Tips to go from Scientist to Entrepreneur
Dr. Annette Gilchrist, CEO of MyGenomeRx and an Associate Professor at Midwestern University, provides tips to go from scientist to entrepreneur.
There were so many things I had to learn when I started my first company, Cue Biotech. As a scientist, I spent my days in a lab, testing new drugs to see if they might be useful therapeutics. I had no idea how to find office space, make an invoice, incorporate a business, complete business taxes, hire/fire employees, evaluate healthcare insurance options, license technologies, etc. And while I have gotten more comfortable talking with Venture Capitalists over the years, I admit that I still prefer talking to an audience of scientists.
I often tell my research students that being a scientist is a bit like being an artist, you do it because you can’t imagine doing anything else. You know you are a scientist when data analysis is paramount to breathing, that it is normal to drop by work on Saturdays to see if the bacterial colonies grew overnight, that not staying an extra hour to run the gel to see if the PCR worked would be ludicrous. Being an entrepreneur is much the same, as it also takes this same drive and motivation, without any assurance of reward. When asked about what advice I have for someone considering starting their own business, I pondered on what helped me and came up with the following:
1. Combine curiosity with creativity and persistence. You can’t teach curiosity. As a mentor you can cultivate it, help it grow, and make it more impactful, but people either have it or they don’t. But the power behind curiosity is when individuals combine it with creativity and persistence, as then they are a force to be reckoned with. When I founded Cue Biotech I had a natural curiosity, and a novel approach to identify drugs. I also had a whole bunch of tenacity. You are going to hear so many negative comments, you must believe in yourself and in your product.
2. Accept that it will be hard work and then jump in with both feet. Having recently started another company I occasionally wonder why I would go through the whole process again. It is so much work. Seriously, an unimaginable, extraordinary amount of work. But when you have a great idea, when you believe in something completely, you can’t imagine NOT sharing it. My new company, MyGenomeRx was started because people want to know more about how their DNA impacts their response to medications. They may have had an adverse side effect from a drug, or not had therapeutic benefit from something their physician prescribed. MyGenomeRx takes information from at home DNA testing kits like 23andme or ancestry and provides information for a more personalized approach to medication management. I don’t know if MyGenomeRx will be successful, but I feel it is imperative for me to share my idea with others that might benefit.
My advice for others who might be considering starting a company would be to “grasp the nettle”. If you believe in your idea and what it offers to others, you should immediately start taking whatever steps are needed to bring it to fruition. Accept that the work will be hard, the hours will be long, and nothing may come of it, or worse that it will fail. Do all that you can to make the business a success. When I started Cue Biotech that meant auditing MBA courses; attending seminars on entrepreneurship; learning the acronyms used by investors such as ROI, CAGR, and GTM; countless hours spent interviewing (business lawyers, patent attorneys, accountants, scientists, etc); and giving up my jeans and t-shirts for more business like attire.
3. Learn to effectively communicate the science behind your ideas at every level of understanding. This is perhaps the most valuable tip I can give you. Be able to describe what your company does to anyone, from 6–96, from someone who hasn’t had biology since high school to other PhDs. You want people to not only understand what you are telling them, but to be able to articulate it to others. That means making complex concepts understandable to non-scientists, because if people can’t understand it, they aren’t going to buy it.
Dr. Annette Gilchrist has a PhD in Immunology from the University of Connecticut Health Center and a MS in Biochemistry from the University of Connecticut. Previously, she co-founded Cue Biotech and Caden Biosciences, companies focused on G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). She currently teaches oncology and pharmacogenomic courses at Midwestern University and studies selective modulators of CCR1 for cancer and FFAR2 for type 2 diabetes. Recently, Dr. Gilchrist founded MyGenomeRx a company bringing pharmacogenomic directly to consumers, by providing an online platform that identifies potential gene-drug interactions based on at-home genetic tests.
