The Scientist Trying To Build A Company Will Fail. Unless She Does This.

You've got a brilliant PhD. You've published in top journals. You've had an insight that could change everything. Now you want to start a company.

And you're about to make the same mistake 90% of brilliant scientists make.

You're going to think like a scientist. Which is precisely the wrong mindset for building a company.

I recently talked with Christian Tidona, who founded BiomedX—an institute that sits at the intersection of academia and industry, deliberately combining the best of both worlds. What makes Christian interesting is that he's lived on both sides. He's got two hearts, he says. One of a scientist. One of an entrepreneur.

And what he's learned is that these two hearts want fundamentally different things.

The Translation Problem Nobody Wants To Admit

Here's the fundamental issue: Academia is really good at turning money into knowledge. Industry is really good at turning knowledge into money.

But these are not the same language. They're literally spoken backwards.

This is why most innovation in the life sciences gets trapped. A researcher at a university makes a breakthrough. It gets published. Maybe it gets cited. And then... nothing. It never becomes a product. It never helps anyone. It just sits there in the literature.

The gap isn't a knowledge gap. It's a translation gap.

Scientists are trained to be rigorous about uncertainty. That's appropriate for research. If you're not sure about something, you run more experiments. You publish your findings. You contribute to the collective knowledge.

But if you're trying to build a company, uncertainty is not your friend. Customers don't care about your confidence intervals. They care about: Does this solve my problem? Can you deliver it? Can I afford it?

Christian describes this beautifully: Academia rewards curiosity. Entrepreneurship rewards certainty.

A scientist will spend five years proving something works under controlled conditions. An entrepreneur will spend five months figuring out if anyone will pay for it.

Neither is right or wrong. They're just fundamentally different value systems.

Most scientists who try to become entrepreneurs fail because they don't realize they're operating in a different context that requires a different mindset.

The Sustainable Path Nobody Talks About

When Christian started BiomedX, he made an unusual choice. He didn't take venture capital.

This sounds insane for a startup. VC is supposed to be the fuel that powers innovation. It's what every ambitious founder is told to pursue.

But Christian realized something: Venture capital has a short-term perspective. It's all about exits. It's about hypergrowth. It's about generating returns on a specific timeline.

If you're a scientist building something real, that timeline creates the wrong incentives.

So instead, Christian built BiomedX on a sustainable, bootstrapped model. He partnered with Merck. They sponsored the first three projects at 4 million euros each. He reinvested the returns into more projects. The model became profitable. He never needed external capital.

This meant he could operate with different incentives. He didn't have to chase hockey-stick growth. He didn't have to pursue exits. He could build something that would last.

And what he built is fascinating: A model that brings the best scientists in the world to a single location for up to five years, where they work on real problems with real time and real resources.

The scientists get to stay focused. They don't have to chase grants. They don't have to teach. They can do deep work on challenging problems.

The host organization gets access to breakthrough thinking without the overhead of maintaining a traditional research lab.

It works because Christian understood the fundamental truth: Scientists and entrepreneurs want different things. The trick is not to try to make them the same. The trick is to create a structure where they can work together without destroying each other.

The Bootcamp That Breaks The Pattern

Here's where BiomedX gets really interesting. When selecting scientists for their programs, they don't just look for brilliance. They look for something else: the ability to grow by helping others.

This matters because most exceptional scientists have massive egos. They've been rewarded for being individually brilliant. They've published papers. They've beaten out thousands of other applicants for spots at top universities.

Then they get to BiomedX, and suddenly they have to work as part of a team with other brilliant people. And suddenly being individually brilliant isn't enough.

So Christian invented a bootcamp process that actually tests for this. Scientists submit proposals. The best ones are selected. Then they come together for five days. During those five days, they don't sleep for four nights.

Why? Because in four nights without sleep, you can't pretend to be collaborative. If you're a selfish asshole, it comes out. If you're someone who genuinely wants to help others succeed, that comes out too.

By the end of the bootcamp, Christian has identified who actually has the temperament to work in a team, and who's just pretending.

This is the opposite of how most recruiting works. Most hiring processes try to assess competence. Christian is assessing character. He's asking: Can this brilliant person actually work with other brilliant people toward a shared goal? Or will they spend five years protecting their intellectual territory and undermining the team?

The results speak for themselves. In 14 groups launched from BiomedX, none of the group leaders have left. None. Not because they're locked in by contracts. But because they've found something rare: A place where they can do their best work alongside people as committed as they are.

The Personality Type Question Nobody Asks

This is where Christian gets brutally honest, and it's not what people want to hear.

There are three types of people working in science: academics, industry types, and entrepreneurs.

An academic becomes a professor. They want the freedom to pursue curiosity-driven research. They want intellectual independence. They care about publication and prestige.

An industry type works for a big company. They want job security, clear structure, and a defined role. They care about solving problems that customers will actually pay for.

An entrepreneur starts their own thing. They want ownership. They accept the uncertainty and instability. They're willing to sacrifice security for the chance to build something.

These are not the same people. And here's what matters: You need to know which one you actually are. Not which one sounds better. Actually are.

If you're an academic who wants to be an entrepreneur, you're probably going to fail. Because the things that made you successful in academia (deep specialization, publication over commercialization, independence) are actually liabilities in entrepreneurship (you need to focus on customer problems, not intellectual problems; you need to commercialize faster than publish; you need to work with a team).

Christian's advice to young scientists is explicit: Figure out which type you are as early as possible. And then be honest about it. If you're genuinely an entrepreneur—not somebody who wants the prestige of it, but somebody who can actually handle the uncertainty and the pressure to commercialize—then pursue it. But know what you're signing up for.

Most scientists can't actually handle it. They think they can. But when it comes down to choosing between intellectual rigor and getting to market, or between publishing a paper and protecting your intellectual property, they choose differently than entrepreneurs do.

The Uncomfortable Bridge

The real opportunity for scientists isn't to try to become entrepreneurs. It's to find structures that let you remain a scientist while still creating impact.

BiomedX is one model. There are others. Research partnerships with companies. Licensing models. Consulting arrangements.

But the fundamental insight is this: Your strength as a scientist is your ability to think deeply about complex problems. Don't abandon that to chase venture funding and hockey-stick growth curves.

Find a context where deep scientific thinking is what creates value. There are more of those contexts than most scientists realize.

And if you do decide to become an entrepreneur? Be very honest about what you're actually willing to do. Are you willing to commercialize something that isn't perfect yet? Are you willing to take risks that a scientist would find reckless? Are you willing to prioritize revenue over intellectual rigor?

If the answers are yes—genuinely yes, not what you think you should say—then go for it. You'll probably be great.

If the answers are no? That's not a weakness. That's data. Listen to it.

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Want the Full Story?

If you want to hear directly from someone who's lived both the scientist and the entrepreneur path—who's built a model that honors both—listen to Yaniv Corem's full conversation with Christian Tidona on The School of Innovation podcast.

It's a conversation about what it actually takes to bridge the gap between knowledge and commercialization, and how to build institutions that work with human nature instead of against it.

Because here's the truth about entrepreneurial scientists: The best ones aren't the ones trying hardest to become entrepreneurs. They're the ones who figured out how to stay scientists while still changing the world.