I’ve always been a person that loves to explore new ideas, especially if they are of my own making.
While at graduate school, I was fortunate enough to have an academic advisor that allowed me to freely explore different projects. Furthermore, when I wanted to take business classes, he let me do so as well.
As I was making progress in my research projects, my advisor decided that it was time for us to intellectually protect the results of my work. At the time, I was very happy with the idea of having a patent with my name on it. My advisor was kind enough to let me get involved in the process. This meant that I had to talk to lawyers and personnel at the university’s office of technology commercialization.
I learned that for filing a patent as graduate student, I had to assign my discoveries to the university for the amount of $1, which it didn’t bothered me at all since I had a full scholarship. I felt it was my turn to give back to the university.
As my business classes went on, I started to consume a lot of literature regarding startups as well as reading biographies about entrepreneurs. I started to attend seminars on campus about entrepreneurship and innovation as well as workshops on small businesses held outside the university and organized by SCORE. I began to notice a strong entrepreneurial desire within me, dreaming about creating my own agricultural-biotech company.
One day, I received an email from the office of research commercialization announcing that a representative from a nearby technology incubator was giving a talk on campus to promote their grant application process for proposals regarding proof-of-concept of technologies derived from academic research with the aim of commercializing them through formation of startup companies. I was excited about it. I attended the seminar eager to learn more about it, to know about the application process. I patiently waited until the end of the talk, and asked the speaker about my eligibility to apply as a graduate student. I was disheartened when I learned that the program was intended only for faculty and that graduate students weren’t accepted. I run back to the laboratory and asked my advisor if he wanted to start a business with me so that we could apply to the program. He replied instead that at 62 years old he had no intention to do such thing.
I decided then to ask the office of technology commercialization at my university about the possibility of licensing my work to get started under my own initiative. Unfortunately, I wasn’t successful in convincing them. It was clear I had to find a way to get started outside the university in a totally unrelated project. It did not mater much though because I had new ideas.
Time later and with financial help obtained from leasing an asset inherited from my mother back in my home country, I paid my subscription to a community laboratory located in Brooklyn, NYC. At the same time, I started to grow plants in the backyard of my rented apartment. Soon I had my own breeding project going. I also sold my car and used the money to buy from eBay a second-hand plant growth camber that I installed in the kitchen of my apartment. I biked to the lab at university every morning since then. During weekends I went to the lab in Brooklyn.
Soon thereafter I’ve finished working on my PhD project, it was time to fully dedicate to my own endeavors. My thinking was that regardless of how hard I may work at the university, I would never own a piece of an academic institution. However, I could own a piece of a startup company, the one I was planning to create.
And that’s what I did.
How did it happen?
As I was working on my sorghum plants at the backyard of my rented apartment, it happened that one afternoon, the owner of the home-improvement company responsible for the renovation of my bathroom stopped by. He saw me working and asked about what I was doing. We started talking and soon found out that he was interested in funding my idea. This person ended up investing $210,000 seed capital to help me get started!
In a period of ten months I was able to get accepted in two technology incubators: one to run experiments in the laboratory, the other to grow my plants in the greenhouse and perform breeding activities. In addition, I was able to rent arable land from a local farmer in order to grow the crop in large scale during the summer.
Along the way, I came up with an idea for developing software that could visualize science content from research papers. I was able to dedicate part of the seed capital obtained for sorghum to hire a developer and start implementing on it. It took us about 8 months of dedicated work to develop a minimal viable product and bring it to market. We named it QiWord (https://qiword.co).
Four months after launch, I was able to pitch venture capital funding to grow QiWord into a stand-alone startup company. I could not be more excited about it!
What did I learn from this?
First, I understood what was that I wanted, and I took actionable steps to make it happen.
It wasn’t without risks though. I left graduate school without a formal job, which means I no longer had my fellowship to live upon. I had the privilege of having a wife that understood me at that moment, supporting me all along the way, knowing that I would rely on her income until I could figure things out.
Second, I embraced opportunity.
When the owner of a home improvement company presented himself as a potential investor, I was humble enough to recognize there was an opportunity, and I took it. Even though I knew this person was far from being a sophisticated investor, the important thing was that enabled me to show what I could do.
Third, I was bold and ambitious.
During my first months as a tenant of the incubator, I had the wonderful opportunity to pitch the software product to several investors in a single day. I pitched a great vision and I was passionate about it.