We spoke to Rachel Carey, Chief Scientist at Zinc. Zinc is a start-up that helps build new companies tackle important social issues. Rachel is a behavioural scientist with a PhD in Psychology, and a passion for research translation and innovation. She has specific expertise in digital health, behaviour change, transport psychology, and communication science.

What follows is an e-interview we conducted with Rachel in the summer of 2020.

Tell us about Zinc. What is Zinc’s purpose and main missions?

Zinc exists to build and scale new ways to tackle society’s most important problems. We run a venture-builder programme where 50 entrepreneurs come together in London, full-time, with the aim of creating new ventures from scratch. We also run a part-time Academy programme for individuals who want to have more impact on problems they care about through or alongside their existing roles. Our programmes bring together diverse and talented cohorts of people, who are united by one overarching mission, and committed to accelerating their personal impact.

From 2020-2024, Zinc will be focusing on four missions:

  • To improve mental and emotional health
  • To add more years of high quality to later life
  • To create new opportunities in places hard-hit by automation and globalisation
  • To help minimise the harm people do to the environment

A central part of our approach is to maximise new applied research opportunities. We are particularly interested in accelerating the impact of the social sciences.

Can you tell us more about some of the issues that Zinc has been/are planning to tackle in 2020?

In June 2020, we wrapped up our third venture-builder programme, whose mission was to add more years of high quality to later life. Working closely with university and charity partners, and our network of expert ‘Visiting Fellows’, our cohort of 45 entrepreneurs set out to create new products and services that would meet the needs of older adults in fresh, evidence-based and user-centred ways. We wanted to tackle the misperceptions often associated with later life, and highlight neglected areas in need of innovation.

From this programme, 12 new ventures were created, focusing on issues such as hearing loss, bereavement, cognitive decline, menopause treatment, mobility, pelvic floor, social isolation and loneliness, nutrition, and incontinence. Over the coming months, we will be continuing to support these ventures as they ‘fly the Zinc nest’ and progress with their products, research and ventures.

In autumn 2020, we launched two new programmes. The first is our new ‘Academy’ programme, which will bring together a diverse group of individuals who share the ambition and drive to accelerate their personal impact on mental health.

The second is a programme of support we are delivering for Healthy Ageing Catalyst Award-Holders. This is a UKRI-funded programme that will involve working with academics to develop new, innovative ideas to improve people’s health as they age. We’re excited that these new programmes will allow us to build on the momentum, networks and learning generated by our previous programmes on mental health and later life.

I think new, mission-driven startups are super interesting environments for social scientists — they provide problem-led, user-centred, creative testing grounds for rapid research and experimentation.

As chief scientist at Zinc, you have worked embedding social science into tech-enabled businesses. Can you tell us more about how social scientists work alongside tech developers, and the valuable input that they can bring to the table?

I think new, mission-driven startups are super interesting environments for social scientists — they provide problem-led, user-centred, creative testing grounds for rapid research and experimentation. In the early stages of a new venture, as founders are testing their assumptions and trying to find product-market fit, startups are essentially a series of experiments. The quality of the research conducted in these early stages is central to the quality and impact of the resulting products. Social scientists can play a crucial role in this. Because early-stage ventures typically involve very small teams, social scientists can work hand-in-hand with tech developers, product managers, creative designers, commercial leads, and others — and this interdisciplinarity is key to purposeful innovation.

To give you a sense of what this looks like, the R&D team at Zinc, for example, works with founders to identify opportunities from existing research, develop lines of enquiry and hypotheses to test, undertake rapid reviews of relevant literature, design and test new products and services (working closely with end-users), operationalise ‘impact’, and facilitate collaborations with academic partners.

Early-stage ventures typically involve very small teams, social scientists can work hand-in-hand with tech developers, product managers, creative designers, commercial leads, and others — and this interdisciplinarity is key to purposeful innovation.

This R&D work, up to now, has been supported by grants from the Wellcome Trust, and from Research England, via ASPECT. Over the next four years, we will be scaling-up this social science activity, through a new programme of work I’ve just launched — supported by a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship. You can read more about that programme of work here.

Can you share some success stories with us from Zinc’s company builder programme?

