While I was thinking about productive, lucrative, ways to spend my time, I ran across a whole new arena to spend time in. I'm currently working as the business development intern for Zwittertech, a start-up that can put non-fouling polymers on a variety of surfaces. The technology is fairly well developed, but they are at that strange point in a start-up's life cycle where is it is time to decide what they are going to make, and how that is going to make money.
Before I started working at the C4C, I'd never given much thought to how you convert good ideas (example, cure for the common cold) to profitable businesses (curing colds). At some point, some savvy entrepreneur decides how that idea can make money, and puts all the pieces in place to get it made, on the market and used by people. I'm starting to realize this is a unique problem in biotech- well, not unique but incredibly expensive. Imagine, if you will, trying to turn any assay you developed in grad school into something as reliable as a mini-prep. AND reagents are expensive, AND distribution is monopolized AND your clients are worried about their funding and uninterested in taking a risk on new products. This might explain the stagnant growth of the biotech industry in the last few years.
All that aside, my task for the next few weeks is to help Zwittertech decide on thier first product, of the minimally viable product (MVP). The sooner they can get something on the market that makes some revenue, it will add stability to their balance sheet, which can allow them to develop more of the products they are interested in long-term. To figure out what the MVP is, I am using a text book called The Startup Owner's Manual. I'm developing business canvases, and hope to be moving into customer discovery next week.
Showing posts with label C4C. Show all posts
Showing posts with label C4C. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Interview: Patent Law
Working at the UWs tech transfer office puts me in touch with a lot of scientists using their training in a non-traditional way. I work directly with tech managers who have a portfolio of projects that they cycle through the development- moving from an idea, to a funded idea, to a company, or a patent or a license to another company. This is a very cool job that I might talk about more later, but these tech managers also work in close contact with patent agents and patent lawyers. In our office, these are all former researchers who've made the leap into law. I got to sit down with a woman from an engineering background to talk about her move into law and her job now.
When we first sat down, she said, "you know, all you need to become a patent agent is to pass the patent bar, and that's really no big deal. Seriously, just sign up, study for a couple weeks and take the test, and you can jump into law." Hold that look of cautious surprise while we back up a bit. Entering patent law is different than other forms of law- in order to sign up to take the Patent Agent Bar, you need a B.S. at least in a narrow list of technical or scientific fields. If you have gone to law school following that degree, you can take the Patent Attorney Bar, which is a different exam. I'm going to focus on the Patent Agent route, since there is no way I am going back to law school now.
What the patent Agent does is help prepare and file documents related to patents with the US Patent and Trade Office (USPTO). There are several levels of documentation that go in with a patent, depending on that nature of the patent and it's claims. What this looks like on a day-to-day basis is juggling several projects, each which requires about 8-80 hours of work, and doing anything from prior art searches, provisional patent language to prosecuting (fancy lawyer term meaning "to persue") patents. Sometimes patents come back from the patent office, and need a response, so you get to advocate for why your client's patent is different that patents 6,923,245. In order to be effective, you actually need to understand the fundamentals of your patents well enough to distinguish it from other patents/ literature available. Even though you don't "do" science in the traditional way, you really need to keep your understanding sharp and up to date.
A little more on the career path. I've heard people say that a Patent Agent is kind of a dead-end job, there isn't room for advancement. It's probably true that your job title doesn't change much over time, but my contact had a little more perspective on it. She said that most people start out in a law firm for at least a couple of years. You work with all the lawyers in that firm and really get experience in the entire life cycle. She said (and I was stifling a smile here), you really need to develop a tough skin and be prepared to put in long hows. You'll be doing a lot of work, getting different types of criticism from the partners. The stakes are high and the deadlines are short, so there is a lot of pressure. The hours can be long and the intellectual labor is exhausting. But after a couple years at a law firm, you have enough experience to pursue another position, like her position at the University, or in a USPTO office. In her position, she manages the law firms that are contracted to do a lot of that work for the tech transfer office. Or to work part-time, or generally take more control over your career. I'm not sure what the job opportunities for Patent Agents are right now or are predicted to be in the near future.
That said, this doesn't sound all that different from post-docing (or graduate school, she had a B.Sc. in engineering before making the switch). Except for the pay. The USPTO reports the average salary for a patent agent is $74500.
Back to the bar then. It's a 3 hour exam, you can probably take at your nearest testing center. You need to pass with a 70% score. The fee to take the exam is a few hundred dollars (which feels like a lot when you are out of work), but could provide some new exciting opportunities. Or, if you decide you don't like it, it doesn't shackle you to the debt of law school. For a career that is a dynamic, challenging way you use your training, the barriers to entry don't seem too high.
