Science in business: become an entrepreneur
Thinking about creating your own business? Here are a few start-up tips from Mathieu Sacrispeyre, founder of Anovra!
Mathieu Sacrispeyre, in his own words
Hello, I’m Mathieu, co-transformer. I created my business, Anovra, to help start-ups succeed and also help big companies address their innovation and transformation challenges. I really believe in a human-centred approach. Because we are all different, we need an adapted manner. Depending on the identified needs of the organisation, I combine different activities to inspire (e.g., keynotes and seminars), to give confidence (e.g., training sessions), to coach/mentor intra-entrepreneurs or to advise (e.g., strategy, develop, manage innovation). Formerly, as the CEO of Intesens, a start-up, I gained a very intense and useful experience: several national start-up prize winner in France, strategic partner of C-level in leading corporates (SNCF, EDF, Oracle, & IBM), in one year we doubled both sales and the team up to 25 people. Originally, a CS Engineer combined with a master’s degree in Innovation Strategy & Management, I have experienced a mindset change from tech/science-driven to usage- and valuedriven.
FIVE TIPS TO BECOME A SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEUR
Tip1: Human is key in start-up success, so listen to yourself and learn continuously.
Tip2: Still motivated? Give entrepreneurship a try, you’ll learn a lot in any case!
Tip3: For example, a good balance between start-up methods such as Lean Startup (limited for disruptive innovations) and more conventional approaches using top-down strategic approaches (Blue Ocean).
Tip4: Define, have in mind and keep iterating on your vision and strategy:
■ The vision: What do I want to bring to the world and to my customers with this company? The vision should drive your actions.
□ In start-ups, we are often speaking of a close concept: the problem you want to solve.
■ Your strategy: What’s the best way to achieve your vision? IP company, markets and market access, partners etc.?
■ Your offer: identify the first draft according to your strategy and vision
■ The above steps are a similar approach of the Why (vision), How (strategy), What (offer) of Simon Sinek.
Tip5: Adopt a user-centric mindset:
■ Be focused on the users’ needs and point of view: What is their need? What value will my product or my service bring to customers? How much can they pay for it to still be of value?
■ Science and technologies are fascinating but “only” solutions to problems users are facing. Having the best technology, pattern, invention or scientific method is an important asset, a good start but not enough to create a company success!
YOUR ASSETS AS A SCIENTIST
Scientists have a lot of skills, yet it may require some time to acquire a business and management mindset.
Beyond that, there are several parameters to consider:
■ Who are you? What do you like/dislike? Are you interested in business or mainly in science?
■ What’s your motivation to create a business? How do you feel about confidence and fears about creating a business?
■ What goals do you want to reach with your company? Personal? Financial?
■ What is the maturity of the research work used to create the company?
Depending on your answers, you may think and feel whether you prefer to create an organisation alone or with a partner who may complete your skills. Indeed, business and management are probably the two main fields in which a scientist may, usually at the beginning, lack skills to run a successful company. Companies created by complementary partners are more often successful when there is a good fit between them. However, you can still start, see how it goes, how you feel, increase the maturity (shorter time to market) of your offer and eventually look for a partner, if needed.