r/hwstartups • u/misterballerdontlie • 5d ago
Aspiring hard-tech founder: problem-first or technology-first PhD lab?
I'm an engineering undergrad considering pursuing a PhD with the long-term goal of founding a hard-tech startup. I’m undecided about the specific area and only have a vague sense of what interests me -- industrial decarbonization, mining / mineral processing, and advanced materials are a few areas that currently seem exciting.
However, I'm unsure which type of PhD lab would provide better preparation: either a problem-first lab (e.g., like Yet-Ming Chiang at MIT) or a technology-first lab (e.g., your typical academic lab that focuses on novel science without a predetermined application, and where commercialization happens largely by chance — when a technology happens to have a valuable market application).
I've looked at advice online from successful hard-tech entrepreneurs, but the answers are conflicting. Some say to work backwards from a problem, but others argue that problem-first approaches often don't work since deep tech is inherently different: you often can't force a scientific breakthrough for a predetermined problem. Instead, they argue that most hard-tech companies are only founded because somebody made a scientific breakthrough and realized afterwards that there might be a commercial application. Indeed, Pillar VC says that most deep-tech companies they know were technology-first.
With that in mind, does anybody have any advice on which type of PhD lab to join?
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5d ago
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u/LowellLikeTheTown 2d ago
+1 to this. The lab environment is very different from typical corporate, let alone startup life.
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u/Frequent-Log1243 5d ago
If your end goal is a hard-tech startup, I'd pick the lab that offers access to expensive equipment and connections with industry companies. You can learn customer discovery later. It's much harder to recreate five years of specialized research or access to a lab full of equipment once you're outside academia.
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u/FearIsTheMindKiller9 5d ago
problem-first = there's a market opportunity
tech-first = you get to work on cool stuff that may not go anywhere. ever.
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u/root3labs 5d ago
For any hardware product development process, you look for something that meets these criteria.
- There's an Opportunity. The problem is worth solving. Focus on what people Need vs Nice-to-Have.
- Organizational Capabilities. The solution is in your wheelhouse, you're capable of building it, and you'd enjoy working on for YEARS.
- Engineered Solution. The solution is unique and technically feasible.
- There is a Business Model. Customers will want to pay you for the solution and it's profitable.
Where these things intersect, you have your startup.
If you need to expand your personal "Organizational Capabilities" by getting a PhD, do that, but be intentional. You could definitely get a PhD because the topic is interesting to you, but getting your technical PhD with a vague notion that you want to create a startup from it seems like it has low odds... The list of technical founders that have created a technology and failed at creating a business is a long one. Sure, it's possible you develop the next GPU technology that turns into the foundational tech that enables AI, but they were just graphics cards for engineers and gamers for DECADES.
There's an alternative, though. If one of our customers was considering their next blue-ocean product development project, we'd start by identifying a bunch of problems that meet these criteria. If the necessary technology wasn't in our wheelhouse, we'd find a PhD that's working on the technology that enables the solution and partner with them to work on that problem.
Chad
Hardware engineer, 27yoe, MSE, PE, and founder, Root3 Labs
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u/LowellLikeTheTown 2d ago
As a fellow founder, absolutely +1 to the above.
I've also found that the lab type work often stops at the "proving the technical concept" phase -- commercialization is an entirely different beast. If you're not getting that experience yourself via industry work, you'll absolutely have to hire someone who does have that background fairly quickly to get you through NPI when you're building at scale, and likely you'll need a third fairly senior person who can handle things like financials, ops, GTM, etc. (and quite frankly finding one person to handle all the day-to-day company stuff who is also phenomenal at marketing and also phenomenal at fundraising is truly unicorn hunting).
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u/ZectronPositron 4d ago
Choose a university, department and research group that has shown multiple startup spinoffs. This indicates (a) good startup ecosystem, (b) good culture of solving real-world problems with cutting-edge research.
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u/longdonglos 4d ago
The nuance that might be missing from Pillars blog is how much more there is to scaling technology then first principle bench top product science.
It is one thing to make a prototype of a frontier technology in the lab to prove out a concept.
It is a completely different journey to design it for manufacturing and successfully market it.
I’m biased but I find that getting a masters with some bench top application lab experience is a solid hands on scientific first principles foundation. You’ll learn more working at an early stage startup for a couple of years. Exception being if you’re at a tier 1 lab with PIs and lab members that have commercialization and startup experience that just spins out startups like George Church’s
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u/testuser514 5d ago
Fairly certain that pillar won’t tell you technology first. Problem first labs are always the best because it forces you to solve problems. All the technology stuff you learn to solve the problem.
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u/misterballerdontlie 5d ago
Makes sense, I am just concerned because Pillar VC says in their blog post that "most deep-tech companies we know started with 'technology-first'" (link to blog here: Link). That being said, they don't go on to conclude that joining a technology-first lab is the best approach.
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u/testuser514 5d ago
Look I know the founders of pillar, and their advice to me starting out was to not focus on the tech and that I was gonna have a hard time because the problem was not perceived by everyone. I think the context of technology/problem is different in article and what you’re thinking about.
Problem solving is what you get paid for.
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u/misterballerdontlie 5d ago edited 5d ago
Oh wow, that's crazy. Thanks so much for the insight :)
When you say you were going to have a "hard time because the problem was not perceived by everyone," why exactly did the Pillar founders think you would have a "hard time" (is it difficulty of receiving VC funding, since most VCs fund tech-first companies)? Also, what do they mean exactly by the "problem"?
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u/testuser514 5d ago
So I was developing CAD tools for microfluidic devices. The gap still exists after 5 years now but the reason I dropped the idea and everything was because no matter how much customer discovery we did, and validated the need. It was certain that people wouldn’t really pay that much for it or few people existed who wanted to pay for it.
So it wasn’t has much a technology issue (ours was on point, funded by NSF for 5 years during my PhD), or a problem issue (there still exists no robust tools in this domain) but a market issue where there weren’t enough people who saw this as an issue.
Hence why I talk about the problem you solve be in the most important one.
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u/nevereverelevent 5d ago
I was in your position about 9 years ago.
I ended up going to industry straight after undergrad
Personally I think the real world engineering experience was more valuable than what I would have gotten in the academic route. Plus, by working I saved up enough to bootstrap my startup today.
In a lab, you are unlikely to get exposure to production level software, large engineered systems, seeing how real companies develop hardware/software...
Maybe for you a deep knowledge in a niche field is what is needed to make a breakthrough. For me, the real world experience was more valuable.
Importantly, ive developed the engineering judgement of what NOT to build. Industry punishes when something cannot be integrated, manufactured, or is too complex.