How to spin your scientific research out of a university and into a startup

Re:How to spin your scientific research out of a university ... by stanrivers on Thursday October 29, 2020 @08:52AM (#24929935)

I would say the business person is way more important than suggested (caveat, I’m a VC investor with a business background)

A lot of time the business person on the team brings two things - 1) translates the tech into “business person speak” which is actually important for raising money AND getting customers excited and 2) they bring a completely different set of relationships that can help commercialize the product.

Also important are translating the business speak back to the startup - how do fund raising processes work? What do all these documents actually mean? Why do these terms in the contracts with customers matter?

This all matters and a single person on the team playing that roll at an early stage can impact things. Just make sure it’s a business person with lots of relationships and experience doing similar things... “business” is general, so make sure it’s the right kind.

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Re:How to spin your scientific research out of a university ... by tetris11 on Thursday October 29, 2020 @11:13AM (#24931370)

Its unfortunate that the actual technicians get underpaid in comparison to the business people who essentially summarise the work to non-techies.

I get that communication and networking are important skills, but I wish the business-speak people were valued either equal to or lower than the actual techies, given the respective hours and efforts to the product.

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Re:How to spin your scientific research out of a university ... by musicale on Thursday October 29, 2020 @12:27PM (#24932233)

Obviously b-school grads are smarter than techies, since they have figured out how to get paid more for less work. ;-)

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