 Okay, welcome. How are you feeling? Good. Pretty good. Has your slush been? It's very exciting. Busy? A lot of people. Akram, you were here on stage as well. Yes. Yes. I just came back from the forest as well this morning. Okay. Yeah. They took me on a trip to the Finnish forest. That sounds nice. Very cool. Yeah, they're really cool. Yeah. Okay, so Akram and Hugo, you are both entrepreneurs. Having witnessed all of these pitches and seen researchers who have amazing ideas, how do you feel as entrepreneurs, what does it take to take your research into a business? What kind of things does a scientist have to think about or what kind of perspectives do they need to open if they want to turn it into a business? So I believe that not every scientist should be an entrepreneur and not every scientist could be an entrepreneur, but definitely if we want to have and to invent the next big leap in innovation and progress, it's not by doing the new food delivery app and definitely we need some scientific background. I would say that the researchers and the entrepreneurs are both complementary. It could be the same person, but it could be complementary as well. So the scientist is here to explain and gain knowledge on specific topics while the entrepreneur is here to make a solution for people. So I'm not a scientist. I'm actually an engineer, but I worked with scientists to develop the product. Some scientists could become entrepreneurs or they can partner with entrepreneurs. And what is really interesting is when you, as an entrepreneur, you are obsessed about the users, the solution and the product. So for example, we developed a sleep product for the consumer. It was based on a discovery where we saw that brain stimulation could enhance the quality of deep sleep. But then when you start to put that into the perspective of a product for real users using it every day, then you see all the difficulties of making that work. And I think these kind of two topics are really complementary to make a real solution that can bring something really new to people. Thank you. I know, Akram, that you have also worked as a professor. How do you see the difference between being an entrepreneur and academic? Yeah, it's a very different ecosystem. I was a professor and, you know, being in academia, I saw firsthand how, you know, academics think. I was one of them. And, you know, oftentimes as a scientist or an engineer in academia, you're just very narrowly focused on your own research, publishing papers. Those are the incentive drivers, right, to publish as many papers as you can. And you fall in love with your science and your technology. It's very different than being an entrepreneur where you actually have to make something work and actually solve a problem, you know, provide a solution to a customer and find what that pain point is for that customer. So, you know, there are two very different worlds. One of the reasons I left was because I really wanted to do something that I felt could make a bigger impact. That's not to say that scientists and academics don't do that, but it's just in a different way, right? So I think that's the main difference. Lou, did you have a comment? Yeah, at first I'm very glad to hear two founders say things like, not every professor or scientist could be a good entrepreneur because it's easier that a founder understands it versus that the investor had to tell it to the founder. And my personal experience, I was a trained material scientist and did a science-based healthcare company, and now is an investor investing in healthcare and also deep-tech innovation. So sometimes I found I prefer a founder to have a strong technical background, even a scientific research background. But meanwhile, I saw this, I won't call it misunderstanding, it's the gap of the mindset what is the right entrepreneur with the right researcher. Like for lots of scientists, their whole career is looking for something best, the highest efficiency. But for something could work, not only the technology has to be better, faster, and also has to be cheaper, has to integrate with the industry. And I talked to founders saying that you have to work on something people need rather than people like. People like super fancy, super cool product, but not necessarily they're going to pay for it. So first I'm very glad to hear the founder say that and also I hope more scientific background founder could understand the difference and be able to change their mindset before they make the decision to become an entrepreneur. If we think about a company at the very beginning of their career, so to say, is the best person to sell a science-based company, the scientist herself, or do they need a business person to be kind of the sales person to not go in so deep into the topic? You've probably heard a lot of pitches from the companies. How does it differ? I would say not necessarily you really have someone to work on the BD because I understand founder always think that I need someone with a totally different background, a sales person. But to be honest, most of the science-based company at the earlier stage, you don't really have a working product to sell. Most important, I think the founder has to find someone out themselves could work on the strategy together, like to tell the full story to the investor like now I'm working on this product. What is the true commercial application of this technology? Sometimes the science background founder always talk about how awesome the technology is. Try to sell the technology itself, but technology not always make money. So you need to have the numbers, show the number to the investor and the founder could calculate the number and he could work with someone have the strategic mindset to think about what is a valuable sustainable business model for this technology. What is a good commercialization application for this technology? I think that