SUMMARY | Maria Håkanson, Deputy Head Innovation at the Universität Zürich | University of Zurich, discussed with startup entrepreneurs at a panel at the Biointerfaces International Conference 2024 about career paths and roles in a start-up, market & regulatory, financing & acquisition and science & innovation. Following, she shares her key points:
This stayed with me after our #sciencetomarket panel discussion at the Biointerfaces International Conference 2024 last Friday: ➡ Deana Mohr-Haralampieva's story of being very intentional about building her team from day one. It takes some self-awareness to identify (and admit) your weaknesses and then use this knowledge to bring in people with complementary skills. For Deana it has been a recipe of success, over the years she has built a thriving team for MUVON Therapeutics AG with almost 20 people. ➡ Then Frank Bonnet’s story of – despite being a science startup – having found a way to start from a problem and not a solution. Seeing scientists’ burden in sorting zebra-fish egg made him dig into an engineering solution that’s now available for purchase from his startup Bionomous. ➡ And finally, Chris Steffi’s story of going full power with her early stage startup CompagOs where the secret sauce seem to be 1) A very competent and driven team bringing together engineering, science and business knowhow 2) The support of a professor with experience in spinning out technology from the university and 3) A fearlessness towards reaching out and listen to clinicians and KOLs early on. I wish all the best to the three founders and their startups and look forward to keep discussing the challenges and learnings made from moving ideas from science to market. Thank you Canet Acikgoz and Samantha Paoletti for the invitation to moderate this panel. I was happy to contribute within my mandate at the UZH Innovation Hub to support researchers to translate their research results from idea to a viable product. #uzhinnovation #startups
