Projects
Volcano's own projects, as they stand today: validation, development, raising capital, on hold, or turned into an active startup.
The index
What is on each page.
The same groups as the menu, and under each title a line saying what that page answers: so you can decide where to go before opening anything. This page is generated from the real descriptions of each page, so it cannot go stale.
11 min de lectura
What we do
What we build, and who we work for.
Startups
The ventures Volcano has running right now: sector, stage of the model and forms of capital involved, card by card.
Services
For established companies with real problems that do not fit a startup: direct R&D services, a declared exception to the Volcano model, with a calculator of the cost per stretch of the path.
Clients
The already established companies for which Volcano has provided direct R&D services, and what we did for each one.
Consultancy
A session with the person who devised the Volcano Method: four formats, linear pricing, and the fee is deducted from your first engagement.
Who it is for
Find your door: what you already have, and what it becomes.
Start here
Three minutes to understand what capital you bring and to propose the right next step: free video call, call with a refundable fee, or resources to explore.
Invests capital
Your capital goes straight into the startup and becomes a stake: no tax mechanism in between, just the project and its risk, already reduced.
Carries a tax burden
A certain tax return, plus a stake in the company that takes the technology to market.
Has a problem
A real, validated problem becomes a stake or compensation in the startup created to solve it.
Brings an idea
A recognised idea is worth 5 to 10% of the project that develops it, plus a licence that leaves the intellectual property in your hands.
Brings a technology
Your technology is valued by Volcano's internal committee and its value becomes a stake in the project. The last word is yours.
Contributes capabilities
They become a paid role and a stake in the startups you contribute to.
Has a network
Contacts and introductions become a fee, equity, or a combination of the two.
Wants to relocate
A profitable foreign activity becomes a new Canary entity at 4% ZEC, managed by Volcano.
How we do it
The full method, from problem to profit, and the place where it is applied.
The model
A venture builder that applies the Tax Lease to its own projects: tax investment funds the riskiest phase and capital comes in with less exposure.
The committee
A committee with the logic of the founders sets each participation within its range: whom to bring aboard, with what participation and with what role.
The path
From problem to profit in thirteen phases, four macro-phases and two markers: the question that closes each phase, who leads it, its TRL and its typical funding.
The phases of value creation
The development path diagram of a Volcano project, explained: thirteen phases, four macro-phases, seven decision gates and seven lines (TRL, CRL, rounds, cost, value, value multiple and funding), with the figures in a table.
Phased financing
There are no phases without capital: there is, for each phase, the funder whose trade is that risk. Who comes in, with what instrument and with what typical ticket, from F1 to F13.
The Tax Lease
The Tax Lease on our own projects, not as brokerage: a certain tax credit for the investor and entry with reduced risk. The guide to the instrument.
The rounds
The seven rounds that follow the CRL ladder: where you enter, where each closes, what each costs, how much it multiplies capital, and when the private investor's note converts: on completing the round they entered.
The convertible note
How the private investor enters a Volcano startup: the convertible note with the stake fixed on day one, without discount or cap; the formula with an example, the buyback window, the conversion events and the tax treatment.
Why the Canary Islands
The Canary Islands offer the most favourable tax regime in Europe for innovating: REF with deductions raised by 80%, ZEC at 4%. And a mission for the territory.
Set up in the Canary Islands
We open your company in the Canary Islands, frame your R&D project so it can be approved and collect with you the highest deductions in Europe, every year. Five services with published prices and a simulator that compares with your country.
Why it works
The levers that reduce risk and the figures that measure it.
The problem-solution matrix
Eight axes, and on each the real problem of anyone trying to innovate alongside Volcano's concrete answer, with a link to the page that demonstrates it.
The engine
Volcano's engine generates mechatronic inventions through phased human-AI co-design, validates them with independent testing and takes them to market.
How we reduce risk
Tax Lease investment and public funds finance the riskiest phase before private capital. The six levers, phase by phase.
The risks of the operation
The risk matrix of the structure, one by one, with the mitigation that governs it: expense base, qualification, criterion for the mainland partner, tax-liability capacity, economic motive, partners' liability, promoter's conflict, technical execution, dissolution, administrative windows. No indemnity: the rules are guaranteed.
The TRL pyramid
The TRL pyramid measures technical maturity; the CRL, commercial maturity. Two parallel thermometers, because market risk outlives laboratory risk.
The CRL ladder
The nine rungs of commercial maturity, with the evidence each one demands; the MVP and MMP milestones and the techniques to climb them almost without spending TRL.
Market, idea and team
The triad that decides whether a startup succeeds: a growing market, a good idea that wins in it and a team up to the task. And why the market weighs most.
How much information is enough
Nobody decides with 100% of the information: it never arrives. Why the optimum lies earlier and what part of the uncertainty cannot be bought with more analysis.
Our figures
What we will publish about the results of Volcano's startups, how it will compare with the sector average, and why this page is still empty.
Tax Lease: end or means
The Tax Lease as an end: a percentage on other people's projects. As a means: our own projects at cost and a margin in the startup. The honest comparison.
