Professors: leave "the kids" alone

The culture

When 5 years ago we started looking at the hurdles within academia we zeroed in on the career challenges faced by postdoc researchers: full-time scientists who have completed their PhDs and are now working within a lab led by a PI (Principal Investigator). A PI’s lab can be made of a handful or several dozen students + PhD candidates + postdoc researchers depending on the level of funding and status of the PI within the university. "Tenured professor" being a higher rank in the system.

As I started to find myself in rooms with established professors I very quickly learnt that many of them colloquially refer to the researchers working within their labs as “my kids”. An endearing way of referring to versions of younger selves I feel in the majority of cases, and a form of expressing a level of quasi-parental responsibility for their apprentices and operators in the lab: their careers are after all being shaped under their guidance.

Now I also know plenty of young researchers that have had a very troubled relationship with their PIs and their use of the term “kids” may be indicative of the hierarchical and territorial culture within academia, where at times there is a short-term obsession around status instead of long-term understanding of how relationships work, especially within an industry that is dependent on human capital and the ability of labs to attract that.?

Having trained as an attorney I relate with the nature of the apprentice-trainer relationship and how impactful that can be when successful. And because I am not a scientist I am not emotionally impacted by the silent threats that can follow when one tries to change this dynamic. And that is why we regularly find ourselves offering pastoral-like pro-bono care to disgruntled researchers, supporting them as they try to figure out their next career move within the delicate dynamics of the lab and the university. This is not scalable however, we cannot help every researcher on a case by case basis if we want academia to work more functionally and why I feel we need more awareness.

The scenarios

This culture within the lab becomes most apparent in the event of a spinout from the lab and at scale it is impacting the future of science commercialization. This is the scenario we encounter most often:

1. Some IP "asset" (could be a patentable discovery, materials, data, know-how) has been generated within the IP's lab
2. PhDs or postdocs within the lab who have been working closest on the development of this IP offer to become full-time founders of a company to commercialize the IP
3. The PI will remain in academia and most likely has very limited experience and bandwidth to help with the commercialization
4. The researchers turned founders and the PI need to decide how to split the company's shares

Now, this is where you encounter two kinds of PIs:

Scenario 1: the one that understands that the job of a founder requires delivery (speed and focus) and that they are unlikely to be able to dedicate time and are unlikely to be relevant in the development of the company = they agree to be prized for their work on the IP through the stake held by the TTO (tell me more) and perhaps by a single digit percentage of the company to continue offer guidance as scientific advisors.

Scenario 2: the one that thinks that because a discovery has been patented within their labs that the company is an extension of their academic ambitions and that they just need to direct postdocs as day to day project managers of the company = they think they deserve majority or equal shares in the business to be built, still think of the researchers turned founders as still the kids in the lab.

If as a researcher turned founder you think you fall within Scenario 1, you have the highest chance of success:

• You have enough equity to incentivize you to fight for the company for the decade ahead accounting for all the investors dilution
• You have enough equity to distribute to new pivotal team members either as co-founders or members of the option pool (tell me more)
• Your relationship with your PI has matured to the point that the PI can recognize that you have chosen a radically different journey than the academic career path and you can count on the continued guidance to validate the science
• You are likely to raise funding from better investors as they will appreciate that the incentive is distributed in the right places and that the company comes with a "clean slate"

If as a researcher turned founder you are falling within Scenario 2, you need to understand what you are about to walk into:

• you are about to start a company with the wrong mindset: maintaining a sense of hierarchy and dependency towards your PI and the university instead of being free to execute and iterate like the rest of the founders in the world can
• you are about to make many expensive and, most importantly, slow mistakes: being directed by a PI who has limited experience and focus to know what needs to be done in the interest of the company
• you are about to start a company with a flawed culture, unable to attract or retain top talent as there will palpable tension and lack of direction and hence trust in the execution.

Rest assured that most PIs who fall within Scenario 2 will be there in good faith: the dynamics of company formation are very different from those of setting up a lab, they are probably speaking with peers that have also done spinouts but are not building beautiful high-performance ones (maybe hyped ones!). Also TTOs will be supporting them in their belief as TTOs themselves are not made of experienced founders who understand long term consequences of a bad cap table and are ultimately focused on preserving the status quo of academic hierarchy (tell me more).

If you have already agreed to the numbers, you can change that: stop adding any more value into the company including by furthering licensing conversations with TTO (tell me more) or with potential investors and customers. Invest the time to educate your PI on how and why the best companies are performing. To the point that you can also walk-away, it's very unlikely that someone will step to the mark to license the technology if ultimately the know-how is with you: some of our best performing founders decided to start from scratch, we backed them to spend time in the lab to explore new ways of solving the same challenge (tell me more) building better alternative technology than the original IP.

For PIs: the benefit of Scenario 1

Some of the most exciting PIs are the ones that are capable of promoting an entrepreneurial culture within their lab, facilitating ideation, attracting the best students and experienced researchers because they are able to offer alternative outcomes to their professional development, including becoming founders of a company.

That talent is the one that will allow you to continuously explore novel ideas and hold the courage to venture in the real world to do something with them. In the real world execution counts much more than ideas, very few ideas become successes but most leaders become successful. The choices that you make at the spinout stage will shape the culture and hence the brand equity of the lab, the quality and quantity of future leaders that you can attract depends on that.

If you are getting started as a PI, we run a program dedicated to helping you set up a lab that is spinout-ready. If you think you have a spinout in the making within your lab, we can share a roadmap to success, it may start from the prospective scientist founders joining Sandbox and applying to Bootcamp.

Scientists First! (why?)

Ale

Wilbe resources for entrepreneurial scientists:

• venture + career resources and community: Sandbox
• prep for your first round: Bootcamp
• pitch for funding: Wilbe.Capital
• help with finding a lab: Wilbe Labs