When we first sat down, she said, "you know, all you need to become a patent agent is to pass the patent bar, and that's really no big deal. Seriously, just sign up, study for a couple weeks and take the test, and you can jump into law." Hold that look of cautious surprise while we back up a bit. Entering patent law is different than other forms of law- in order to sign up to take the Patent Agent Bar, you need a B.S. at least in a narrow list of technical or scientific fields. If you have gone to law school following that degree, you can take the Patent Attorney Bar, which is a different exam. I'm going to focus on the Patent Agent route, since there is no way I am going back to law school now.
What the patent Agent does is help prepare and file documents related to patents with the US Patent and Trade Office (USPTO). There are several levels of documentation that go in with a patent, depending on that nature of the patent and it's claims. What this looks like on a day-to-day basis is juggling several projects, each which requires about 8-80 hours of work, and doing anything from prior art searches, provisional patent language to prosecuting (fancy lawyer term meaning "to persue") patents. Sometimes patents come back from the patent office, and need a response, so you get to advocate for why your client's patent is different that patents 6,923,245. In order to be effective, you actually need to understand the fundamentals of your patents well enough to distinguish it from other patents/ literature available. Even though you don't "do" science in the traditional way, you really need to keep your understanding sharp and up to date.
A little more on the career path. I've heard people say that a Patent Agent is kind of a dead-end job, there isn't room for advancement. It's probably true that your job title doesn't change much over time, but my contact had a little more perspective on it. She said that most people start out in a law firm for at least a couple of years. You work with all the lawyers in that firm and really get experience in the entire life cycle. She said (and I was stifling a smile here), you really need to develop a tough skin and be prepared to put in long hows. You'll be doing a lot of work, getting different types of criticism from the partners. The stakes are high and the deadlines are short, so there is a lot of pressure. The hours can be long and the intellectual labor is exhausting. But after a couple years at a law firm, you have enough experience to pursue another position, like her position at the University, or in a USPTO office. In her position, she manages the law firms that are contracted to do a lot of that work for the tech transfer office. Or to work part-time, or generally take more control over your career. I'm not sure what the job opportunities for Patent Agents are right now or are predicted to be in the near future.
That said, this doesn't sound all that different from post-docing (or graduate school, she had a B.Sc. in engineering before making the switch). Except for the pay. The USPTO reports the average salary for a patent agent is $74500.
Back to the bar then. It's a 3 hour exam, you can probably take at your nearest testing center. You need to pass with a 70% score. The fee to take the exam is a few hundred dollars (which feels like a lot when you are out of work), but could provide some new exciting opportunities. Or, if you decide you don't like it, it doesn't shackle you to the debt of law school. For a career that is a dynamic, challenging way you use your training, the barriers to entry don't seem too high.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Interning and Market Analysis
I've been interning long enough to complete a few assignments for different groups of innovators. I'm in a better position now to comment on my role and have a little perspective on biotech start-ups, but hopefully we can revisit this often. As an intern, I take up short, task-based assignments to help a team of innovators at an early stage in the start-up process. C4C generally works with companies while they are still just a twinkle in someone's eye, before a business license appears or office space is leased. Lately, I am working with teams hoping to put together commercialization grants- that is, ask for money to do the kind of work that starts them to be profitable. This is work the NIH won't usually pay for.
In order to convince someone this is a good idea, there needs to be some assessment made about how profitable any idea could be. We call this market analysis- I've done a few of these now. These grants need something to bolster the science as a solid investment. You've got a new idea that could vastly improve common hip replacements? $mart. You've got an idea that could improve a small fraction of hip replacements? How $mall is small? Your idea might only be useful in a fraction of pinky toe joint replacements, but is crazy expensive? Not sure if anyone will pay for that. The market analysis can help to focus the innovators on where they are going to take their inventions, and it provides reassurance to investors (in this case, the University) that this won't be a waste of money. So I investigate how much is spent on this technology, on related technologies, and what does the market still want. For example, cancer treatment is a huge and competitive market with many players, but if you could cure cancer, people would buy it. In other markets, it's the cheaper, easier, faster trifecta that can be used to drive the market forward.
I pull together facts including competitors and context, and then make a recommendation. I'll be interested to see some of the follow-up from these analyses- do my teams get funding? Do they shift direction? Some teams I have worked with personally, some I just get an email from their tech manager and return another email with the analysis, these ones feel much like my freelance work. The projects where I get to work with the team, the most interesting part for me is meeting the EIR- the Entrepreneur-In-Residence. These are folks who describe themselves as 'serial entrepreneurs' who have a host of start-ups under their belt, and are hoping to mentor these big shot professors/noob businessmen into their first company. They use an interesting vocabulary and have a fascinating professional history. I seriously need to pick their brains more.
