Scipreneurs/7-day-intro/2 - find out what you do

I hope yesterday you had time to think about your reasons to becoming an entrepreneur.

I will share a little secret, playing the devil's advocate, I wrote some answers to the reasons here: Reasons to start a company. It's not to demoralize you, just to show you there is no single, perfect and unique path.

The Idea

If you want to become an entrepreneur, you need more than willingness, you need an idea. And today, we are going to focus on how to find them, validate them, and make them grow.

One of the unique positions of scientists is that they can gauge the interest in their research by the number of times papers are cited, by the amount of people that stop by a poster, or by the attention they receive in conferences.

Scientists are always exposing their ideas to the world, and they can leverage that.

If you don't have a clear idea of what would you like to do, yet, I suggest you pay attention to what you have already done.

Let me tell you a story.

Physicists (like myself) are used to building tools for themselves. From microscopes to particle accelerators. In many cases, we develop new tools, algorithms, or entire systems. This was exactly how I started my path.

Once I realized what I had done in my lab was useful for other people, I started trying to replicate it and sell it.

If you don't have an idea yet, think about what you have done in the past year. What have you become good at doing. It may be a new synthesis, perhaps you got extremely talented with some analytical tool in the lab.

What are you good at

With that idea in mind, describe what you do. Imagine you already have a company running, what would that company be doing. Are you offering services? Have you developed the cure for a disease? Are you building instruments?

I have seen many entrepreneurs that get straight into doing, even if they haven't really defined what doing means.

Understanding how you are going to get your innovative ideas to the people that care about them will allow you to understand the type of company you will become.

But now I am curious to know what is it that you are building! If you feel like it, drop me a line or two telling me about your ideas.