would be good enough. Not necessarily some professional sales person charge super high price or some BD guy at the early stage. How are these roles given out a dream, for example? How do the scientists and business people work together? Again, I think it depends on people. I don't like the world saying that a scientist should be with a sale guy. Nobody likes a sale guy, you know? But I would say that one of the quality as a CEO of a science-based company is to have empathy, understand users and put users prior to technology or science. Sometimes a scientist can, sometimes a scientist can't. In my case my co-founder is a chief science officer and now the chiefs technology officer so we have scientists but generally the CEO should have in mind very well the product, the user and the use case. Personally, I think science is extremely important. Deep technology is extremely important if you want to unleash really new innovation for people's life but this is not the end goal. The end goal is about user usage and if this person can get that it could definitely play that role. We don't need a sale guy. It's not about selling, it's about understanding your product, understanding your market, understanding your business model and then communicate that to people. Sometimes it can play that role or sometimes it's associated with someone that will have the responsibility of the product, the application, and in my case, again I'm not the scientist, I'm engineer and I'm owning the product, the marketing strategy. I have a chief science officer and I have a chief technology officer but obviously in that case the sale guy shouldn't be obsessed too much about only sales or product. It should be deeply committed to the scientific and the technological questions because the complex aspect when you start a company or a scientific discovery is you need to find a use case. Generally when you start a company you identify your need and then you build a solution but most of the time when it's about taking an innovation in the lab out to the consumer you are doing the opposite way. It's especially important to have someone which is looking at what can we really do and what can we build that will be really useful and just not nice to have for the users. I'm wondering though because we have research that is focused on delivering solutions like applied research and then we have basic research which is more about finding new things and really innovative thinking without having that target audience or market that you're trying to reach. How do these two kind of come together when it comes to science-based companies? Akram, you have probably been kind of in both. I think basic research is really the domain of academia and I think that's one of the problems today that I see at least is that people in academia are trying to do too much applied research without really understanding how entrepreneurship works how business works and so academics really in my opinion should stick and focus on basic research to make the discoveries as you mentioned that can then spin off and turn into companies and I don't think there's a formula there's obviously no formula to this and that's one of the beautiful things about being an entrepreneur and also one of the hardest things it really depends on the personality so if you're a founder who's very scientific and really loves the science you can still be the CEO as long as you can raise money and you can sell the vision and find the users and the product market fit as you mentioned and then there's also from the business side too that works as well that person can come and help the founder and be the CEO and build the company that way but I think in the ideal case you want a founder who understands the science can also sell the business and they're going to have the passion and the drive to grow it and so I think as long as they understand that basic science leave that in the university if you have a discovery you've got to quickly turn it into a viable business you've got to actually find a market or application for it don't fall in love with the discovery because at the end of the day it's survival to fit us out in the business world I'm saying that an academic should kind of decide already early in their career whether they want to go into starting a business or whether they want to stay in academia and continue their research one of the things that I've seen with my friends who have been through academia and then started companies is that sometimes the professor that they worked with will want half the equity in the business which is crazy, they have a full time job they're working in a university they're doing research they shouldn't take half your equity if you're a founder and you've discovered something and you're going to devote 100% of your time to build the business you should have the lion's share of the equity not your professor because he or she has their own day job and building a company is super hard you can't do two things I used to be a professor and when I started Matrix I realized really quickly that there's one or the other and I decided I'm going to put all my effort into Matrix and I left academia there's just no way you can do both at least I haven't found a person that could do both successfully I would say that not necessarily you can I totally agree that as a professor as a scientist it's hard to run in a full time company meanwhile full time become a professor but meanwhile as a professor at Stanford alumni there's a concept we talk about the scientist could consider become a pie shape talents so basically on one hand you still have focus on the academia for lots of professors at Stanford they have the track of the research that focusing on publish the top tier paper and focusing on the technology maybe you're going to be using the next 10 or 20 years investing into the future but they also have other research