Mike Nicholls is a Partner at Main Sequence Ventures who positions himself as a talent scout for deep-tech founders, focusing unusually heavily on teaching sales and marketing execution rather than just providing capital, and actively runs sales, marketing and hardware events for portfolio companies. His background includes prior experience as Director of Invention Development at Intellectual Ventures where he commercialized inventions and assembled engineering teams, plus multiple founder and CEO roles, giving him hands-on experience scaling hardware- and IP-heavy startups across semiconductors, AI, renewable energy, and life sciences.