Ten Simple Rules for Starting a Company

Abstract

Many faculty, staff, and students at academic institutions think about starting companies at some point in their careers. As academic funding models change, and how academia views entrepreneurial activity changes, starting companies is likely to happen more frequently. Hence, it is worth considering Ten Simple Rules to contemplate when starting a company while in academia. There is a wealth of general information out there to help you, but that information is not aimed specifically towards computational biologists. What follows is a hybrid that is intended as a general quick review for anyone, intermingled with some specific advice for computational biologists. By way of experience, we should say we have been involved in starting several companies: both in the biomedical sciences, dealing with biological software, computational biology services, and currently SciVee Inc. (http://www.scivee.tv) distributing scientific rich media, and outside it, ranging from the distribution of independent films, to a socially oriented dining club aimed at supporting local businesses, to a business supplying art quality photographic prints. None have been a great financial success, but all have been immense fun, an opportunity to meet interesting people, and an opportunity to think quite differently than when doing scientific research. Read that as a personal endorsement to go for it, even if starting a company is not yet a well-formed idea, and even though, as you will see below, the rules themselves might be cautionary and off-putting.