Researchers Make Great Startup Founders If They Stay Open

I envy that. lol

Actually, I have a very distant relative—my wife’s cousin’s husband’s sister’s husband (basically a stranger at this point, lol)—let’s call him Mr. A. Mr. A’s main job is professor at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh (a truly prestigious school), but he’s also what you’d call a millionaire, having sold his own startup three times over.

His specialty is natural language processing, and he founded three separate translation software companies built on his research, and sold all three. I’d call that a classic example of one of the “winning patterns” for startups.

I don’t have that kind of “weapon honed to a razor’s edge over years and decades,” so on that front I honestly envy researchers.

That said, when I talk with researchers, they themselves often raise concerns like “I have almost no work experience” or “I don’t understand practical business matters at all.” That’s certainly true, but there’s actually a very simple solution to it.

Find a partner (or team member) who has plenty of work experience and a solid grasp of practical matters.

There are a few most basic things needed when starting a business: a business idea, capital, and a partner (team members). I think their self-assessment—that researchers have sharp, specialized strengths but are unbalanced overall—is correct to some extent. But that’s not really so important when it comes to starting a company. It’s fine as long as you connect with the right people, get their advice, and let them lend a hand when needed.

Whether a researcher has that kind of flexibility and openness is, I think, the key to whether a researcher-led startup succeeds.

The content of this post is an excerpt (original text) from the following book. If you’re interested, please pick up a copy.

The Shape of a Happy IoT Startup

The Shape of a Happy IoT Startup

Originally published in Japanese at https://clazytech.com/2022/10/1248/. Translated with LLM assistance and reviewed before publication.