By Lina Sorg
Most graduates and early-career professionals in applied mathematics pursue employment in either academia or business, industry, and government. However, many are likely unfamiliar with a third possible career direction: entrepreneurship. While starting a company based on one’s strengths and interests may lead to monetary success and personal satisfaction, navigating the complex nuances of the business world can be daunting.
The Second Joint SIAM/CAIMS Annual Meeting, which took place virtually this July, featured an online panel discussion that addressed entrepreneurship within the field of applied mathematics. Speakers Patrick Bangert (Samsung SDS), Frédéric Gardi (LocalSolver), Jeffrey Hoffstein (Brown University and QuantumSafe), and Hector Klie (DeepCast.ai) discussed their individual career paths, spoke candidly about the challenges and gratifications of founding one’s own company, and offered advice to future entrepreneurs. Lalitha Venkataramanan (Schlumberger Doll Research) chaired the panel and kept conversation flowing throughout the hour-long session.
Bangert, who founded algorithmica technologies in 2005 to bridge the knowledge gap between mathematical applications and industry-based solutions, opened the discussion. He feels that many undergraduate and graduate-level courses implicitly persuade students to become research professors, and warned that numerous academic duties—such as attracting third-party funding, performing administrative tasks, teaching, and grading student work—limit a professor’s ability to actually conduct research.
While Hoffstein has enjoyed his stint as a research professor and does have adequate time to work on personal projects, he echoed Bangert’s sentiment about academic pressure. “Far too many students out there are indeed told that you must be a researcher,” he said. “That is completely untrue.” He encouraged students to learn as much pure and applied mathematics as possible, which increases the range of problems on which they can work. Hoffstein noted that much of today’s applied mathematics is based on what was completely pure math only 10 years ago. For example, he co-created the NTRU public key cryptosystem in 1996 and established NTRU Cryptosystems Inc. shortly thereafter; the mathematics that inspired his company were completely pure until he and his colleagues found an application.
Clockwise from top left: Lalitha Venkataramanan (Schlumberger Doll Research), Hector Klie (DeepCast.ai), Patrick Bangert (Samsung SDS), Frédéric Gardi (LocalSolver), and Jeffrey Hoffstein (Brown University and QuantumSafe) partake in a virtual panel discussion about applied mathematical entrepreneurship during the Second Joint SIAM/CAIMS Annual Meeting.
Klie, the chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder of DeepCast.ai, recommended that all mathematicians who plan to start their own companies first take machine learning courses, master a programming language, and become comfortable utilizing data. Students who complete short-term internships often work with data and are thus at a distinct advantage. “A little experience is a great deal more than none,” Bangert said. “What you learn at universities is extremely important and gives you a lot of the background, but the one thing it doesn’t teach you is how to apply it in a commercial setting.” Internships with commercial businesses also teach students how to report to a boss, succeed in a hierarchical situation, and communicate with colleagues who might not have mathematical backgrounds. All of these skills are necessary when forming and leading one’s own company.
Hoffstein urged future entrepreneurs to seek out partners with business sense. “The leadership team is considerably more important than the idea itself,” he said. “It’s a total disaster to start a company with only technical founders.” Furthermore, venture capitalists (VCs) are typically hesitant to invest in a company if none of the founders have business experience. However, one must also be wary of bringing in an outside CEO whose agenda might not directly align with the company’s vision.
Nevertheless, a CEO acts as a chief salesperson and no business can exist without paying customers. Bangert indicated that hired CEOs should focus on sales rather than technical matters. While some level of technical capability is useful, it is more important for an effective CEO of a fledgling company to possess a strong communicative ability and extroverted tendencies — traits that help attract VCs. Obtaining VC funding is notoriously difficult, even if a company offers a strong product.
Bangert also provided specific advice for attendees who wish to take on an outward-facing communicative role themselves. “If you yourself are considering doing this, take a few English language and communication classes,” he said. “Be able to go out there, speak loudly and confidently, and tell a joke. If you can do some of these things in public, you’re on your way to communicating with a nontechnical audience.”
Gardi, who co-founded a global optimization solver called LocalSolver in 2012, filled this role within his company. He admitted that it was difficult in the beginning because he had not studied sales or marketing in school and thus had to learn quickly. “As mathematicians and scientists, we clearly underestimate the ability to sell and communicate,” he said. “Ensure that the research and design team is well aligned with business needs to avoid losing time by working on things that don’t matter.”
Conversation then returned to the role of universities in promoting entrepreneurial skills. “I think universities offer most or all of the necessary components,” Bangert said. “Students just need to go out and take them.” He reiterated the value of communication courses and suggested that students look for opportunities to meet entrepreneurs who might then become mentors. Hoffstein concurred. “Everything seems to work by links, by person to person,” he said. “Absolutely everything is done by personal trust and personal connections.” He encouraged students to ask their contacts for introductions to professionals in related specialty areas. Forming a “trust link” with several people often leads to someone with beneficial expertise.
Panelists agreed that amateur entrepreneurs must set financial expectations, decide how much they are willing to sacrifice in personal financial risk, and establish a system of checks and balances to protect their funds from fraud or other unforeseen circumstances. “In order to keep things going, you have to adapt to the times and stay alert,” Klie said. “You have to keep the ball rolling.” He also recommended that companies start with consulting, with the intent to eventually transition to corporation status. While consulting does earn money and maintain momentum, it is generally not particularly lucrative in the long term. However, it allows companies to explore customers’ demands and expectations, experiment with the presentation of their product, and ultimately build a service that consumers actively desire. In addition, Gardi and Klie mentioned that entrepreneurs in this investigatory consulting phase should direct their services towards smaller companies and businesses that do not necessarily have strong internal expertise and are thus more likely to embrace the product in question.
Venkataramanan next steered the conversation to a new topic: issues of intellectual property. In the late 1990s, Hoffstein proactively made a deal with the research office at Brown to ensure that his team’s intellectual property was their own and that they had not used any Brown resources in its creation. Nowadays, intellectual property issues are much less archaic and are easily navigable if one is based at a reputable institution or university. The associated research offices might even take care of the patent, work out a fair deal, and help the inventors make contacts.
Bangert expanded upon Hoffstein’s explanation, describing how the situation is different in industry. Most companies establish an employment contract, which states that an employee’s inventions inherently belong to the inventor’s company. Companies are like people in the eyes of the law, in that they can own things and ideas. “There’s no conflict in intellectual property in that sense,” Bangert said. “It’s very clear who owns it, and in no cases is it me.” The exception to this rule, of course, is if one’s idea is completely unrelated to the employer.
As the discussion wrapped up, Bangert shared some strategies that he uses to keep a calm and stable state of mind. “A large part of my job involves being creative on a short timescale,” he said, adding that daily meditation facilitates this process. When Klie finds himself overwhelmed with stress, he partakes in unrelated leisure activities that pull him completely out of a work mindset. Doing so increases his efficiency when he returns to the job.
Upon conclusion of the panel session, attendees had the opportunity to further converse with the experts in online breakout rooms. Despite the challenges of entrepreneurship, panelists urged participants to remain optimistic. All four speakers cycled through various jobs and organizations before arriving at their current positions, reinforcing their stance that there is no concrete path to entrepreneurship. “You can create your own job by becoming an entrepreneur,” Bangert said. “Reframe your mindset; it is possible for you, upon finishing graduate school, to start your own company.”
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Lina Sorg is the managing editor of SIAM News. |