Organize | Zheng Yue
As early as 2017, the Chinese Academy of Sciences organized a debate on "whether scientists should be encouraged to start businesses", at which Shi Yigong, a clear-cut opponent, said, "It is impossible for people to be university professors and managers of companies while also managing finance. It has also been argued that scientists should be encouraged to start their own businesses.
In the past few years, more and more scientists have stepped onto the entrepreneurial stage.
Chen Tianshi, a researcher and doctoral supervisor at the Institute of Computing of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, founded Cambrian; Tang Xiaoou, a professor in the Department of Information Engineering at the University of Chinese of Hong Kong, founded SenseTime; Zhu Long, a doctor of statistics at the University of California, Los Angeles, founded ITU Technology; and Kai Yu, a computer doctor and artificial intelligence and machine learning expert at the University of Munich, founded Horizon. This year, the IDEA Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Digital Economy Research Institute, founded by Shen Xiangyang, has led a wave of scientists to start a business.
The policy environment is beginning to show a tendency to encourage scientists to start their own businesses. On December 24, 2021, the 32nd session of the Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress voted to pass the revised Science and Technology Progress Law of the People's Republic of China, in which "strengthening the reform of the ownership of job scientific and technological achievements" became a key point. This means that researchers will be incentivized through equity, options, and dividends to stimulate innovation.
Capital is also quite favorable to leading scientific researchers. In recent years, the number of "hard technology" investment cases of major leading investment institutions has shown a significant increase. Taking Matrix Partners as an example, in recent years, most of the investment has revolved around the layout of hard technology, Zhang Ying, the founding managing partner of Matrix Partners, recently wrote an article "9 Suggestions for Founders of Scientific Research/Technical Background", which received considerable response in the venture capital circle, and Zhang Ying also said in the recent closed-door sharing of science and technology innovation hubs that in the wave of science and technology, the head scientific research scholars can easily get financing and become founders, "but it is a long process to convert from a scientific research scholar to a qualified entrepreneur."
How do you manage your organization effectively? From scientist to step up, to become a qualified entrepreneur with entrepreneurial qualities - it has begun to become a topic of concern for many investors and entrepreneurs.
The characteristics of the community of scientists have a considerable impact on their entrepreneurial appearance. "The founders of this wave are very different from the founders of the mobile Internet in the past, they are more professional and sometimes stubborn." Zhang Ying said.
The world needs hard technology, and it needs innovative science and technology to continuously bring value to society through business. In this underlying logic, it is an inevitable trend for scientists who hold science and technology to stand up and start a business.
What is the general path from a research project to a commercial product? What mistakes are startups prone to make along the way? What are the key insights in the role shift from researcher to founder? What is the impact of Sino-US relations on the current scientific research background founders and scientific research attribute companies?
The following content comes from December 22, the first phase of Matrix Partners Sci-Tech Hui was shared behind closed doors, and released by Geek Park.
01 Yao Song, Co-CEO of Oriental Space: I have three problems
In 2015, after graduating from tsinghua's department of electronics, I founded an AI chip company, Deepin Technology, which I sold to Xilinx, a chip company in the United States, two and a half years later. After doing a lot of thinking, I finally decided to pursue a solution to the major problem of aviation, because from the perspective of human races, aviation is a part of the problem that must be solved.
Yao Song, co-CEO of Oriental Space, | Image source: Matrix Partners
In the process of starting a business twice, I personally experienced three problems that require the attention of entrepreneurs with scientific research backgrounds.
First, researcher-born entrepreneurs should focus on pure engineering and not just focus on research and development. It is very happy to make a new algorithm, but the algorithm can not be used directly to get the actual scene, and it is necessary to repeatedly adjust the parameters, and everyone will be bored after a week. Because of this, many people are reluctant to do engineering, only willing to do the most cutting-edge research and development, but more than 90% of the time after research and development is needed to do pure engineering. So we must force everyone to demand themselves from the perspective of professional engineers, not just researchers.
Second, a company's business decisions cannot be a democratic act. At that time, we made AI chips and chose the drone market - because to make a new hardware product, it takes about a year to polish to have higher reliability, so the cost is also higher, and the drone market can accept a relatively high cost.
But after the mass production of the first drone, I found that the ceiling of this market is too low, and 70% of the volume is from DJI. So I was under pressure from the whole company to say that I had to transform. At that time, all the engineers and technicians were opposed, because everyone had spent more than half a year in vain. But I did a lot of market research, still made a decision, and finally did assisted driving and smart security.
