Inspiring women insights

What does your company do?

Porotech focuses on the development of high performance and energy efficient Gallium Nitride (GaN) semiconductors by applying cutting-edge material technologies and solutions to realise the full potential of GaN. Porotech aims to revolutionise the optoelectronics industry by improving the extraction of light from LEDs to reduce the amount of light lost and wasted within the LED affecting overall device efficiency.

Company background

Porotech, incorporated in April 2018, utilises technology developed in Professor Oliver’s research centre, the Cambridge Centre for Gallium Nitride. It is co-founded with two postdoctoral researchers; Materials Scientist Dr Tongtong Zhu and Materials Chemist Dr Yingjun Liu.

The Founder

Rachel Oliver is Professor of Materials Science at the University of Cambridge. She works on the materials which are used in energy-efficient LED light bulbs to improve the efficiency of these devices. Professor Oliver is the Director of the Cambridge Centre for Gallium Nitride which conducts world leading research into nitride based semiconductors.

Alongside her academic research and entrepreneurial activities, Professor Oliver is heavily involved in advocating for greater Equality, Diversity and Inclusion within STEMM and leads The Inclusion Group for Equity in Research in STEMM (TIGERS), a network of scientists which campaigns to make STEMM more equitable.

What have been some of the biggest challenges?

The biggest challenge was raising the money to get the company off the ground! Porotech is developing manufacturing processes and scaling them up to the industrial level. That means we need lab space and lab equipment, and they don’t come cheap! We were thus trying to raise a sizeable chunk of money in our seed round - £1.5 million – which was certainly challenging! As a female founder, with a very busy academic career and primary responsibility for caring for my child, I found the process particularly difficult because a lot of relevant meetings and events happen in the evenings, when I don’t necessarily have childcare available.

What do you believe are the important characteristics that a spinout founder should have?

I think it’s really important to have a clear vision for what you want to achieve. You also need to be really resilient, because there will be a lot of bumps in the road!

How would you characterise a successful spinout company?

The key to a successful spinout is having the right team in place. You need a group of talented individuals, all passionate about the company and its future, who between them bring together all a really diverse skillset, from the technical side, to sales, management, administration… the works!

Do you have a message for other women academics who may be thinking of spinning out their research?

Go for it! And when you do, be aware there are lots of different ways to get support and training to help you push forward. Courses like RisingWISE are available to help women specifically develop an entrepreneurial skillset. 

What does your company do?

Our company offers the UK’s first 3D gait analysis that uses infrared cameras to precisely calculate joint angles during a runner’s stride. The results are analysed through a database of uninjured controls to identify the cause of injuries and assess injury risk, improve performance, and recommend the most appropriate footwear for all runners. We’ve worked with triathletes and members of Team GB to diagnose injuries and improve their long-term performance.

What was your motivation for founding a spinout?

I truly believed in what I wanted to do. I am a very keen runner and during my PhD I had an opportunity to research running by combining science and engineering with running mechanics, in the form of biomechanics. Toward the end of my PhD I began to question why the technology I was using in my research wasn’t accessible to real people. It was fine for those doing my research project. They got to use it, but runners everywhere else didn’t have access to this type of technology. They would be (at best) using video cameras or things like that in the clinic. So, I believed in it. It was what I wanted to do, I had the opportunity to do it and so I did.

What have been some of the biggest challenges?

I think the main thing was not knowing what to do but having to do everything. It had never been a grand plan of mine to spin out a company and so shareholders, investors, angels…it was all totally new to me. I won’t lie; it was a very difficult journey for me at the beginning. I learnt the hard way, by finding it all out for myself.

What do you believe are the important characteristics that a spinout founder should have?

Determination and being aspirational, looking high and saying, ‘I can do that. How do I do it?’ For example, when I needed a software developer I was advised to fly out to Holland, talk to a group of specialists and convince them to come and help me. So, I did. I essentially pitched to them and said, ‘I want to use bits of your software and enable you to enter a completely different market.’ It takes guts to do that.

What would you say makes a successful spinout company?

Very much the people involved. You all have to want the company to succeed. You need people who genuinely believe in everything you do and are willing to help you get that. You have also got to have a good idea and to have a business model for it. It is all very well having the technology, but if it doesn’t have a market and it doesn’t have people who are going to buy it then it is not going to work. For me, a successful spinout is one with happy customers and happy end users

Do you have a message for women other women academics who may be thinking of spinning out their research?

