Each year OTT helps launch high-quality start-up companies based on discoveries made by Emory faculty or staff. Over the past few months, OTT set out to interview a selection of the entrepreneurs and VCs we have worked with and pick their brains about what it takes to make a successful startup venture.
What was your biggest fear/apprehension going into starting your first company?
Ed Cannon (President & CEO of the Emory start-up NovAb): Thirty years ago, when I started, the only “rule” was “there are no rules,” which allowed us to make up the rules as needed. My biggest fear and anxiety then was recruiting talented scientists as I knew the technology was well-developed and the commercial opportunities were obvious. My business partner’s biggest fear on the other hand was obtaining adequate financing for the company. We were fortunate on both counts as Boston was, and continues to be, overflowing with scientific and technical talent. Local venture groups were likewise flush with cash from successes and looking for the next “Big Thing.” In fact Boston, like the Bay Area, was rich with all of the infrastructure needed to support the nascent biotech industry. There is no substitute for being at the right place, at the right time, and I certainly am grateful for that unplanned circumstance in my own career.
Michael Lee (Chairman & CEO of the Emory start-up Syntermed): For me it was a bit later in life with an established lifestyle so “personal financial uncertainty” was my biggest apprehension, not so much a fear. Whereas if I was 21 then I don’t think that would have been the case. Hard to loose what you don’t have!
Terence Walts (President & CEO of two Emory start-ups, Transfusion & Transplantation Technologies (“3Ti”) and Cambium Medical Technologies): The same fear/scare I still have and that probably all start-up entrepreneurs have; that is the fear of not being able to raise sufficient early-on and on-going capital to get the technology to break-even and/or an acquisition. The #1 need for any start-up is first and foremost, survival. Running out of money or negotiating new financing from a weak position is not fun. Fortunately that has not happened to me as of yet, but I think about it every day.
Daniel White (President & CEO of the joint Emory/Georgia Tech start-up Clearside Biomedical): Clearside Biomedical is my third start-up company. I have experienced the high of starting a company, full of dreams and vision, to the low of heartbreak and despair due to lack of funding and not attracting investors to your vision. The biggest fear is somewhere in between – to operate in a place where there is inadequate capital to fully breathe life into a vision and only have the wherewithal to pursue a smaller fraction of a great idea.