This is Ale's first article in his newsletter 'Scientists First Daily (maybe)'. Click to subscribe to the LinkedIn newsletter here.
I am a venture operator: for 10 years I have had the privilege of working with some extraordinary founders at the stage of conception which has led to the formation of some beautiful (aka high-performance) scientist-led ventures across all fields of science including nuclear fusion, protein expression and neuromorphic computing. I did not train as a scientist or at a corporate and in fact, I am surprised I had enough academic discipline to complete law school and qualify as an attorney. These skills have over time become foundations of my vocation: advocating for the unrepresented, and promoting talent.
Five years ago I realized scientists were unrepresented. With Dee (Devika Thapar), we started teaching business skills to academic researchers so they could remain in control of their research and have the tools to thrive outside academia. Over 25 career departments of the leading universities in the world chose us as official suppliers and to this day we enjoy some beautiful relationships with the dedicated staff there. Scientists who trained with us have gone on to build some of the best science-based companies in the world, joined startups or themselves have become research team leaders who are evolving the legacy culture of academia to get science unlocked for good.
We also started intervening when greedy commercialization departments of universities (aka TTOs) and professors were getting in the way of scientists who were looking to build ventures based on their research and know-how: we tackled each negotiation alongside the founders and in the process flipped their spinout processes. A playbook that has allowed our founders to secure licensing terms that are 90% cheaper than the national average (2.5% vs 25%) and these terms have become precedents that the rest of the ecosystem can refer to as a baseline.
News of our work and the dissatisfaction with the culture of TTOs traveled to the highest level of a leading government and this time two years ago we were asked to be a “dissenting” voice on an advisory board for a Spinout Review (my account on the outcome here) mandated to change the status quo of science commercialization in academia. This exercise cemented two things:
The birth of a lobby of universities and legacy investors is determined to continue protecting the commercial interest over that of the personal development of researchers.
Our conviction is that prioritizing universities’ interests over that of scientists is not in the interest of science and tax-payers and on the need to bring scientists together at scale to develop a novel infrastructure to allow them to express their potential at best.
A global community of scientists who are winning at life was born through all of this workaround training, negotiation, and advocacy. The tagline for all the events (and merch): Scientists First! There are 8 million researchers in the world and we are locked in on empowering all aligned researchers in the world. This time last year we started a humongous process of open-sourcing all of the knowledge, materials, playbooks, and tools that we developed for scientists and as of December 2024 Sandbox is live for scientists who are exploring entrepreneurship, a career change or want to meet a community of solution-minded scientists with whom to explore novel ideas.
As a venture builder, investor, and policy advisor I realize that I now find myself at a vantage point of view to observe what is happening in the world of science, and by offering a take I look forward to continuing learning about new issues and solving them with you.
As ever, Scientists First!
Ale
Wilbe resources for entrepreneurial scientists to get science unlocked:
venture + career resources and community: Sandbox
prep for your first round: Bootcamp
pitch for funding: Wilbe.Capital
help with finding a lab: Wilbe Labs
This is Ale's first article in his newsletter 'Scientists First Daily (maybe)'. Click to subscribe to the LinkedIn newsletter here.
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