Closer than it looks: progress in power, diagnostics and maybe even optimism
Small Steps Vol. 119: EVs as part of the grid ⚡; at-home blood tests arrive via Amazon 🧪; and hope might have a medical use 💓
What we're thinking about:
⚡What if your EV could power your home? Globally, over 1 in 5 new cars sold are electric. In Australia, it's just 13% but growing. As EVs scale, their batteries are being seen as more than just transportation tech. With the right setup, they could send energy back into the grid, stabilising it when demand spikes, or even power your home in a blackout.
But the system isn’t ready. Most EVs aren’t yet compatible, and the standards and incentives that would make it all work are still lagging. As the cost of traditional energy infrastructure keeps climbing, momentum is building around smaller, decentralised storage that lives closer to where energy is used. The grid is shifting... and we’re diving deeper into this soon. Stay tuned!
Graph source: Our World in Data
🌱📈 More food, with less. We often assume growing more food means throwing more at the problem: more fertiliser, more land and more labour. But in many high- and middle-income countries, that’s not what’s happening. Yields are going up, while inputs are holding steady or even falling. The shift seems to come from a mix of better seeds, smarter timing and farmers having the right info at the right time. Read more here.
🎯 Early traction ≠ early revenue. First Momentum have shared their 2025 Deep Tech Hardware Napkin, and it’s full of thoughtful signals about what early-stage success looks like in this space. Stats that stood out: 40% of pre-seed teams have no traction beyond customer research and some Series B startups aren’t even generating revenue yet. Instead of early results, investors are leaning into long-term technical bets and teams with strong commercial intuition.
🧪Amazon enters diagnostics. Amazon launched at-home testing across six Indian cities, offering blood tests with 60-minute pickup and six-hour results. This adds another layer to its growing health stack alongside telehealth, pharmacy and AI tools. It’s early days, but you can start to see the shape of something fuller: a more connected, data-driven model of care.
🧠💓 Hope as medicine? New research links higher hope levels to better heart health including less pain, less fatigue and lower mortality. We don’t fully understand how the mind-body link works yet, but researchers are exploring how positive thinking might one day be part of treatment plans.
🌾 When food travels far, everyone pays the price. Fresh produce often travels thousands of kilometres to city hubs, and then back out to regional towns. It’s inefficient, expensive, and frustrating for farmers and remote communities alike. This ABC article explores how rethinking food logistics including localising processing and shortening supply chains, could help build fairer and more resilient systems.
👀 Still curious about AI in education after our last deep dive?
🧑🏫 Ariel Hersh from Seek Investments’ shares 5 sharp insights on how AI tools are being used by teachers today and where it's is heading.
🤖Have you tried Study Mode in ChatGPT? It is a study partner that guides users through problems, instead of just getting an answer. Google’s Gemini has also rolled out a similar feature called Guided Learning, which include licensed visuals that help students understand difficult concepts.
📚And if you’re using Google Classroom, there are now 30+ free AI tools available to support your teaching.
In the news
🧩 The room matters as much as the pitch. On the Women’s Agenda Podcast, our Giant Leap Partner Rachel Yang explores what it really takes to shift investment culture, from who’s in the team to how the process is structured including how founders are questioned.
💜 Ovum is now live on Apple and Android! It’s the first AI health partner built for women that tracks symptoms, spots patterns and shows up to appointments with real data. Ovum is here to close the gender health gap, giving women more clarity, confidence and control in every medical conversation.
New paths
🪰 Goterra is looking for a National General Manager (Sydney).
🚽 Who Gives A Crap is hiring a National Channel Manager (B2B) (remote).
🎧 Mindset Health is after a Senior Software Engineer - Tech Lead (Melbourne), Senior Software Engineer - DevOps (Melbourne), and Provider Partnerships Manager (New York, hybrid).
⚡Amber is looking for a Software Engineer Manager (Melbourne), Senior Finance Accountant (Melbourne) and Full Stack Engineer (London).
Save the date
📅 11 August: The Australian Government is offering up to $5 million in grant funding to accelerate the uptake and deployment of grid enhancing technologies on Australia's electricity networks.
📅 12 August: Catalysing Climate Capital Report Launch, Sydney.
📅 10 September: Cicada x Tech23 2025, Sydney.
📅 19 September: HEXPO 2025: Festival of Ideas & Innovation, Melbourne.
📅 October: ANDHealth is inviting Australian digital health companies, along with key ecosystem partners, to join ANDHealth Delegation to the US. This initiative is designed to help companies grow their brand, connect with key US healthcare stakeholders, and gain practical insights into market entry and expansion. Submit your EOI here.