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So having covered the basic features of entrepreneurship, the type of personality you need to have.

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Let's move into reasons for starting a venture.

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Well, we've already said that it's really about having a great idea stuck at the back of your mind.

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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?

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I think I'm onto something. I'd be quite keen to find a way to get it out there.

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And the real reason, the real vision behind starting a business is actually some form of desire to change the world.

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In my case, it was to transform health care. For others, it is to transform business or consumerism or computer science or something.

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But transformative is a very, very key word.

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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.

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The best reason for me is a desire to translate, as I've said earlier,

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the outputs of a very successful project that is coming to completion and project is to be taken in the broadest sense.

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It could be your Ph.D. Studentship, it could be your internship, it could be your postdoc.

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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.

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The bad reason is I can't get this project funded anymore and therefore I'm going

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to go and raise some money because I want to continue doing this sort of research.

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And a small company environment is the worst possible environment in which to do research because it is so high risk,

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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.

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The second good reason for doing this is that very often as an academic,

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you reach the end of the road of what can actually be done within an academic institution.

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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.

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You need to actually be able to provide the documentation as to your design process.

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The fact that every piece of instrumentation you have used has been appropriately calibrated and appropriately reviewed.

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Universities are terrible at doing that. In the case of sonics, we have to manufacture some nanoparticles to GMP good manufacturing practice.

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You are not able to manufacture a new particle or a new therapeutic to GMP, typically within a university environment.

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And for all of those reasons, you need to form a company.

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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,

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and I can only really do that by forming a company.

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There's a lot of pressure for reasons that it will become apparent to actually do so from within an academic environment.

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Do not yield to that pressure unless something in your gut tells you that it's the right time to do this.

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It is wrong to try and do this simply because someone has told you to.

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Achieving impact rather than personal fame and glory is the next very big reason for doing this.

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Maybe journal publications and successful grant applications are a good indicator of success for most people.

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To me, it doesn't really exist until someone is using it.

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And for me, that is the very definition of impact. And that is actually what a company can enable you to do.

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You can find hundreds of publications in nature that have never made it into practice.

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And you can find things that have been unpublished and have changed the world.

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There is, of course, a significant component in terms of generating wealth.

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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.

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They will, of course, create a significant financial return for the university.

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And if all works out for the founders.

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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.

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And the big dilemma when you actually realise that you want to translate is how do you translate?

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You spin out or do you license? And that is actually one of the most difficult decisions that you have to make early on.

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It is also the very first question that excites innovation or universities or

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companies Technology Transfer Office will ask you when you go to see them.

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Why is this a spin out and not a license?

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Well, here are some reasons why it's really only worth spitting is finding out something that is not a one trick pony.

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If what you actually feel, what you have is a platform technology,

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something that can literally explode and target several applications and several markets,

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then it is unlikely that licensing it will achieve that potential because typically the

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party that licenses your idea will have a very specific application and use of it in mind.

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The second thing is only certain types of ideas are well suited to deployment by a small company.

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If you need extensive pre-existing infrastructure, then you are in trouble.

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And I'll give you a very specific example at the end of this slide.

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But ergonomics is a good example. Transplantation is a niche area.

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It is therefore possible for a relatively small company. It's a very, very centralised market.

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There are in total about 150 transplant centres in the US and about 120 in Europe.

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So as a number, it is possible for a relatively small organisation to reach out to those.

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With extensive pre-existing infrastructure being needed.

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For example, mobile telephony apps for mobile phones, specific applications that are limited to an existing Wi-Fi infrastructure.

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You are in trouble because you have a degree of separation between you and the customer and therefore a license.

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Maybe the correct way forward is that no one out there who can do it or other existing

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partners and competitors with the right capability who could get you there faster.

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And so there is a question of right opportunity, right time,

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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.

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And it also boils down to you and your team. Do you have everything you need to make all of this happen?

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Or are you actually short? And do you need external guidance and partnerships in order to achieve this?

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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.

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There were other companies that were manufacturing, organ preservation devices, and we spoke to them.

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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

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technology to these companies is things would gradually migrate in their direction

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and they would simply use it as an add on feature to an existing product.

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And neither Peter nor I were willing to see this happen because we knew the technology would work superbly,

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but it would only work if we actually had the opportunity to build it the way we wanted to build it.

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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.

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And none of the parties we're talking to was interested in really pursuing it across all of these applications.

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Checking all the right boxes. We'll move forward with a spin out.

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And the last and most important reason for spinning something out is because you have to.

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You just don't have a choice. As I said earlier. What got me into Sonics and into this,

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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.

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Herceptin, a commonly used drug for breast cancer therapy, achieves about a six months survival by being seen by only 30% of cells.

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So the idea I got stuck in my head is imagine. What it could possibly do if you could reach 100% of cells.

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And how could you justify not trying that?