(Editor's note: Zhang Ying mentioned this: "When a company makes the final choice, as a founder, you must know that this is the choice of a few people, and the majority will oppose it." But the growth of a company is never a democratic act, a few people make correct decisions, with the majority of the majority of people to this goal resolutely stumble, and finally win the victory. ）
Third, borrow power when appropriate. In 2018, Deepin Technology and the car factory have progressed to in-depth cooperation, they took the initiative to pay us to test, the results are very good, but after entering the last stage of testing before mass production, but it was delayed in receiving customer orders, until we officially announced that we were acquired by Xilinx, customers quickly signed a contract. Therefore, entrepreneurs need to have a deep understanding of some considerations within the industry in addition to surface indicators in business cooperation.
02 Samari founder Senpei Cheng: The path from scientific research to business
I am a serial entrepreneur and this year is my eleventh year of business. Founded in 2015, Triassic focuses on the application of 3D printing technology to pharmaceuticals, which is an innovation in the underlying pharmaceutical technology. The high threshold, long cycle and strong supervision of the pharmaceutical industry make it difficult for the industry to be shaken by emerging technologies. The originality of technology depends on two dimensions, one is the depth and breadth of the patent layout, and the other is whether it can be made into an industry standard.
Emerging technologies in the pharmaceutical industry from science, technology to commercialization is a path to follow, first of all, there is a scientific hypothesis or scientific theory, and then the development of industrial-grade technology, and then to the establishment and registration of products, and then the commercialization of new technologies.
The beginning of science and technology entrepreneurship requires two-way thinking to form a closed loop. My co-founder has been working in science and technology for more than 30 years and is positive thinking. I have 11 years of entrepreneurial experience and am good at reverse thinking. The two of us formed a closed loop from technology to business when we worked together. If such a closed loop is not formed, in the process of company development, it is likely that there will be a general direction change.
The founder of the Triassic Period is Senpei Cheng
Many times there will be a mistake: think that good technology, good scientific theory will bring market competition products, and finally usher in better commercial returns, in fact, there is no certain causal relationship between this, each step is the basis of the next step, but does not produce inevitable results.
For emerging technologies in the pharmaceutical industry, in addition to the advantages of technology, the protection of IP, and the smooth passage of registration and declaration, it is also necessary to consider the clinical value and commercial value.
Here's a lesson from the past. In 2016 and 2017, we focused on the road of excellence in drug delivery technology, and we arranged a lot of scientists to design more than a dozen drug dosage forms hand-drawn by the co-founders.
But one day we found that something was wrong, because it took a few hours to talk to investors about the thinking and data behind these research work, so we decisively stopped the systematic research work and retained the more well-studied but relatively simple drug dosage form design for the rapid development of subsequent products.
The goal of technology is not the same as the goal of the product, the goal of the technology is to pursue the advanced, unique, reflected in good papers and good patents, the product needs to meet the needs of users and market demand.
What should technology, products, and businesses look like?
First, technically, it should be industrial mass production and the cost can be controlled.
Second, the product needs two "rates": the high efficiency of development and the success rate of the system.
Third, in the business dimension, for the pharmaceutical industry, it is mainly patient demand and market demand.
03 Supply chain troubles and solutions
Yao Song: When I was in the chip industry, I was not troubled by the supply chain, because the supply of circuit boards or some basic components was relatively mature in China, and our process was 28 nanometers, which was not subject to export restrictions such as advanced processes or 5G.
In the aerospace industry now, the supply chain problem is very interesting.
The question is often asked, why is the price of China's space launch three times, five times, or even higher than SpaceX? One of the core reasons for this is the high cost of our supply chain.
Because aerospace companies have not been able to conduct complete quality inspections of supplied products like consumer electronics companies so far. Because aviation systems are so complex, it's unlikely that detecting every single thing will actually play a role in a rocket. Therefore, the space company can only rely on the trust relationship with the supplier before, and cannot break the relationship to find a more suitable supplier. This is a big problem.
But on the other hand, this is also a way for you to establish the latest core competitiveness of the whole company, others may be subject to the supply chain, if you can independently do a set of supply chains relying on China's basic industries, your efficiency will increase a lot, and the cost can come down.