Democratising the Tax Lease
Why only ten of the forty tax combinations recover more than they contribute, and the lever with which the advantage reaches the others: the certified expense attributed to you grows with the private capital that enters the AIE. With a control to see it.
The simulators
Four simulations to run your numbers.
Tax investment simulation
How much you could recover by contributing capital to a Canary R&D and technological innovation project: absorbed cost, deduction, BIN and tax benefit, calculated live.
Private investment simulation
Why Volcano needs private investment: the non-repayable grant does not always cover 100% and working capital comes in through a convertible note. Simulate your stake.
Simulation of the cost of the services
Choose the phase you enter at and the phase you leave at, the project type and the grant funding, and read the R&D cost of the stretch, what remains at your expense and the deliverables. And the two ways to pay for it: as a service or inside Volcano.
Simulation of the early-stage valuation
How much a startup that does not sell yet is worth: the Berkus method, with the maximums by zone of forty markets, five risk fronts and the investor's stake. Indicative and not binding.
To understand
To form your own judgement: the essay, the short essays, the data and the simulators.
The root: water, food and energy
The systemic crises have one root: water, food and energy. The demonstration, with data and sources, of why intervening there generates the greatest impact and the greatest return.
From the abstract to the concrete
Why we innovate: from the biology of the environment to the model that validates, finances and creates startups.
Value and cost, phase by phase
How much it costs to develop each maturity level and how much the startup is worth at each phase: the two curves, with adjustable bands, and the gap that gets captured.
Understanding innovation
The essay in seventeen chapters: innovation as a knowable, measurable and manageable process. Thesis, readers, reading itineraries and a synthesis of the five parts.
The essays of the Volcano model
Ten essays in three stages: the problem, the method, and capital and risk. The suggested reading order and what each one answers.
Glossary
AIE, ZEC, REF, IMV, BIN, Tax Lease, startup: the terms of the Volcano model and of the Canary Tax Lease, defined clearly.
Frequently asked questions
What Volcano is, how the Tax Lease works, what protects the operation and how to start: the short answers.
Why technology exists
Before startups, capital and risk: why a living system makes tools. From matter to life, from life to cognition, and why knowing is always the sign of a limit.
Being right early
Four times I saw years ahead what others went on to build. Why being right early is of no use, and how Volcano removes the need to convince anyone.
The window of time
People asked us why the hurry, mistaking the window for desperation. Timing decides more than the idea, the team or the capital: the data, and how it is managed.
What a venture builder is
What a venture builder is: the organisation that holds every component needed to build a company and reuses them; each company costs less and fails less.
Investing in innovation
What innovation has historically returned against bonds, housing and equities, with sources and charts; and the small print: only a part of your capital.
+capital = +projects
More capital, more R&D projects in parallel: the arithmetic of the average project and the recovery by the treasury and by private capital in a single chart; indicative.
The map of risk and reward
The risk and the prize of venture, on an interactive map: eight controls, real data and no promises.
The four questions of risk
Why take risk, the best case, the most likely and the worst: an almost mathematical protocol for deciding on the whole distribution, not on the expected value.
The theory of capital
Why Volcano treats as capital everything that reduces risk or adds value to a venture, whether or not it takes the form of money, and the eight doors in.
The frontier of knowledge
Volcano maps the edge of knowledge so that each invention starts at the right point, without rediscovering what exists, and turns the detours into value.
Who we are
The network, the people and the reasons.
Who we are
Volcano is a network of independent companies coordinated from the Canary Islands; its founders add up to thirty years of innovation. The name and the track record.
The team
The people behind Volcano: thirty years spent building innovation to order. Full profiles coming soon.
The members of the committee
Who forms the committee that sets the participations, who appoints them and how this work is paid: with participation, not with fees.
Why we exist
Empowering Innovation in its double sense, the four commitments, the priority to water, food and energy security, and why Volcano is a network.
Where the name comes from
Why this company is called Volcano: an Italian expression, a nickname others gave him, an aria by Rossini and a volcano that concentrates in order to distribute.
Allies
Governments, financial institutions and other institutional allies of Volcano. Page under construction.
Join us
Positions open by project, when a startup in the network needs them. Send us your profile.
Understanding innovation: the essay in seventeen chapters
Introduction
Thesis, readers, reading itineraries and a synthesis of the five parts.
Part I, The fundamentals. 01 Why innovation exists · 02 The problem before the idea · 03 Generating ideas · 04 The forms of innovation
Part II, From laboratory to market. 05 How an innovation spreads · 06 Measuring maturity · 07 Risk and its management · 08 Strategy and portfolio
Part III, Capital and value. 09 The capital of innovation · 10 Investing in innovation: the statistics of returns · 11 Who captures the value · 12 Intellectual property in practice
Part IV, Organisation, impact, measurement. 13 Organising people · 14 Innovation and impact · 15 Measuring innovation
Part V, The synthesis. 16 Why a venture builder exists · 17 The method, from problem to benefit
We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
John F. Kennedy, 1962
John F. Kennedy, 1962