project based on the interest of the student kind of collaborate a lot with the industry cooperation like Apple sponsored or Facebook sponsored then they are focusing on the solution related with the true use case in the real life when the technology is ready there are always tech transfer office pattern office at university either professor choose to spin off the company finding someone from the industry to run the company instead of running it themselves that's very important all the tech transfer office in the university they're going to put together a team maybe student from the GSB from engineering department they put together this funding team but importantly I agree with him professor could not be the majority shareholder of the company if he's not full time running the company because from the investor perspective I'm investing not only the company but also the founder if the majority shareholder or decision maker of the company is a part time affiliate with the company I'm investing in my capital and my resources for the company I found more and more professors than for although the affiliate was like so many company recently I was talking with a professor a while side from Harvard he has more than 12 companies like almost of the billion dollar exit the way he work on it is not he was running it he has the company spin off maybe the professor only take less than 20 or 10% of the share meanwhile they have this very good group and the company that research group continue to do the research potentially affiliate with the startup, act as an R&D center for the startup, but they got the government funding, they got the NSF funding, meanwhile they published the top-tier paper. When the technology is ready for commercialization, they did exclusive licensing deal with the startup company. So that's a very good and healthy sustainable business model between the scientific research and startup. And also for those for the scientists or professor, they don't need to vary too much that had to make a early decision in my career whether I could only be a scientist or entrepreneur. They could still try out on the both way, but meanwhile has to try it out with the smart model and the smart partnership. Let me just add and I totally agree and let me just add that oftentimes when you're doing basic science and you make a discovery and the company gets started based on that discovery, you know nine times out of ten what you started with will end up changing into something totally different, right and so that's what I mean like you know the entrepreneur that's devoting most of their time you know they need to be incentivized to you know you know keep grinding and keep persevering because the initial technology is never going to be this you know what it looks like at the end right so... If I may ask you Hugo do you have an experience of this with dream that you have had science that you have had to kind of take to another direction at some point? So what happened at dream is we started with a scientific discovery and the two first years of the company we have been focused on the technological development. So we had this idea of stimulating the brain at night to enhance deep sleep but then to get that to the consumer it was mostly an engineering work so make EEG so the measurement of the brain activity available to the consumer so it was a technical question so we kept contact with scientists but during the two first years it was really focusing on generating and then when we went out with the first version of the product we started to have new scientific questions we are generating tons of data today we have one of the largest EEG repository in the history we have more than 600,000 nights of EEG so what do we do with that data what kind of knowledge can we can we do and so now we have 25 laboratories and hospitals all around the world working with us on these questions and so now we have a scientific director we have a scientific team and we have collaboration working on that so in our case and I think it could be that you know you have the scientific discovery then it's about implementation execution maybe the scientific funder is less relevant at the beginning but maybe it can gain back some weight in the future and then you know have maybe a full-time position later on in the history of the company yeah that's I'm also wondering in a company for example when when you Lou meet these companies and I know that for an investor the team is everything when you hear about the pitches and it's the people who really make it how much do the academic credentials play a role when starting or funding a science-based company is it also the amount of papers or the years you have behind you or is it some other characteristic that you're looking for when you see a prominent science-based company yeah so especially for the because my focus is basically deep tech and healthcare like industrial automation network technology most of this company I invested really required the founder has a strong technical background so for us when we evaluate a company not only funder is important there are no matter technical background scientific background is important too because one tricky part about doing science-based the startup is although yes technology could be disruptive to the industry but meanwhile if the founder does not have comprehensive or enough understanding of technology they may do something has a wrong timing or maybe just play with the concept for example recently we heard the news about this gene editing baby right and I feel for for people really really in this industry they know that the gene editing is fade far away from commercialization but the people of founder don't really have enough scientific background they will think okay this is something we need to try so from that perspective we even pray for founder really have a comprehensive understanding so they know