk analysis each founder drives against their own business.
BMERC & UCT MedTech
Biomedical Engineering Entrepreneurship
Delivered at the Neuroscience Institute to biomedical engineering researchers and postgraduates building companies out of their research. Covers what BMEC got right and wrong on the way through.
An excellent topic, and you delivered it well, exceeding my expectations.
Thank you Raphael for sharing your amazing journey.
You helped us previously with a masterclass on IP Strategy, for which we received positive feedback from last year's cohort.
Also presented for
- Savant Foundry
- UCT MedTech
- BMERC
- Stellenbosch University
- UCT Research Contracts & Innovation
- UCT Inventors Evening
- ORU Symposium
- Groote Schuur Innovation Hub
- Wesgro
- Code for Cape Town
- MECAD
How it runs
What an organiser gets.
- A briefing call. We work out the audience and the decision in front of them before anything gets written.
- Slides made for a live audience. Graphics carry the argument and the text stays at heading level.
- Something for attendees to keep. Depending on the format, that is reading sent beforehand, a worked example to keep, or a licence for our due diligence tooling.
- A route to more depth. Anyone who wants to go further can take a Risk Review or a Discovery Phase with us afterwards.
Book a session
Tell us about the event and who will be there.
Send the date, the format you have in mind and a line on the audience. Raphael replies himself, and will tell you if the subject sits outside what we have done.