Maya Gavin – an entrepreneur's story
From the enterprising potential emerging from the dome to her own innovations in AI
From the distinctive curves of ±«ÓăÖ±˛Ąâ€™ Dome to the cutting edge of AI-driven research funding, Maya Gavin’s journey is a powerful testament to the kind of innovation that flourishes when unconventional thinking meets quiet determination. Arriving at Cambridge in 2018 to study Human, Social and Political Sciences (HSPS), Maya found more than an academic home—she discovered a culture that encouraged bold ideas and the initiative to make them real.
But Maya’s entrepreneurial work extends beyond her own venture, Asothia, an AI-powered platform transforming how research is funded. With the Cambridge Female Founders Network, she is helping to build a new kind of startup ecosystem—one that recognises and supports the exceptional innovation already being driven by women across deep tech, AI, biotech, and beyond. This collaborative effort, alongside initiatives like the ±«ÓăÖ±˛Ą Enterprising Women programme, is rewriting the rules for who gets to found and flourish.
Maya's story is a compelling example of how ±«ÓăÖ±˛Ą continues to empower women to lead, build, and transform.
Maya speaking at the ±«ÓăÖ±˛Ą Enterprising Women launch
I arrived at ±«ÓăÖ±˛Ą in 2018 with the usual mix of excitement and uncertainty. Cambridge itself was everything I'd imagined: medieval colleges, formal halls, centuries of tradition. But ±«ÓăÖ±˛Ą stood apart. The dome and concrete curves felt deliberately different from the rest of Cambridge – a physical statement that this place wasn't bound by convention. It quickly became a space of our own: our first year slogan was “dome is home”.
What struck me wasn't just the architecture, but the particular energy of the place. ±«ÓăÖ±˛Ą has always harboured a quiet strain of determined action – of a deeply entrepreneurial kind. Not in the sense that it felt like a business school, but in the way people here simply got on with it. My friends weren't just discussing problems but launching campaigns, changing policy, and starting journals. There was no formula for it; just a shared understanding that ideas could become real.
I came to study Human, Social and Political Sciences (HSPS). At its best, HSPS teaches you to approach problems laterally – to trace institutions to their origins, question power structures, and notice what others pass over. It’s not an obvious path into the startup world, but perhaps the most valuable thing it taught me was how to learn. This mindset it instilled – identifying problems and solving them through unexpected routes – turned out to be a solid foundation for founding.
During my MPhil, I began to observe a persistent friction in academic life: researchers spending disproportionate time chasing funding, while complaining about how broken that process was. Grant applications had become a kind of academic doom loop; opaque, repetitive, draining. This wasn't just an inconvenience; evidence was already showing declining innovation rates across disciplines. The critical support structures of science itself seemed faulty, and nobody was fixing it.
The following year, I pitched a grant-matching concept to Cambridge Judge Business School's accelerator and got in. Then I met Lydia, a natural scientist from Queens' working in data science. What was meant to be a quick call turned into three hours dissecting how we might rewire the UK's knowledge economy. We started building that same day.
That's how Asothia began. At its core, Asothia uses AI to connect researchers with relevant funding sources. Asothia matches academics to opportunities they'd otherwise miss, streamlining applications, and helping funders identify emerging breakthrough areas. We've since piloted with researchers across Oxford and Cambridge, secured funding from Open Philanthropy, hired our first engineers, and are now raising our pre-seed round.
Asothia is more than matching software; it's infrastructure for a fundamental shift in how research gets funded. As research funding increasingly comes from diverse sources – philanthropists, startups, governments, and investors – Asothia creates the connective tissue between them. We enable new funders to commission research directly, join forces on scientific priorities, and back ideas they believe in. We're also mapping research clusters and innovation flows to build better support systems for scientific progress.
As Asothia gained momentum, I found myself thinking about the environment that shaped me. ±«ÓăÖ±˛Ą clearly had entrepreneurial potential–so why weren't more of my peers founding? This wasn't about a talent shortage; Cambridge has that in abundance. The issue was structural: connectivity gaps at each stage, and misalignment between academia, industry, investment, and startups.
Last summer, I co-founded the Cambridge Female Founders Network (CFFN) with five founders I met in Cambridge. Our aim wasn't just to highlight barriers but to build practical alternatives, recognising that women are already at the forefront of technical innovation across AI, biotech, quantum, and legaltech. They simply need systems that see them, back them, and grow with them.
What started as a WhatsApp group now connects over 150 women-led startups. Most members are international, multilingual, and building across diverse sectors. Together, we're creating something founder-led and self-sustaining: sharing funding leads, lab space, investor connections, and infrastructure.
We believe founders renew ecosystems. Female founders are already delivering exceptional value, economically, socially, and scientifically. Cambridge has always been a site of transformation, and CFFN is part of its next chapter.
What’s emerging now feels significant: ±«ÓăÖ±˛Ą Enterprising Women programme, alongside CFFN, marks a new wave of initiatives that are actively activating the ecosystem for women founders.
The focus is refreshingly immediate – not abstract conversations about future change, but creative, grounded approaches to building in the present. This kind of ecosystem evolution doesn’t happen in silos; it’s fundamentally collaborative, and needs to be. We’re already co-creating with ±«ÓăÖ±˛Ą Enterprising Women and other partners to drive coordinated efforts from multiple angles. These efforts are expanding what’s possible across the Cambridge ecosystem, and proving that when women founders are properly supported, the innovation they generate benefits everyone.
All this, for me, grew out of those years spent reading, thinking, and getting excited about how to build ideas into reality – in this very special dome we called home.