The must-dos for researchers who see their future in a startup

If commercialization is a journey academic researchers are afraid to take, it may help to offer some expert guides to start them off right.

Earlier this week CommerceLab hosted a Google Hangout session on Startups for academic researchers, hosted by facilitator Rick Paradis. The online panel was a followup to live workshops he recently presented on behalf of CommerceLab for faculty and grad students at locations in Ontario and Nova Scotia, on commercializing academic research.

The full Hangout is available for on-demand viewing below, but if you can’t watch for the full hour, we’ve culled some of the best takeaways:

Publish before patenting, and you may perish: According to Rob Cowan, a lawyer with McInnes Cooper, it’s important researchers understand that after filing a patent, they will need to provide full details of their invention, which is then investigated in a process that sometimes takes years. Should a researcher publish a paper before doing so, however, their intellectual property rights could be at risk.

“The first step is really just keep it confidential,” he said. “With a startup, often the big consideration is, ‘Do I need a patent or is this something I can build a product around or have a service around?’ In some industries, like life sciences, a patent is more important. In ICT, perhaps less so, unless you’re going head to head with Google or Microsoft.”

Leave the lab behind occasionally: Mary Kilfoil teaches the Lean methodology at Dalhousie University’s faculty of Management in the Rowe School of Business. She said the Lean Canvas” approach, which is a way of documenting a business model, has proven particularly effective for a number of researchers turning their work into startups. But it’s not a one-time exercise.

“You have to continue to do customer discovery — that’s the most critical piece,” she said. “It’s about always being in search mode and searching for your business model. Get out of the building and talk to customers.”

Be a rabbit, not a hippo: Jake Arsenault is an example of a researcher who’s been successful with commercialization, essentially turning his Ph.D thesis into a technology called Backscatter Computed Tomography and forming a business, Inversa Systems. He went even further than Kilfoil in suggesting his peers need to have “great big ears and a little mouth,” listening for feedback wherever they can.

“You want to wear out your shoes, you want to wear out that telephone. There’s (accelerator) programs and all this stuff, but the main thing is you travel, you’re in front of the customer, engaging,” he said. “Find a killer pain point. If you have the promise of taking away that pain, you’ve got their attention.”

Keep your HR hat handy: If and when a researcher launches a startup, the next big hurdle is having the right team surrounding you, said Josh Wright, co-founder of Decision.io.

“All you do is fundraise and hire engineers. It’s a necessary skill to find and retain talent,” he said. “That company culture piece is something that’s becoming very attractive to investors . . . you have to look at what you’re good at and what you’re not. You hire for the deficiencies you have as a person.”
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