So having covered the basic features of entrepreneurship, the type of personality you need to have.
Let's move into reasons for starting a venture.
Well, we've already said that it's really about having a great idea stuck at the back of your mind.
And I think every single person in here would probably not be sitting in here if at some point in the last five years they hadn't gone, you know what?
I think I'm onto something. I'd be quite keen to find a way to get it out there.
And the real reason, the real vision behind starting a business is actually some form of desire to change the world.
In my case, it was to transform health care. For others, it is to transform business or consumerism or computer science or something.
But transformative is a very, very key word.
So here you are, a full time academic or someone on an academic career path, and you need to decide why you might want to do this.
The best reason for me is a desire to translate, as I've said earlier,
the outputs of a very successful project that is coming to completion and project is to be taken in the broadest sense.
It could be your Ph.D. Studentship, it could be your internship, it could be your postdoc.
But you've come to the end of something. It's worked out great, and you're suddenly thinking, This deserves to go out in the real world.
The bad reason is I can't get this project funded anymore and therefore I'm going
to go and raise some money because I want to continue doing this sort of research.
And a small company environment is the worst possible environment in which to do research because it is so high risk,
it is the best possible environment in which to do development, but it is the worst possible environment in which to do research, at least initially.
The second good reason for doing this is that very often as an academic,
you reach the end of the road of what can actually be done within an academic institution.
And I'll give you very specific examples. In order to get any device or any product approved, you need to operate within a quality system.
You need to actually be able to provide the documentation as to your design process.
The fact that every piece of instrumentation you have used has been appropriately calibrated and appropriately reviewed.
Universities are terrible at doing that. In the case of sonics, we have to manufacture some nanoparticles to GMP good manufacturing practice.
You are not able to manufacture a new particle or a new therapeutic to GMP, typically within a university environment.
And for all of those reasons, you need to form a company.
So in my own area, if I don't feel I exist as a biomedical engineer unless I take something from the bench to the bedside,
and I can only really do that by forming a company.
There's a lot of pressure for reasons that it will become apparent to actually do so from within an academic environment.
Do not yield to that pressure unless something in your gut tells you that it's the right time to do this.
It is wrong to try and do this simply because someone has told you to.
Achieving impact rather than personal fame and glory is the next very big reason for doing this.
Maybe journal publications and successful grant applications are a good indicator of success for most people.
To me, it doesn't really exist until someone is using it.
And for me, that is the very definition of impact. And that is actually what a company can enable you to do.
You can find hundreds of publications in nature that have never made it into practice.
And you can find things that have been unpublished and have changed the world.
There is, of course, a significant component in terms of generating wealth.
And one of the things that I'm very proud of is that the two companies together have to date created about 30 to 40 jobs in the city.
They will, of course, create a significant financial return for the university.
And if all works out for the founders.
And so it is a very, very important vehicle for growth generation, but it is not a particularly good vehicle for topping up your income.
And the big dilemma when you actually realise that you want to translate is how do you translate?
You spin out or do you license? And that is actually one of the most difficult decisions that you have to make early on.
It is also the very first question that excites innovation or universities or
companies Technology Transfer Office will ask you when you go to see them.
Why is this a spin out and not a license?
Well, here are some reasons why it's really only worth spitting is finding out something that is not a one trick pony.
If what you actually feel, what you have is a platform technology,
something that can literally explode and target several applications and several markets,
then it is unlikely that licensing it will achieve that potential because typically the
party that licenses your idea will have a very specific application and use of it in mind.
The second thing is only certain types of ideas are well suited to deployment by a small company.
If you need extensive pre-existing infrastructure, then you are in trouble.
And I'll give you a very specific example at the end of this slide.
But ergonomics is a good example. Transplantation is a niche area.
It is therefore possible for a relatively small company. It's a very, very centralised market.
There are in total about 150 transplant centres in the US and about 120 in Europe.
So as a number, it is possible for a relatively small organisation to reach out to those.
With extensive pre-existing infrastructure being needed.
For example, mobile telephony apps for mobile phones, specific applications that are limited to an existing Wi-Fi infrastructure.
You are in trouble because you have a degree of separation between you and the customer and therefore a license.
Maybe the correct way forward is that no one out there who can do it or other existing
partners and competitors with the right capability who could get you there faster.
And so there is a question of right opportunity, right time,
and no one else being able to do it versus someone better out there to develop this particular project at this particular moment in time.
And it also boils down to you and your team. Do you have everything you need to make all of this happen?
Or are you actually short? And do you need external guidance and partnerships in order to achieve this?
So cards on the table. I will tell you that when we first went to Ice to spin out organics, we were told flat out it's a license.
There were other companies that were manufacturing, organ preservation devices, and we spoke to them.
And what actually emerged through our first meeting and our second meeting and our third meeting is that what would happen if we were to license the
technology to these companies is things would gradually migrate in their direction
and they would simply use it as an add on feature to an existing product.
And neither Peter nor I were willing to see this happen because we knew the technology would work superbly,
but it would only work if we actually had the opportunity to build it the way we wanted to build it.
The second thing is, it is a platform technology. You can do it for the liver, but you can also do it for almost every other organ.
And none of the parties we're talking to was interested in really pursuing it across all of these applications.
Checking all the right boxes. We'll move forward with a spin out.
And the last and most important reason for spinning something out is because you have to.
You just don't have a choice. As I said earlier. What got me into Sonics and into this,
my current area of research was the realisation that most cancer drugs are seen by less than 30% of the cancer cells within the body.
Herceptin, a commonly used drug for breast cancer therapy, achieves about a six months survival by being seen by only 30% of cells.
So the idea I got stuck in my head is imagine. What it could possibly do if you could reach 100% of cells.
And how could you justify not trying that?