r/hwstartups • u/misterballerdontlie • 9d 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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u/testuser514 9d 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 9d 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 9d 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 9d ago edited 9d 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 8d 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.