Yes, you as a scientist can also be a great entrepreneur
Simple steps to start seeing yourself as a startup founder
A couple of years ago, in my role of guiding researchers to become entrepreneurs at Fraunhofer Society, I was visiting one of our institutes in Freiburg. Opposite me: three researchers that had - for the fun of it - declared in a grant application that the path to commercialization for their research results might be a startup. Of course, they said, that’s not really what they wanted to do. Way too risky! They bombarded me with questions around the process of building a startup with a mix of intense curiosity and obvious dismissal. Most questions didn’t have a straightforward answer, but somehow I guess I got them to at least agree that they would join our internal accelerator and give ‘being a founder’ a try. Fast forward five years, and in 2023, Max Gulde, now founder and CEO of constellR, and his team raised a 17m€ seed round for their satellite based beyond-visual imaging technology. It was great to watch Max go from deeply skeptic to driven entrepreneur.
Examples like Max make me believe that there are many other scientists out there that are not only working on really important science but also have the potential in them to be an entrepreneur. Unfortunately though, entrepreneurship as a potential (career) path outside of academia is something that scientists rarely are exposed to. I think this is a missed opportunity!
So today I would like to challenge you, as a scientist, to consider the idea of starting your own company and show you two simple ways of testing that path for real. Sometimes all it takes is a small trigger: a chance encounter with another scientist-entrepreneur, a role model you stumble upon, a course you hear about, or someone who sees the entrepreneurial potential in your technology - something that sows a seed in you that says: yes, I too can be an entrepreneur!
Maybe the above anecdote can be the trigger for you. You might recognize yourself in the doubts but also the bold dreams. Are you excited by the potential of your research? Not only by what you have built so far, but what it could become? How could your technology transform the field you are in? What would a world ten years from now look like with your insights in widespread use by others around the world?
Dare to dream.
And if that gets you excited, take the lead and give being an entrepreneur a try.
What could that look like? Two simple first steps:
Talk to others - find a role model (aka another scientist-entrepreneur) to see what such a path could look like.
Recalling Max’ journey: you definitely won’t be the first to try building a company based on strong scientific research. There are great examples of scientists becoming successful entrepreneurs and CEOs out there. Some of the most widely known in Europe in the past couple of years are Ugur Sahin and Özlem Türeci. Both are scientists and professors working on mRNA and both are founders of BioNTech, manufacturing one of the first COVID-19 vaccines. Another example who I got to meet with is Mark Kotter (hear his journey here). Mark is a professor and neurosurgeon at Cambridge University but also runs several spinoffs, partially as CEO, centered around new advances in stem cell technologies that he developed in his lab (bit.bio, Meatable and clock.bio - with more than $300M raised in funding across the three companies by now). He started out trying to find a business-savvy CEO (“Because that’s what I was told is what you do!”) but ended up taking on the role himself after a while.
And there are plenty of other scientist-entrepreneurs paving the way for others to follow and increasing in number as more science and hardware-based startups see the light of day. I’d encourage you to take a look around you: sieve through your university’s alumni, check out startup accelerators in your field, take a look at conferences that promote science entrepreneurship like Hello Tomorrow or scour the portfolio of investors in your space (take a look at the founders in Positron’s portfolio!). I’m sure there are role models for you to find. Observe the steps they took to becoming a founder. And reach out and bombard them with all your questions about how risky it really is to leave academia and start your own company.
Actually do it - try on the role of an entrepreneur for a while.
The best way to figure out if this new role is something you might like, is to try it on for a limited period of time without the commitment to do anything beyond that. Remember Max from the initial anecdote joining our Fraunhofer accelerator (AHEAD). Find a similar program around you to join. There are ample offerings - many with a focus on scientific teams - available in Europe by now. From one-day workshops to 12-month programs, locally at your university or research organization or European-wide, open to many different technologies or focused on your technological niche: check out some examples below.
A big part of joining a program like the ones listed above is starting to practice communicating your vision to others: potential co-founders, employees, partners, customers, investors. Test how your vision feels out in the wild, when shown to the real world. What kind of feedback do you get? What does taking on the role of driving this vision forward feel like?
These are relatively easy, no-pain, first steps to take and see if you like the idea of yourself in a role outside academia. Building a company is a long journey - for scientists as entrepreneurs I observe the prospect of this long journey to be less of a challenge though. Quite the opposite: It might actually be a strength of yours. If you are a PhD student, Postdoc, PI or professor, you have probably shown quite some tenacity and grit already and spent years on solving the problem you are working on. Your drive goes beyond a quick-lived idea of starting a company. You might have spent 10+ years on developing your technology. Getting to lab scale and proving the science is the first part. And then part two, building the company that creates the product and gets it onto the market can simply be an extension to your already existing drive to solve a certain problem. I see this intrinsic motivation and drive as a great advantage for you as an entrepreneur.
So, have you developed something exciting in the lab and feel like there’s more potential in it than writing a paper? Do you want to see it come to life in a real product? If yes, then the truth is: it will probably not happen without you taking a lead in that process. So give it a go!
Will you enjoy the process of building a company (developing a vision, hiring a team, creating a product, finding customers,...)? I don’t know.
Is it the right thing to do with your technology, market or team? I don’t know either.
Will it be completely different than planned? Probably.
Will there be risks, uncomfortable decisions, ups and downs in the road? Absolutely.
But: If you get excited about the potential of the problem you are solving, then I’d like to encourage you as the scientist to take on the leadership, try out the role of an entrepreneur and consider being the captain of the ship yourself. Who knows what it may lead to. If you don’t try, you will never know.
If you think your science is pretty cool but you are not sure yet if you are cut out to be an entrepreneur: let’s talk. E-mail me or join an upcoming 1:1 office hour for scientists.
If you know someone who you think has the potential to be a great scientist-entrepreneur (although they might not realize so yet themselves), reach out to me at scientists@positron.vc.