Could your PhD be the best place to start a hardware company?

For physicists, chemists or engineers, access to lab space, scientific instrumentation, grants and years of foundational research can make university labs an unusually good place to develop new technologies. Yet scientists can start companies too early, and struggle to launch without strong data and a robust proof of concept. The PhD, as a structure, was designed to train future academics, not necessarily to produce CEOs.

Whether or not a project becomes a company also rarely comes down to the scientist alone. Supervisors are often key enablers of venture creation, but can also kill initiatives before they gain any momentum. Can group leaders be more intentional about establishing a culture of company creation within their labs?

Join Conception X and Positron for a conversation that puts both sides of that relationship on one stage: two founders who have taken physical innovation out of the lab and are now building, and two principal investigators whose labs have produced multiple spin-outs. Followed by drinks and open networking.

WE WILL DIG INTO

  • What a lab built to generate companies looks like, and what the PI’s role is when it works

  • What founders wish they had known before leaving the lab: proof of concept, first prototypes, regulatory hurdles, etc.

  • How you can turn your physical innovation discovery into a commercially viable technology that can scale

WHO IT IS FOR

PhD students, postdocs and early-career scientists thinking about building a company, early-stage hardware founders, and PIs looking to enable more venture creation.

ABOUT THE ORGANISERS

Conception X is the home for Europe’s venture scientists. Since launching in 2018, Conception X has supported more than 800 PhDs, postdocs and early-career researchers from 92 universities to launch over 220 science companies that have raised £270+ million in investment and grants. Their £1 billion portfolio includes Rahko, Solve Intelligence, Humanloop and Infinitopes.

Positron is an early-stage venture fund for scientists and technical founders who want to turn bold ideas into real companies. They work closely with teams grounded in deep scientific expertise and are drawn to ambitious solutions for some of the most important challenges facing human and planetary health.