Three Lessons From a Scientist-Turned-Entrepreneur
The best inventions are often surprises. This was certainly the case with SomaDetect.
My dad has an incredible passion for light-scattering and the development of new technologies and approaches. This part was not new. In fact, I had grown up watching my dad build all kinds of things. It was a normal part of my household. Some dad’s hobbies are repairing cars, or painting, or music. My dad loves light.
My dad has a Ph.D. in biophysics and believes that light scattering has never been applied nor exploited to its maximum potential. In July 2016, just after I defended my Ph.D. in Biology, my dad’s patent for the detection of somatic cells in raw milk was granted. We decided to work on the commercialization together as a side project, or as a weekend activity. The company ended up coming together with three co-founders and my dad as a scientific advisor. SomaDetect was born and then, before we knew it, took off.
Since founding SomaDetect three years ago, that initial motivation has brought me so much more. Today, I am motivated not only to help my dad, but also to give back to the community of dairy farmers who have helped us make this possible, and to show the world what is possible with dairy data, deep learning, and light-scattering together. My work at SomaDetect is full of challenges and enormous opportunities for growth. I am nothing but grateful for this. Here are three key lessons I’ve learned along the way.
Lesson 1
I love my work. Being a CEO is one of those roles where when it’s good, it can be wondrously, amazingly good, and when it’s bad it can be devastatingly, heart-wrenchingly bad. This is both beautiful, and sad. Being an entrepreneur will make you laugh, cry, celebrate, and rage, all in one afternoon. It can be incredibly difficult to find yourself, and your dreams, at either end of this spectrum. If you can find focus amongst all this, you can do anything.
Lesson 2
True leadership is humbling, in a way I’ve never known before. You can put a lot of time and energy and planning into designing files and documents to talk about company culture. “We’re going to build trust!” I remember saying early on. Trust is not built, it is earned. And when you have it, it is not power or triumph you feel, but a humbling of the spirit. Once you have trust, you also have enormous responsibility; responsibility to honour and not break that trust. Above all else, this space is humbling.
Lesson 3
There are a few little quotes or phrases about planning and direction that I love. One is “How you get there is where you arrive” from Alice in Wonderland. Another one I learned from an old friend: “The plan is nothing. Planning is everything.” These things are so unbelievably true in a startup and worth repeating often. You won’t hit every target. But having the team aligned and following a plan is priceless. Starting something and doing it in the smallest possible way is better than doing nothing at all. By piecing together little things, we can go far.