China is the only country in the world with all the industrial capabilities of all categories, and in theory you want to find the supply chain of the industry you should be able to find. It's just that we don't dare to look for it because we don't have the quality testing ability. If we can replace a certain part of the aerospace supply chain with the supply chain of the automotive industry, the cost may be directly reduced to one-third of the original, and if the supply chain of the civil industry can be used to replace the automobile supply chain, the cost may be reduced by half. It's something we do on an ongoing basis, very long-term, and the process is at least five years old.
Cheng Senping: In terms of processors, China's processing chain is very rich, but non-standard machinists are more difficult to manage. In the same processing plant, it is possible that three batches of things are different, and the final way to use is that we write the process ourselves, strict process steps, only in this way can we ensure quality.
04 Cheng Senping: Predict the risk release point of the project in advance
Emerging Technology for 3D Printing Pharmaceuticals This project has a long cycle and is very difficult. (Editor's note: So divide the long cycle into different phases and release risk in the middle.) There are many risk release points, and the survival rate of the company will increase greatly after breaking through these release points.
In the past, the company had three relatively large risk release points. First, in engineering, in order for a 3D printing device to become an industrialized device in the pharmaceutical industry, it must be stable and precise in 3D printing equipment. Our technical team conducted more than ten iterations of the device, and finally controlled the printing accuracy to an acceptable range in the pharmaceutical field. This is called a breakthrough in core technology, which will eventually be transformed into a real patent with commercial protection.
The second release point is related to structural preparations, and the Triassic has made a new type of preparation with 3D printing technology, called structural preparations, but the model and theory are good, and they must eventually be reflected in the clinical data of the human body. The tension at the moment when the first clinical data came out in 2018, which I still remember vividly, turned out to be one-time up to expectations, and we succeeded. That's a very big risk release point, and if it's successful, the previous theory of controlled release of 3D printing processes and structural preparations is not a problem, but if it is not successful, every link in the chain may be the problem, and we have to go back and spend another 2-3 years to study.
The third is the registration declaration (approval by the regulatory authorities). Any emerging technology to get the clinical approval of the drug is a major regulatory breakthrough, such as AI pharmaceutical technology and synthetic biology pharmaceutical technology, and finally entered the clinic of the few products, we worked hard for 2 to 3 years, and finally the first product T19 in January this year obtained the US FDA's new drug clinical trial approval (IND), it is the world's second 3D printed drug product to the US FDA to submit a registration declaration, and is also the first 3D printed drug product in China to enter the registration declaration stage.
I summarize three different points of doing research and entrepreneurship.
The first is the dimension, scientific research is deep, and entrepreneurship is broad.
The second is the core ability, scientific research imagination is very important, imagination can make science into technological breakthroughs. But to be a company, execution is put first.
The third dimension is that the focus is different, scientific researchers focus on the static level, things, phenomena, data and other things, but the company needs to pay attention to the dynamic pattern, the situation and the characters, these are more complex, how to switch is very important.
Jingwei China founder Zhang Ying | Image source: Matrix Partners
Zhang Ying suggested that the founders of scientific research technology can carefully consider what core turning points will occur in the company's development, including the previous review and the prediction of the future. If you want these core inflection points to occur, what else needs to be done in the underlying logic to cause them to appear. These core turning points are not casual or spontaneous, but must be the initiative of the founders of scientific research technology, operational means, team upgrades, more abundant funds, a grasp of the sense of rhythm, a real understanding of the product, and so on, in order to make it appear. It is worth thinking carefully, summarizing and refining the methodology, and preparing for climbing higher peaks in the future.
From researchers to entrepreneurs, because of the change of thinking and roles, it marks a change in the way achievements are evaluated. This requires entrepreneurs to make role switches and trade-offs. From the commercial demand backwards to technology matching, the founder of scientific research background to give up a certain ambition, put aside pride, in many cases, based on the cost and mass production considerations, the need for technology dimensionality reduction rather than upgrade.
The answer to whether scientists can start a business is yes, the trend of whether to start a business is encouraged, and in this wave of scientific and technological entrepreneurship boom, catching up with the good times does not mean that everyone can succeed, and the difficulty of starting a business is not reduced by the identity of scientists. Scientists start a business "long version is very long, there are many shortcomings", how to avoid pitfalls, how to make up for shortcomings at the level of business operations that are not good at business, is the place that technology founders need to examine.
*Image source: Matrix Partners
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