Top 8 lies by Technopreneurs/Scientists
May 21, 2006 by Bernard Leong
In short, in the spirit of Guy Kawasaki [1], I will compile the top eight lies from technopreneurs, i.e. the group of scientists and technologists involved in technology startups.
“One could not be a successful scientist without realising that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow minded and dull but also just stupid.”
- James D. Watson “The Double Helix”
The academic world has undergone a major transformation over the past twenty years with the rise of US. The days of having scientists hiding in their laboratories to create Frankensteins are over. Being both a scientist and an entrepreneur gives me an unique perspective on how the divide between the two worlds are like. Whenever I have friends or acquaintances discussing technology and business, here is how the conversation goes:
Friend: Scientists are living in their ivory towers. They don’t interface with the real world at all and they have no understanding what we go through in the private sector.
Me: Perhaps you are right about that. How do you think that scientists get their funds to do stem cell research or build the biggest accelerators?
Friend: They need to write grant proposals to get their funds.
Me: Who are the people do you think usually read these grant proposals?
Friend: The bureaucrats from (so and so government agencies)
Me: What’s the probability of these people having a PhD to evaluate these grants?
Friend: Very low.
Me: Between skin and prostrate cancer, which one do you think that the bureaucrats give us?
Friend: The prostrate cancer.
Me: Why so?
Friend: Because they have commercial applications and the big pharmaceutical companies and government agencies are interested.
You can imagine what happens next. In some sense, whenever there are people, there will be politics. To be honest, even for surviving in academia, you need your supervisor to be someone famous and be associated to good schools for future job prospects. Then you need to position your grant proposal to make it look fashionable to the rest of the world. So, we also need fundraising and marketing like an entrepreneur.
Recently, we witnessed a lot of scientific fraud incidents happening in US and Asia. Examples of scientific fraudincludes the famous Schon Scandal, the South Korean stem cell scandal (Hwang Woo Suk) and the China Han Xin chip scandal (Chen Jin). The rising expectation from investors and governments to match scientific breakthroughs with economic performances has created an impact to the scientific community. The rush to innovation triggers the decrease in quality of scientific work from the scientists.
Here is how my list goes:
- “With your cash, we will find the cure for cancer in the next five years.”:
If the scientist says this to you, it is likely that he is looking for research grant to complete his research. In some sense, there are two ways of looking at this scientist: one, he is innocent and naive to think that you are philanthropic or he does not understand what key performance indicators are. Most scientists don’t understand that investors want to put cash to get quick returns. They can sell hope to the investors, but whether the investors want to put money into it is another question. Of course, there are famous scientists who manage to get a lot of money to continue their search for the cure to cancer. They sustained because there are investors who are willing to risk ten to twenty years of funding waiting for their silver bullet.
- “My technology is/will be far more superior than the existing alternative ones.”: The scientist may not be lying about the technology. For example, say tomorrow, some group of scientists come up with a new file compression format which can compress video files better than avi, they will try to sell that to the entertainment companies. They will start to say that their technology is far superior than existing avi formats. What they forget to tell you, is usually the business model or how to get the industry to adopt their format as the de-facto standard.
- “If you are not interested about investing in my technology, I will licence it to Roche/Microsoft/Intel.”: Some people do try this strategy. To me, it’s calling bluff. I know of scientists who can arrogantly tell me that they have so and so big multi-national companies queueing up for their technologies. I usually start my timer to count the time lapse after the scientist’s claim. The technopreneurs usually end up at least a year without funding. If they are really that good technologies in the first place, the MNCs will gobble it without question.
- “I are forward looking enough to see that there will be a demand in this kind of technology.”: If you hear this from a scientist, I am prepared to assume that they are having crack. Most scientists do not realize that they have no business experience. Sometimes, they make the life of their business people very difficult by telling investors that they know the market. While I respect some scientists for being good at science, they lack an understanding of market forces and they exist.
- “We can finish the proof of concept in a year and get it to market quickly.”: I have a rule of thumb to this. If an innovation cannot be bring to market within six months, chances are that it is bound to fail. Science is a difficult enterprise, and it seldom turns out what we want to make it out to be. The process of getting to a breakthrough usually takes a lot of time. If you want to commercialize your technology, you must have at least the beta proof of concept done, otherwise, my theory is that it won’t succeed. The scientist is better off licensing the technology.
- “The results of the experiment shows that the technology still needs some time.”: This one is to tell the investors that their scientific hypotheses failed or their technological breakthrough did not succeed. If they are really stubborn people, which I know most scientists are, they will like to continue asking you to burn money on them.
- “My technology will be FDA/ISO approved”: Some scientists claim that their technology will be approved by some international organizations. When they tell you that they are in the process of patenting, you can query whether they have actually filed it. Here is something which you can use it as a rule of thumb. If someone claims that they have Generally Regarded As Safe substances approvals from Food and Drug Adminstration, you better go and check out with a google search. I have encountered dodgy claims when doing due dilligence on such technologies claimed by “credible” scientists.
- “My laboratory can specifically create this technology and hence commercialization will be automatic and simple”: Most scientists can prove their technology work in the laboratory, but they are not engineering oriented, i.e. they have no sense on how things can be mass produced.
Of course, at the end of the day, I always adovcate doing good science and technology are absolutely important. Once you have credible science, you can commercialize anything you want. But without that, it’s hard to create or build a successful business enterprise around it.
[1] Check out Guy Kawasaki’s “Top 10 lies” series in this post. Also check out the one by “The top 12 sins of Marketing Gurus (and their books)†by Uri Baruchin as well.Technorati Tags: Entrepreneurship, Singapore Entrepreneurs, Guy Kawasaki, Uri Baruchin, Marketing, Lies, Venture Capitalists, Scientists, Scientific fraud, Technopreneurs
About The Author
Bernard Leong - Co-Founder
Dr Bernard Leong is the co-founder of Chalkboard where he currently serves as the chief technology officer and is the architect behind the solution to help small and medium enterprises to market promotions. Formerly a partner at Thymos Capital where he does early stage investments, his portfolio and specialization includes online social networks, mobile-web applications and games that leads to iHipo being acquired and also Lunch Actually (Eteract) raising next round of financing. His accolades include the Young Professional of the Year Award for the Singapore Computer Society 2010 and Outstanding Young Alumni for National University of Singapore 2007. His expertise includes technology and social media. Currently, Bernard also serves as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence with INSEAD Business School and also teaches entrepreneurship in NTU.
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