I would say, understand the opportunities that are out there. If you have got an idea, if you believe in it and think you could commercialise it, then explore the opportunities to do so because there are a lot of people out there with a lot of money who want to invest in things. You don’t realise that when you are an academic. They genuinely get excited, they have got a lot of money and they like supporting start-ups, so just do it!

Run3D is a spinout from The University of Oxford and our rigorous approach to running injuries is supported by decades of research. 3D gait analysis is the most accurate assessment of running motion using a scientific approach to capture reliable and measureable information. Using infrared cameras to track positions of small reflective markers, we are able to precisely calculate joint angles to provide unparalleled insight into an individual’s running stride. The results are compared to a database of uninjured controls to quantify an individual’s injury risk, assess biomechanical efficiency and performance, recommend appropriate footwear and review biomechanical variables known to be affected in post-bike running.

What does VeriVin do?

VeriVin is a start-up that has developed a through-barrier spectroscopic analyser for wine, spirits and other complex liquids in sealed containers. Our aim is to create a database with the optical fingerprints of millions of bottles of wine, allowing for bottles to be authenticated, characterised and monitored over time.

What was your motivation for founding a start-up?

My biggest loves in life are physics, wine, classic cars and ballet. Somehow I managed to marry the first two! When I was doing my PhD, I ran the Oxford University Wine Circle and was captain of the blind tasting team and I absolutely fell in love with blind tasting and the idea of identifying wine. I also think that in the back of my mind I had always wanted to be an entrepreneur -- my father is an entrepreneur. The main motivation has to be one of curiosity – I started to think ‘would I be able to analyse a bottle of wine through the glass?’ – I like making things so I liked the idea of making a device. Of course it would be great if it makes lots of money, but it’s more like a life choice I suppose.

What have been some of the biggest challenges?

Firstly, this is scientifically difficult. Wine is one of the most chemically complex liquids we know of. It is composed of around 85%-87% water and 12%-14% ethanol, whilst the remaining 1%-2% consists of around one thousand different organic molecules which make the difference between your supermarket red and a bottle of Lafite. Differentiating between the spectra of two different wines requires sophisticated statistical analysis and/or machine learning techniques, and ascertaining the presence of any particular compound is, in layman's terms, like looking for a needle in a haystack. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that this liquid lies behind a curved tinted piece of glass which varies from bottle to bottle and displays spectral characteristics of its own.

I also didn’t know how to go about it - it’s a very different case to most companies that start with a technology that has been developed in the lab at a university that works and is looking for a business case. This was a business case with technology that had not been proven and that needed a research lab to do the R&D in order to prove it. Investors would ask for the prototype, so I’d go around in circles a lot.

What do you believe are the important characteristics that a start-up founder should have?

Having patience, being realistic and possessing a lot of self-belief and motivation is really important in an entrepreneur. I think you also need good people skills and the ability to motivate people and make hard decisions. You also have to be adventurous and be prepared to take risks

Do you have a message for women other women academics who may be thinking of spinning out their research?

Be patient and analyse your idea as much as you can. And then once you do believe in that idea and you’re happy with that then I would say just stay confident and you can do it. Just keep with it, keep believing in it. It’s a great opportunity to do something that you design and it’s really exciting!

Dr Amy Varney – Vice President (VP) Operations at OxStem, a regenerative medicine spin-out from the University of Oxford developing small molecule therapeutics targeting innate regeneration and repair.

I studied Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry at Magdalen College, Oxford before completing my DPhil in Organic Chemistry, also at Oxford, under the supervision of Professor Angela Russell - one of OxStem’s co-founders.

I joined OxStem at its inception in 2015 as the first full-time employee. I came on board into a very broad role – the idea was that I would help spin-out and establish the company. In the first two years I was heavily focused on fundraising, investor relations, communicating the science externally and project management. In the last two years I have been in the role of VP Operations: I work with our Chief Operating Officer and Chief Scientific Officer to deliver operationally but I also work with our Chief Business Officer and Chief Executive Officer to support fundraising and partnering discussions with investors and pharmaceutical companies respectively.

