

Ask HN: How can I create a startup from my graduate thesis? - amirmansour

Hello everyone,<p>I always hear of people starting companies that spawned from a graduate school thesis. I am currently working on an idea, which I completely came up with and develop myself in graduate school. Like the professors, researchers, and other graduate students, I signed an agreement that makes the university own all my creations.<p>I would like to start a company from all my research (this is my life and passion) after graduation. How can I do this if my research is not my property? How have others (maybe you) done this in the past?<p>My research can be applied to a diverse set of fields, but if it just stays with the university it will belong to just one project, and it would stay like that forever. It's hard to watch my research trapped in one field and one project.<p>Hopefully the HN community can provide some guidance, feedback, and maybe so interesting stories.<p>Thank you. I appreciate it.
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_dps
Even the most graduate-school-inspired businesses are about 5% pre-existing
research and 95% solving a problem people will pay for. Academic research is,
almost by definition, solving problems that people will not yet pay for (I say
this having been a graduate student and professor, and now in the startup
game).

I'd encourage you to think about what marketable problems you are well-
equipped to solve, rather than thinking about what you can do to sell your
pre-existing research. The former is the essence of a startup and the latter
is, on average, a recipe for disappointment.

On the legal matters: the University will almost certainly license the idea to
you. Universities are not in the business of business, so just holding the
patent is not particularly useful to them. They _want_ someone to go out and
start a business around the idea. You would be a good candidate for that.
There is essentially no chance that they won't license it to you if you are
credibly starting a business around it (though they'll probably want some kind
of stake in the company). This is exactly the situation Google has: Stanford
owns the PageRank patent and licenses it to Google in return for (I believe) a
portion of Google's early stock.

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amirmansour
Thanks for all that info. You made a good point about having something that is
marketable before wanting to start a company. I have actually done just that.
I have been demoing my research through marketable applications from the
start. On application is actually directly helpful to a product that the
school is developing. So they license it to me, and I sell it back to them
(kinda funny)?

To tell you the truth, my only problem is with the university wanting a huge
stake, and leaving me and my fellow partners with very little for our hard
work.

Thanks for the help I appreciate.

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masonhensley
My university had an intellectual property office. I'd ask around your the
engineering department for for their student liaison or the name of someone
who won't yank you around.

They IP office would regularly send someone to the larger engineering classes
when I was in undergrad. Hopefully you will be able to sit down with a cool
cat and walk out a single page waiver.

I'm guessing you will have a harder time getting what I call an IP waiver if
you are on a full ride vs paying sticker price for your degree.

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amirmansour
Thanks for this. I did not know such a waiver existed. I searched the "Office
of Research" website of my school, but I did not find any information
regarding such a waiver. I will talk to a professor to see if my school has
such a thing.

Also one of my professors said that schools don't usually go after students
making companies with university related research. Unless the company gets
really big. But if the company gets big, then they could easily settle with
some cash.

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abbasmehdi
Counting your eggs way before they're hatched. If you become a successful
company you can deal with it then. Start doing what you wanna do with it, if
any success appears on the horizon then think about all this.

~~~
amirmansour
What you said is actually what I have been moving towards. I'm just gonna
worry about it later, and start the startup.

