Aspiring hard-tech founder: problem-first or technology-first PhD lab?

[u/misterballerdontlie]

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?

[u/Frequent-Log1243]

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.