The title of this article sounds silly, doesn’t it? If you are creating a new company and you are a technologist, isn’t it obvious that the company should earn a profit, or at least that you will strive to do so? Conventional wisdom would suggest yes. However, scientist founders often struggle to articulate the impact of work might have in the world through the process of forming a company.
Scientists I talk to do what they do because they are passionate about finding the truth about natural phenomena. This truth could be about the physical world, like discovering new chemical reactions, or about the socio-cultural world, such as how people lived thousands of years ago, tools they used, or how people are affected by the use of technology. Once results of their work are published, they might feel confident to reduce their work to practice for the benefit of society. This is where the struggle begins.
Once their work is published and found supporters, earned accolades, and is used as the foundation for other work, the scientist must decide what to do next. This often presents the dilemma, especially for those who are not interested in continuing a purely academic path.
Some institutions of higher education are very supportive of scientists becoming company founders, with MIT being a great example. As an instructor at MIT I-Corps, I work with scientist-founders every day and can say that many are very passionate about making a large, positive impact in society. Their struggle lies in understanding how to fit their technological insights in people’s daily lives, through productization of what they know.
At the heart of this struggle is the economic models available to them to ensure their solution, product, or service, is sustainable over a significant period. Some scientists want to make a lot of money and make this a clear goal at the inception of any company. However, most of the scientists I mentor are aware their efforts need to be financially sustainable, but are more interested in impact and adoption than in making a lot of money.
This is the core of the dilemma: To be able to make a product or a service based on their knowledge and technological insights, scientists often need to invest in engineering and product development before the product can be available to customers, therefore they need to find capital that allows them to do just that, creating a chicken-and-the-egg problem.
The paths available at this point tend to be few and narrow. Either the scientist chooses a business model that can grow quickly and yield significant profit justifying a large investment up-front, or find non-dilutive funding sources that support the work with no expectations of return. There is some middle-ground, but it’s very hard to find and when found, unstable.
The for-profit path often presents the scientist founder with hard choices on initial market-product configurations that may be well removed from their technology’s initial intent. This D-tour creates a lot of inner tension in scientists, as they struggle to know when a D-tour turns into a new path. This uncertainty is often at the root of failed businesses, as the founding scientist resists acknowledging the reality that their technology may not be as relevant to society or society not ready for their technology as they, and their peers, thought.
And, the funding sources for non-profit applications are far and few in between and often come with thick strings attached. Those that are free and clear, such as philanthropic giving grants, are often small and insufficient to carry out meaningful work.
I don’t have an answer for this dilemma, but can say that scientist founders benefit tremendously from doing customer discovery to research the society (and market) they care about with the sole purpose of identifying the immediate, high-priority condition, need, want people have before spending any money on further development. This process of discovery, if done well, will result in insights that will lead to clear decision-making about the best path forward.