We have >30 ventures in our portfolio, covering a variety of issues and areas including transport, education, employment, social care, mental health, IBS, sexual wellbeing, and more. To give a couple of specific examples that are interesting from a social science perspective:

  • Ferly supports women to have a more positive relationship with sex — tackling issues around confidence, communication and sexual health. The co-founding team includes a social scientist, and they have built a deep understanding of the issues they’re tackling and interventions they’re developing, based on extensive primary and secondary research.
  • Studio X is an entertainment platform that aims to make mental health information more accessible and engaging. Its first product, Wakey!, is a breakfast show delivered on users’ phones, hosted by a comedy drag queen and a former Love Island contestant. The content is designed by a team of creatives working with psychiatrists and psychological scientists, and the team includes a lead researcher with a background in psychology.

Mental health issues have become a salient issue during the pandemic. Zinc founders have used technology to address mental health issues. Can you tell us more about that?

We chose mental health as the mission for our first venture-builder programme, back in 2017. It’s worth highlighting that there is a lot of synergy across our missions, and mental health has emerged as a central, cross-cutting theme. We all have mental health, and many of us experience mental ill-health at various points in our lives. As you say, this has become particularly acute for a lot of people during the pandemic.

Despite an enormous number of commercially available digital health and wellbeing products — and despite their potential to provide accessible and adaptive interventions — a lot of needs remain unmet, a lot of populations remain underserved. We wanted our mental health mission to be a springboard for founders to think creatively and systematically about specific neglected areas in need of innovation, moving away, as much as possible, from the ‘lower hanging fruit’. Many of our founders are tackling areas often considered ‘taboo’ — from menopause, to sexual wellbeing, to perinatal mental health.

We are not prescriptive about how central a role tech needs to play — our priority is to create products and services that have scalable and sustainable impact. We think that, in most cases, tech can enable this to happen but we’re very much problem-led, rather than tech-led.

Research and evidence play a central role in our ventures, and many of them have partnered with academics and/or hired in-house researchers to bring rigour to their design, implementation and evaluation processes. Last year, we worked with the Wellcome Trust (through their Public Engagement Scheme), Big Society Capital, and Bethnal Green Ventures on a collaborative programme around this. You can see the report here.

To your question around the role of technology, we are not prescriptive about how central a role tech needs to play — our priority is to create products and services that have scalable and sustainable impact. We think that, in most cases, tech can enable this to happen but we’re very much problem-led, rather than tech-led. Many of our ventures are developing technologically innovative solutions (e.g. Tonus are developing hardware to help older adults stay active for longer), while others are prioritising face-to-face human connection, facilitated by technology (e.g. Ketka are looking to improve children’s mental health and emotional literacy through engaging, audio-based interventions).

Can you tell us more about Zinc’s work combatting the impacts of automation on the workforce?

Our second mission was to unlock opportunities for people in places hard-hit by automation and globalisation. We wanted to focus not just on the future (i.e. buffering against oncoming waves of automation), but also on how the impact of previous economic changes have led to unequal opportunities for people in different places. This mission was an opportunity to take a place-based approach — in particular, focusing on areas outside metropolitan cities and thinking about how needs can be tackled in areas where they are currently acute. This year, we are working with the US Autodesk Foundation on a report that summarises our learning from this mission, and lays out an agenda for ‘how and where to innovate’.

Our second mission was to unlock opportunities for people in places hard-hit by automation and globalisation.

We have a number of startups tackling problems in this space — for example, in education and employment (e.g. Yuno are looking to match people to better jobs; Game Academy are looking to translate video game skills into employment opportunities), transport (e.g. Tandem are looking to tackle transport poverty through a ridesharing service), retail (e.g. Sook are looking to revitalise the high street through adaptive retail space), and social care (e.g. Bellevie are looking to redefine care-work through employment that provides more autonomy, support, and financial stability).

What are the different ways the people can get involved with Zinc? And how can people stay informed about Zinc’s work?

We’re still a pretty small team, but we’re supported by an incredible network of experts, collaborators and supporters. You can check out the various ways to get involved in our programmes via our website. If you’re interested in research opportunities specifically (social science or otherwise), you can get in touch via research@zinc.vc.

We also had a couple of events focusing on research in ventures, for example, in October 2020 we hosted a panel discussion among social scientists who have made the transition to working in (or founding) a startup.