The very first step we took was filing our invention disclosure. From there, we became familiar with the people who'd be working with us from the innovation institute. At that point, there was some grant writing. Things that we're familiar with in the academic world, but that was when we started to look at participation in the Coulter Program. I took the Benchtop to bedside course. Lots of things from there. Pitch competitions and meetings with investors, and really just welcoming every opportunity that came along. So the early steps are kind of just familiarizing yourself with what those things are. And then later on, you start to actually participate in them and eventually reach a point where you just know what needs to be done a bit more rather than having to kind of refer to the manual every time. More recently, what we've done a lot of is working with lawyers. So when you want to form a startup company, you need representation. You also need personnel. And so we have been interviewing people who would like to work in our startup company. That's actually been one of the most difficult things. We also take meetings very regularly with potential investors or potential licensees. Anyone who has an interest in this, sometimes it can be frustrating. Because it feels like I spend all my days talking about the same thing. You're introducing the technology to so many different people over and over and over and that can get a little bit rote, but I will say that, that's the only way that this gets done. You have to tell a lot of people about what you're doing and where it becomes very satisfying is when I go somewhere, and people know about the technology before I start talking about it. And they say, you're the one doing that and I like that, because it means that word is getting around. So I'm doing my job, it's working. So always, always, always taking lots of phone calls and meetings with interested parties. And with the formation of the startup company talking to lawyers, talking to people who might work in the company, all of those things are incredibly important. First, we need to incorporate our company. We need to spin out the company. We need to option the license for the technology, then exercise the option and there's no set timeline for this, because there's lots of things happening all at once. We need to hire people. We need to kind of execute all of those steps that I'm working on now and continue talking to investors. So of course, the most obvious and biggest step in the future is raising money. Nothing happens without fundraising. And so that is something that needs to happen, nothing else can happen without it. Once we have some money, then the steps I could tell you would be way more straightforward. But the truth is without that money, none of it happened. So you have GLP testing, GMP manufacturing. You file your IND, you do all of that stuff. You can look that up in any book, but the first chapter the the prologue is go out and get a bunch of money or else you cannot do any of those steps. Early on, the biggest thing I learned was that I can do it. So I think that initially, I thought I will do it, because I felt like maybe I had to. But then over time, I learned that I actually can do it and it's amazing that I have a PhD. I have my own lab. So to an outsider, of course, you can do this. All you're doing is selling the thing you made. But to me and I think to most academics, it's not something that we think is within our capabilities. And so learning to speak that language, learning that there is a different language that you have to speak. These are all things that I had to learn. And oftentimes, I learned the hard way. Another really important lesson for me was that people who present themselves or who are presented as experts, they often have a lot of great information. But you have to accept that even the most accomplished serial entrepreneur has maybe done it four or five times. In the academic world, in the research world, that's what we call not statistically significant. So there's just not enough data points for them to say for sure, this is what you must do. So you can take what they're saying and kind of fold it in to your understanding of your project, but it took me a really long time to realize that some of the stuff that these experts were telling me was not relevant or not appropriate for what we were doing. And so I had to kind of put a filter on things in the right way. So that was a big lesson for me. My hopes for the future of this project are that it gets commercialized. My biggest hope is that it gets into the hands of the patients or clinicians, whatever the final form is. That it is something that works and can be used. That would be the fulfillment of every reason why I got into this career in the first place and I would be ecstatic for that to happen. But realistically speaking, that's a long way away. And so many things can happen on the way that may not make that a reality. But I think that to a lesser extend, another hope that I have that it's much more realistic is that I will continue to learn about entrepreneurship and I'll continue to exercise that in my academic career. And that my next technology will not share the same mistake as this one, maybe make some new ones. But that all kind of continue this process and not let this be a fluke, and actually establish myself and my research as translational and commercializable. So that's probably my most realistic hope and think that it's all to me, it's the best you can ask for when you start this process. It's for either of those things to happen, because you have either the chance to really help people or to really help yourself and your research and the students you come into contact with. So it really doesn't get any better than that. My advice to someone who's just starting out in this is to take it one step at a time. When I was writing my thesis, I had a big sign that said, how do you even an elephant one bite at the time? This is the same idea. So you'll be overwhelm if you try look at everything all at once, but just take one step at the time. The other piece of advice I would give which is advice that was given to me by someone who went from academia to startup company who is now very successful is that you have to just stop what you're doing and say, no one can do this, but me. It's not even saying I can do this, it's saying, I have to be the one to do this. And so that swagger, that confidence was not something that I had. But my advice to everyone would be to figure out where you can find that and use it, because that's going to make you successful. Not necessarily only a commercializing, but you'll be a better speaker. You'll be a better writer. You'll do everything better, because you'll have this ability to recognize that you have the power to make it all happen. Not to sound too corny but you have to kind of forget about that there's a business world and a science world. You have to just willing to be the one at the interface and to do it all, and to recognize that you're the one who is best suited to do it. So that would be my advice is to just suck it up and be the one who does it.