Working for a spinout can be very rewarding – it is great to see all your hard work turn into something real. The best part has to be the breadth and variety of work. No day is the same and that can be exciting and challenging. I love being exposed to a breadth of science, as well as the variety in my daily working life in the business and scientific world. Of course, all careers have challenges and I would say that working for a start-up can bring periods of uncertainty and frustration, for example if things do not progress as you thought they might in a rapidly changing landscape.

The advice I would give to women who are thinking about moving into entrepreneurship is as follows. Firstly, make sure you know your technology/science inside out and be effective at communicating it to both experts and non-experts. Secondly, get an excellent mentor. Professor Angela Russell, my former DPhil supervisor is a continued academic and entrepreneurial inspiration to me. Finally, be confident and believe in yourself, but never make promises you cannot keep. To work in the scientific business world you need resilience, flexibility and creativity to succeed. I’d encourage other young women who are passionate about science to really ‘think outside the box’ because there are so many different opportunities and different types of scientific careers to pursue.

Find out more about OxStem

Brittany Harris – CEO and Co-founder of startup ‘QFlow’, a cloud-based platform using IoT and machine learning to enable construction projects to stay compliant and manage their environmental impact.

Brittany talks through her experience of founding her company and gives advice to future women entrepreneurs in STEM.

I studied Civil Engineering at the University of Bristol, graduating in 2015. On graduating I worked for ‘Engineers Without Borders’ on a placement in Peru designing sustainable sanitation solutions for a remote fishing village. While working for ‘BuroHappold Engineering’, I travelled to New York to volunteer with ‘World Merit’ – an international organisation mobilising young leaders to tackle the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. It was there I met Jade - my co-founder. We immediately bonded over our mutual interest in ‘building a sustainable future’ and decided to tackle this in our own industry – civil engineering and construction. It wasn’t a straight forward decision to leave our jobs to start something so high risk, but the support of Josh Valman, an amazing entrepreneur and close friend, and the opportunity presented to us by Entrepreneur First and the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE) made it seem just a little less scary and a whole lot more exciting!

Every day is a challenge, from finding and hiring the best talent, to raising investment and on-boarding clients. I could list a thousand challenges, but I have learned from every single one. The one thing that I found most useful to get through these challenges was simply being comfortable asking for help. The long and short of it is there is no ‘right way’ about it; reading books and blogs, asking other founders and mentors, or simply saying ‘I don’t know, I’ll get back to you on that’ really helped me learn fast! The important thing to remember is that all the advice you get is just that - advice - and so it should always be taken with a pinch of salt and a caveat label ‘feel free to ignore this’. In the end it is your business, and your life, you can get as much data and insights to back you up, but it is your decision what to do with it.

There is a huge amount of support out there for start-ups and I would say take what you can get and use it wisely. We have received lots of support and specific training from the RAE, an accelerated introduction into the investment community from Entrepreneur First and a fantastic network and technical support from Geovation. We have also had amazing support from other Entrepreneurs including Josh (founder of RPD), Elspeth (founder of IAND), Pae (founder of Trik) and Richard (founder of Venture Catalyst). Everyone brings their own stories, experience and advice, and they have always been there in the many times that I have said ‘I just don’t know’.

The best piece of advice that I’ve ever been given and has really helped me is ‘make time for sleep and relaxation’. I am dyslexic, and need plenty of sleep to let my brain process everything and de-clutter. There is a huge temptation to just keep working, and not make time for relaxation and sleep. I make extra effort to stop work by 9pm, and work less than 4 hours over a weekend (only committing my time to planning and quick responses), taking extra pleasure in mountain biking, running, baking and playing guitar. I still haven’t got this right, and often find myself breaking my own rules, but going to see friends and family helps to pull me out of ‘start-up life’ and reminds me to enjoy the simple things.

My advice to any aspiring women entrepreneurs is - it’s hard, but don’t get put off. Try not to fixate on the things that don’t go your way or read too much into the potential biases that may have influenced that - I have found it doesn’t help you move forward. I do not think you need to ‘lean in’, or be negatively disruptive. Stand your ground, know that you are the expert in the space you are talking about, and just keep moving forward. It is hard, and it is tiring, but you will create something amazing and powerful out of it, and even if your company ‘fails’, you will have learned so much about yourself, business, and people, that you will never have lost out by trying.

Find out more about Q-Flow