Academia to Entrepreneur: How and Why to Leave Academia Behind

This is the story of my career as I transitioned from academia to biotech to the tech startup Mendeley. The slides are designed mostly just to anchor key concepts from my talk, so they're not as useful without the accompanying audio, but the main points do come across.

Transcript

1. Academic to Entrepreneur: Why and how to leave academia behind William Gunn, Ph.D. Head of Academic Outreach Mendeley william.gunn@mendeley.com twitter: @mrgunn
3. How many of you currently have tenure-track faculty as your top choice?
4. My story
5. In academia
6. The advice I got • Good: Pick a stable, well-funded lab where people graduate on time • Good: Diversify project risk • Bad: Keep your head down, work hard, and it’ll all work out
7. 1. Seek advice from the people who can give it Lessons
8. The first transition: Grad school to Biotech
9. I was part of something!
10. It was a little isolating
12. Csikszentmihalyi, M. Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. (1991)
13. 1. Seek advice from the people who can give it 2. Know Thyself Lessons
14. The second transition: Biotech to tech startup
15. A desire to make things better
16. Early Adopter
17. Achievements • OA policy advocacy successes • a tool that doesn’t suck
18. Instrumenting the Research Workflow Search Read Annotate Organize Write Import
19. The workflow starts with finding research You can also: l Add existing EndNote/BibTeX/RIS databases l Sync with other reference management webapps l Use Mendeley Web Importer to add from online databases l Add from the Mendeley Research Catalog http://www.mendeley.com/blog/tipstricks/7-ways-to-add-documents-to-mendeley/
20. The workflow starts with finding research http://www.mendeley.com/import/
21. The workflow starts with finding research http://www.mendeley.com/blog/tipstricks/7-ways-to-add-documents-to-mendeley/
22. Set up and manage your reference groups Add tags & notes and edit document details Library showing all your documents (citation or table view) Filter your papers by authors, keywords, tags, or publications Step 2: Organization in Mendeley Desktop
23. Citing in Word & Open Office Click on “Insert Citation” in Word
24. Citing in Word & Open Office Citation will show up based on selected style Cite into Google documents or other editors by copy & paste Generate a bibliography in one click!
25. ..and aggregates research data in the cloud Mendeley extracts research data.. Mendeley helps researchers work smarter
26. Aggregate data enables social discovery in real time
27. http://swets.com/mendeley
28. ..helps researchers work smarter ..makes science more collaborative and transparent ..is creating the world’s largest open research database Tools of scientific discovery Mendeley..
29. Network of 1,000 Advisors at the world’s top universities, spreading the word at their institutions http://www.mendeley.com/advisors/
30. 1. Seek advice from the people who can give it 2. Know Thyself 3. Look Beyond the Surface Lessons
31. Forget what you know about jobs outside of academia.
32. BLOG!
34. Stay • What do you want to do? • Will you find "Flow"? • Realistic impression? • Supportive network? • Are you young?
35. Go • Frustrated by lack of impact? • Like to write? • Want to influence policy? • Are you too charismatic?
37. tinynazispiders.spreadshirt.co.uk
38. Network!
39. Not just standing around talking to people
40. 1. Seek advice from the people who can give it 2. Know Thyself 3. Look Beyond the Surface 4. Do Interesting Things Lessons
41. Such as blog
42. FINDING OPPORTUNITIES http://blogs.nature.com/soapboxscience /tag/transitions
43. Reaching Out!
44. In your department • Be a speaker, symposia, conference organizer or session chair • Your local Biotech Club • MassBio • Your local Postdoc Association
45. MAKING THE TRANSITION •Goals •Mindset •Time management
46. Grants vs. Sales
47. Time pressure
48. Teamwork vs. solo research
51. 1. Seek advice from the people who can give it 2. Know Thyself 3. Look Beyond the Surface 4. Do Interesting Things 5. Communication is Everything Lessons
53. www.mendeley.com