Supporting Scientists as Startup Founders with Matt Krisiloff

In this week's episode, Matt Krisiloff, CEO of Conception, a company working to turn pluripotent stem cells into viable human eggs, talks about SciFounders, which he started with partners Lucas Harrington and Alexander Schubert to help technical founders launch companies. Topics discussed include:

- Why Scifounders decided to focus on technical founders

- Why Matt believes it's a good time for scientists in industry to start companies (link to Matt's blog post below) and also, in Matt's experience, what have been the positives and areas for development he's noticed when working with founders coming from academia

- Steps scientists affiliated with a universities who are thinking about starting their first company could take to better inform and position themselves to succeed as a founder

- SciFounder's mentoring program for idea-stage founders and how scientists can benefit from funding and advice through the program

- Why the type of startup founder who might be a good fit for SciFounders is someone who's "able to communicate clearly with the technical team" and the importance of being an effective communicator both with the technical team and also with external stakeholders unfamiliar with the team's technology, such as potential funders, for example

- Some of the critical factors Matt has noticed that successful startups seem to share and fatal flaws that tend to doom startups

- What Matt sees over the horizon, in terms of business opportunities for technical founders, emerging trends, and potential tripwires to for scientist founders to avoid

Resources mentioned in the episode

Matt's blog post, It's a Good Time for Industry Scientists to Start Startups, November 9, 2022