Debunking 10 Myths about Working at a Startup as a Scientist

I received a few comments on the latest startup busyness article about the fact that working all the time at a startup is just a myth so I decided to put together more myths, from the perspective of a scientist or engineer working in a deep tech startup.

Myth #1: You’ll get to work on strategy with the founders

Startups need doers, not strategy consultants. While strategy sounds fancy and appealing to many people, everyone’s main responsibility is execution (aka getting things done). Over time, you might get involved in higher-level decisions (especially if you learn about venture capital) but this is not a given, especially as newcomers.

Myth #2: You have to be a rockstar scientist

The most brilliant scientists in the world are not joining startups. They are busy publishing papers to become professors or working at a big company that pays double the salary.

And this is a good thing because startups usually need different skill sets.

Scientists who work at startups are rarely the best in their fields. Instead, they usually come from diverse backgrounds and enjoy the business side of scientific discovery.

What sets them apart is the willingness to learn and teach themselves whatever is needed, even if it does not perfectly fit with their previous experience.

Myth #3: You will be solving new challenges every day

Early-stage startups should only prioritize a couple of things - for example, getting to a First-In-Human trial or a working prototype.

This usually means becoming an expert in a specific topic and skipping everything else that is a distraction. There are usually a few big important challenges between you and that outcome (even if it takes years). Everything else is noise.

Myth #4: You’ll never put to use all those years in academia

The truth is that unless you become a professor or a staff scientist in a research department, you are never going to use all that knowledge anyway. Even if you’ve been told otherwise, many of the technical things you learned are not useful in a company and holding up to them is a classic sunk cost bias.

Myth #5: Just work on something you’re passionate about and you’ll build a great career

This is very common in health & bio startups where working on new drugs or innovative treatments creates the illusion that just doing good leads to success. On top of that, it does not help that countless CEOs use this technique to attract talent motivated by something more than money.

In reality, nobody becomes successful just for working on something that sounds useful to society. The only way any company (and the people working there) become successful is by solving a problem other people have and capturing some of the value they create. There are countless examples of successful companies that are arguably not improving society but are still extremely valuable.

Most of the people you hear talking about passion while being driven by creating a better world since the beginning came up with that narrative after achieving success (it makes for a heck of a story!).

Myth #6: You will spend all your time in the lab

After many years working on a bench, you might believe that joining a startup means working in the lab but on different topics and in a younger environment. If you end up spending all your days in the lab, there is probably something wrong with the company.

As someone with deep technical expertise, your role is to bridge the gap to the next milestones, looking beyond the individual experiments. In other words, you have to become a bit of a generalist.

Myth #7: stock options are your ticket to get rich

After hearing stories about the Facebook painter who made $200M or the Google chef who joined as employee #56 and made millions at the IPO thanks to stock options, it’s easy to believe that it could happen to you too.

In reality, stock options are vested over years and if you leave too early or don’t have the means to exercise them on time, you might not get anything. Not to mention that the probabilities of financial success are stacked against you.
The bottom line is that there are easier and faster ways to get rich.

Myth #8: You won’t be able to go back to a big company

If after working at a startup, you realize that a big company might be best for you, you will not be at a disadvantage. Nowadays more and more large companies are looking for people with an entrepreneurial spirit and the best way to show that is with real startup experience.

It’s not unlikely that you’ll get a bigger role within the organization (compared to someone with the same years of experience who only worked there) where you’ll get to make the most out of your breath of startup knowledge.

Myth #9: You will have fast career growth

Without a formal career progression, startup titles do not always reflect one’s growth. It goes both ways: there are “Heads of Departments” who got that title because there was nobody else (and because the CEO probably doesn’t think much of it) while other people with the same title are so brilliant that they deliver as much as you would expect from a small team.
All that matters is your work and what you know how to do.

Myth #10: Startups are a risky choice for scientists

There is no doubt that startups cannot guarantee you financial stability but with countless layoffs happening across the industry, life as a scientist in a big pharma is not much better these days.

I’m not here to convince you that joining a startup as a scientist or engineer is the best job ever. It’s not an easy way to financial freedom or career success but if you’re the right type of person, it can be one of the most rewarding environments to work in.

If you enjoyed this issue, share it with a scientist who has questions about startups.

This week's top scientific reads

1. Antibody Patterns in Multiple Sclerosis (Nature Medicine)

2. Diamond Dust as a Novel MRI Contrast Agent (Advanced Materials)

3. World's First AI-Generated Gene Editor (Businesswire)

4. Microcoil Arrays for Neural Stimulation (JVSTB)

5. The Future of RNAi Therapeutics (Nature Reviews)

Read the highlights of these articles here.

Latest European funding rounds in health & bio

• Cultimate Foods raised €2.3M to develop their alternative fat ingredient used in plant-based meat products 🇩🇪

• Roclub raised €4M for its IoT platform that connects medical equipment to skilled technicians for remote exams 🇩🇪

• Owlstone Medical closed a €7.6M round (€5.8M in equity & €1.8M as grants) for their breath-based diagnostic test for early disease detection 🇬🇧

• Neurocare raised €16M for their mental health digital platform that allows physicians to provide personalized treatments to patients 🇩🇪

• Locate Bio raised €8.6M to develop next-generation products for surgeons who are treating patients with musculoskeletal conditions 🇬🇧

• Flindr Therapeutics raised €20M to develop precision cancer treatments 🇳🇱

• Edonia closed a €2M pre-seed round to develop plant-based meat ingredients using microalgae 🇫🇷 

• Klineo raised €2M to speed up access to cancer clinical trials 🇫🇷

• Qureight raised €7.5M for its clinical trial imaging analysis and curation platform 🇬🇧

• Prescriby raised €2M for its platform to manage addictive medications 🇮🇸

• Pixacare raised €3M to develop a medical device that automates the monitoring of wound healing 🇫🇷

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