One aspect that makes scipreneurship different from other forms of entrepreneurship is the role of the academic founder.

Startups always start with founders who, sooner or later, jump full-time into the new venture, and become crucial aspects of the early stages of growth.

On the other hand, spinouts from universities and research centers normally revolve around multi-year projects that were started by senior scientists. In almost every case, a PI has very little incentive to join a startup, and it's also healthy that they don't.

The most likely scenario is that a postdoc, PhD, or master's student will take the lead and will become a founder in the more traditional sense. However, the role of the person who maintains their academic position can be crucial in the early stages of a new venture.

To create a bit of a distinction that gives proper recognition of the roles, the idea of the academic founder next to that of the founder is very useful.

A PI (principal investigator: can be a professor or any other type of permanent role in a research institution) gives continuity to projects. They are the ones that have the largest exposure in conferences, they deeply know their fields. PIs are the ones that have the largest chance of identifying commercial opportunities if they look for them.

Even if a PhD or postdoc is the one with the drive to valorize research, the PI is the one that can enable them. PIs are in the position of applying for grants that would allow them to extend contracts, and they know the system and how much boundaries can be moved around. There are many ways for a senior scientist to support scipreneurship without jumping out of their career.

PIs can be enablers of the tech-transfer process, ensuring that they give enough recognition to the people actually taking the risk.

Understanding that the academic founder can be crucial for the success of the startup, but that they don't have the aspiration of becoming an entrepreneur, is fundamental to split responsibilities and recognition. For example, a topic that is always contentious is the splitting of shares between founders. It's a topic that can easily be disregarded, but that drags important consequences later on.

In my perspective, an academic founder should have close to zero shares in a new company. Shares should be allocated to the people taking the risk and as a recognition of future involvement, not of past achievements. Many professors with whom I've discussed this topic tend to disagree with me, while every single founder with whom I discussed complained about how many shares professors took.

Ideas are easy to come by, but execution is what makes or breaks a startup.

Shares are one way of receiving money if the startup is successful. If becoming rich is the underlying motivation of the PI, they should seriously consider a career change, or they could negotiate better licensing terms around their patents.

Shares also allow one to retain control of a company. However, it makes no sense to give control to someone whose primary interest should be to preserve their scientific integrity. Moreover, leaving control to someone who will not be fully involved in the startup can only create drag later on.

Finally, shares are a fundamental way of allocating ownership to the process, not to the ideas. PI's names will be linked to the company, the techniques, and the products regardless of the number of shares. If you think about any spinout company you know and the professor behind it, you have no way of telling how (if any) shares they still hold.

Once we start normalizing the role of the academic founder we'll ease out the discussions that arise once companies mature.

It can also serve as a way of keeping conflicts of interest at bay. After all, what would be the interest of a scientist to develop cheaper, faster, better, alternatives to what their own company sells or to find the limits of the technique.

Academic founders need to be recognized. They are enablers, and a big part of the chances of success depend on them.

But academic founders should not overstate their value when it comes to company creation.