Entrepreneurship as a career pathway

 

Entrepreneurship has become more and more popular in recent years. Magazines, events, and even television shows dedicated to entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs have emerged over a short period of time.

Entrepreneurs are considered to be the new heroes of the economy, pioneers of market imperfections. They are praised for their vision and courage, studied by researchers for their unique traits and treasured by governments for their ability to contribute significantly to economic growth, employment, productivity and innovation.

 

Starting a new company however, is not easy and failures are still being frowned upon. It requires vision, perseverance, unbridled ambition, and above all plain hard work. What motivates entrepreneurs to choose such a challenge? And how do they succeed in building a successful company? In this article two entrepreneurs share their experiences with you.

 

Pieter Gaillard (39)

Education: MSc in Biomedical Science and PhD in Pharmacology

Prior occupations: PhD at LACDR and Scientific Manager of a Research Group at AMC

Company (co-)founded: to-BBB

 

After his PhD the logical step for Pieter Gaillard was to pursue an academic career. Since he was interested in applied research he took a job as scientific manager at an academic medical centre. “After a while I noticed that applied research was not very innovative, and I started to miss that. When the results of my PhD work were licensed out for contract research to the pharmaceutical industry, I realised that I could use my own knowledge to start a business.” This eye-opener coincided with the announcement of the BioPartner and STIGON programmes, and that triggered Pieter to talk to people of Leiden University about setting up a company. “Although the idea was far from concrete, it gave me enough confidence to quit my job and to create to-BBB.”

to-BBB is a biotech company that deals with drugs that act on the brain. Drugs cannot normally enter because of the blood brain barrier. Dr Pieter Gaillard is founder and CEO of to-BBB. Together with Alfred Nijkerk (VenGen) and Dr Bert de Boer (Leiden University), Pieter created the company in 2003 and subsequently secured two private equity seed rounds, numerous academic and industry collaborations, and recently a Series A financing round with Aescap Venture. 

 

“These past few years as entrepreneur have been great, and my learning curve is tremendously steep. Entrepreneurship is a lot of fun, and it gives me a great deal of energy and drive. I enjoy it again and again every day. Although my computer is always on, and I’m available for my company all the time, it doesn’t feel like real work. The risks that go along with entrepreneurship are in essence manageable, and I don’t experience them as risks. For me the most challenging part is to decide whom to trust and who to involve. You need people who can help you to get started. The support I got from the university, and also the help from VenGen, BioPartner, STIGON, and the investors, has been invaluable to the success of to-BBB.”

About the qualities you need as an entrepreneur, Pieter says the following: “As entrepreneur you need to be determined, confident and not afraid to follow your own intuition and to take decisions. You cannot linger in the ideas phase; at a certain point you have to take action in order to realise your plans. That’s something you don’t learn about at university.”

 

Eric Claassen (50)

Education: MSc in Medical Biology and PhD in Medicine

Prior occupations: TNO Prevention & Health, Director R&D Dutch Institute for Animal Science & Health

Companies (co)founded: Skintec, ViroNovative, CoroNovative, Viroclinics

Other involvements: AM-Pharma (President of Supervisory board), Dynamics (Supervisory Director),

Professor at Erasmus MC, Entrepreneur in Residence at RSM, Professor at the VU University, Visiting Professor at University of Paris

 

When Eric Claassen was Director R&D at the Dutch Institute for Animal Science & Health, the organisation was privatised. In that process he created spin-offs for activities that did not belong to the core business. Claassen: “I worked about 80 hours a week, but could not participate in the companies that I helped to build. That made me restless. My late spouse said to me: “Why don’t you start a business for yourself? And if it doesn’t work out you can find another job.” That gave me the push to quit my well-paid job – perhaps the biggest step in my career – and to dedicate myself full-time to entrepreneurship”. After that one thing led to another. “I got a few great breaks and (co)-founded several companies.” Today, Eric is involved in about 10 young companies. His role is usually putting together the company and its management in the first year(s), and after that he acts as supervisory director and is involved at the strategic level.

 

“For me entrepreneurship within academic settings is a combination of despair and fun. It’s not easy to combine all different interests in such way that everybody is content, but if it succeeds the gratification is enormous. It gives you a great feeling, because you have managed to create something that wasn’t there in the first place and you have accomplished that together with your team. And if everything goes well it will generate money for research and for the parties involved. The people that work in start-up companies are usually young, inspired and passionate. It’s a great environment to work in.

I believe that a successful scientist can also be a successful entrepreneur. As an entrepreneur you should also be flexible and socially intelligent. A common misconception is that entrepreneurship it is about taking risks. It’s not: it’s about dealing with risks in a sensible way, through recognition and management.”

 

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