The Venture Professor Track

Spending time building companies in a university takes academics off the Professor track.

There is no path to become a "Venture Professor". The default career pipeline is to publish and academics (in Australia at least) are not rewarded for entrepreneurial activity. So a year out might be seen as a year BACK and, even when academics get over that, they will be weighed as a poor academic and struggle on the professor track if they are spending time entrepreneurially instead of publishing.

 

I propose a new career pathway that is recognised and rewarded. A Venture Professor is a senior, highly regarded academic who stays in the institution and has a focused output on company spin outs and creation over publishing. Like a venture investor is a company builder operating across a portfolio rather than a single spin out, a venture professor is an academic who operates across a portfolio. Like a some of the well known examples in the US, these professors will have a small amount of equity in tens of companies that they have incubated in the university. 

So what is the track to get there? Well, it begins with a Venture Fellowship where post docs can do a 1 year fellowship. This is a deep immersion into creating companies from science. There is specific training in company creation and mindset through residencies in VC firms. There is time in the most 'agile' of labs in research orgs that are already working dynamically with external innovators and adapting as they go. 

The objective is to incubate a science leader who is passionate about building impact through companies and spin outs.  These people might be our 'Founders' in company creation projects for that first year. Then we would be more focused on hiring chief scientists into the companies.

I have discussed this with a few of the more entrepreneurial scientists I know and they have liked the idea. 

The trick will be to make sure that the university culture does not repel them when they come back enthusiastic about this approach.

This pathway might internalise an incubation engine that creates customers, employers and inspiration for the university.

WDYT? How do we build on this idea, and who wants to try it?

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I'm a Partner at Main Sequence, a VC purpose-built to create global companies from scientific ideas with the inventors who imagine them. I build-out-loud here: https://philmorle.substack.com