which level which states of the technology took we use now and they could prepare for the future with more frontier technology but they know the time is now right and when we talk with the founder besides their their understanding of technology another important thing is as back to our questions is same as we said earlier also the other two found their mention their understanding about product product market fit for example we talk about artificial intelligence for the past few years right but AI is not a new thing AI was super hot back in 10 years ago in Silicon Valley and we have super awesome product at that time but how come we did not see any huge AI company right now it's because at that time they did not really find a very good product market fit the technology was kind of mature but technology application cost so pretty high market integration cost was high and the people that's not really see the need why we're using AI instead of like the existing solution so the timing was not right the partner market fit was not ready there's no window for the commercialization so now we see lots of the opportunity came out and another thing it was to have tons of data be generating every day which prepare for the AI application so that's one example that not only they have to understand technology they have to understand the market trend then they understand now is the right timing for us to pull this product into the market and the which industry to choose to start with is also important for example still with AI if you do lots of consumer-facing application I sure lots of people their experience with consumer-facing AI is AI is not smart at all right but now we see lots of application for AI in healthcare AI for industry automation truly show the full capability our advantage of AI so for founder it's also important that he could show me that why I choose this industry to start with why penetrate into this market first because we saw the potential for this technology to be go with the market to be mature along the way so that's not only that's a thing we also want to see from the founder and other than that we also want to see the founder has a right to understand of the leadership put together the good team because one thing I found very interesting with the technical background founder is for example founder was a scientist was a professor they thought okay I'm gonna make it happen I'm gonna work on the technology product all day long once I start a company but unfortunately once you become the CEO your full-time job in the first two years is fundraising recruiting and strategy nothing relate with the technology the first is the technology so whether the founder could find some co-founder either take the role as a CEO I'll take the role as a CTO to help on the product it's also very important yeah okay so it sounds like you need to have a great understanding of what you're getting at if you're going to be an entrepreneur as a scientist what kind of things do you think we need to bring academia and the business world especially the startup world closer together I think so I was at the University of Michigan and they actually did a phenomenal they had a great way of building an accelerator program within the university for spin-offs from from the laboratories I thought that was incredible the Michigan also was the first university before Stanford believe it or not to actually take some of the money from their their their fund and put it into startup companies based of based out of research from the university so that was really forward-looking and then the in the in the States we have government programs like the NSF National Science Foundation that I was actually started entrepreneurship type of courses to help seed professors to start their own companies to teach them about entrepreneurship that sort of thing so I think you know these types of things are really have been I think really helpful to help academics kind of transition into becoming entrepreneurs one last quick comment from Hugo on the matter yes I think it's really important my case the companies based in France as you might hear is my accent and in our country most of the research is funded by the government and grants from the government which means that the salary of a researcher is between 1500 and 2500 euros per month what I'd stand for you can get probably a salary around 10k and it's important to say that because if we want to keep the best doing research we need to put more resources and the government can't fund everything it's impossible right and we can see that right now so I believe that if we can bridge the academic world the research world and the industry world it would be perfect but right now we need more business people we need more people that are use of building companies working in laboratories so you have like specific division of the laboratories which are looking at potential collaborations and right now it doesn't work so I think it's it's it's really important because you know sometimes we can hear we need to build the next Silicon Valley for France or for Europe I think it's completely dumb we're not going to build the next Google but maybe we can build the next basics right because we're really good at aerospace in France so let's take that kind of problems but right now some researchers believes that you know entrepreneurs and companies sometimes can be evil because it's about money and you have people working in the laboratories for business which are not good at business and if you change that definitely it will be good because the success that you creates from the value the valuation of innovation in the lab can then fund the research and I think it's especially important okay thank you so much thank you thank you all of you thank you to our panelists thank you for a great discussion thank you we'll continue later on at the studio behind the stage