In order to convince someone this is a good idea, there needs to be some assessment made about how profitable any idea could be. We call this market analysis- I've done a few of these now. These grants need something to bolster the science as a solid investment. You've got a new idea that could vastly improve common hip replacements? $mart. You've got an idea that could improve a small fraction of hip replacements? How $mall is small? Your idea might only be useful in a fraction of pinky toe joint replacements, but is crazy expensive? Not sure if anyone will pay for that. The market analysis can help to focus the innovators on where they are going to take their inventions, and it provides reassurance to investors (in this case, the University) that this won't be a waste of money. So I investigate how much is spent on this technology, on related technologies, and what does the market still want. For example, cancer treatment is a huge and competitive market with many players, but if you could cure cancer, people would buy it. In other markets, it's the cheaper, easier, faster trifecta that can be used to drive the market forward.
I pull together facts including competitors and context, and then make a recommendation. I'll be interested to see some of the follow-up from these analyses- do my teams get funding? Do they shift direction? Some teams I have worked with personally, some I just get an email from their tech manager and return another email with the analysis, these ones feel much like my freelance work. The projects where I get to work with the team, the most interesting part for me is meeting the EIR- the Entrepreneur-In-Residence. These are folks who describe themselves as 'serial entrepreneurs' who have a host of start-ups under their belt, and are hoping to mentor these big shot professors/noob businessmen into their first company. They use an interesting vocabulary and have a fascinating professional history. I seriously need to pick their brains more.
Monday, March 12, 2012
My new professional life
In addition to my part-time job at the bank, this week I am starting as an intern at the Center for Commercialization at the UW (C4C). I've been assigned my first project, which will be helping in some regard with an SBIR. An SBIR is a grant award via the Small Business Administration to help provide vehicles for commercialization of ideas. I'll write more about this once I've read some more, but researchers who do more applied research are interested in these types of grants. I spent the afternoon reading about the differences between patents and trademarks, and searching google.com/patents which was kinda fun.
I also accepted a new contract from another mysterious Chinese editing company. I must say that dashing out of the bank to campus, then fighting through traffic to come home and look up the Instructions to the Authors for Pediatric Surgery International is pretty much where I thought my career has been headed. Someday we'll get to look back on these posts and laugh, or maybe even reminisce about the good old days when I was editing for Chinese Yuans and chilling in the U district. (That's what I'll call waiting in traffic when I am old and nostalgic.) For now though, I have 4,000+ words to 'polish' and format for publication before Friday.
I also accepted a new contract from another mysterious Chinese editing company. I must say that dashing out of the bank to campus, then fighting through traffic to come home and look up the Instructions to the Authors for Pediatric Surgery International is pretty much where I thought my career has been headed. Someday we'll get to look back on these posts and laugh, or maybe even reminisce about the good old days when I was editing for Chinese Yuans and chilling in the U district. (That's what I'll call waiting in traffic when I am old and nostalgic.) For now though, I have 4,000+ words to 'polish' and format for publication before Friday.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
2 more Part Time gigs
Good news! I've got two new part-time job-ish things to keep me busy. At some point, I decided the monotony of the job hunt was wearing on me too hard, so I started applying for entry level jobs. This is how I landed a job as a teller at KeyBank. I have had several other PhD types seems surprised and excited that I was able to get this type of job- it is well paid, respectable work, even if it isn't what my committee had in mind for me. I told my interviewer that my passion for learning is what took me to grad school, and my passion for learning would propel me to success in a new industry as well. This meshes well with the corporate culture (which likes to promote from within, and encourages and facilitates training opportunities for career development), and I assume the fact that I can speak well, am personable and have been practicing dressing like an adult helped a bit as well. It's a bit humbling to decide to go this route, you don't need a college degree to do this type of work, but I am ready to get to work. And I am being reminded of all those nifty perks that other professionals get, like retirement options and paid time off. However, this doesn't mean I am done job hunting.
The other part time gig I'll be starting is as a commercial licensing intern at the University of Washington's Center for Commercialization (C4C) (Tech Transfer office). They have a nice program to provide Ph.D.s the opportunity to provide (unpaid) technical and intellectual support in terms of considering the commercial viability of ideas and products. I'll spend a few hours a week on campus interacting with licensing managers, Entrepreneurs in residence and innovators, digging up info on a tasked basis. And I'll get journal access, which I was worried was going to catch up to me eventually. It is awesome that they are able to provide this type of opportunity in the community, I am hoping to learn the language of business and expand my network while doing it.
While both of these feel like good opportunities, I still feel frustrated that the things I can do don't feel like they really get me that much closer to the prized job. Working as a teller will ease the financial burden of job hunting, and maybe give me some perspective to reassess what I really want out of my working life. But do you see that side-bar? Someone out there spend hundreds of thousands of dollars training up my brain, and I feel compelled to do something good with it. The internship is more like what I am looking for, but I have no expectation that a position will open up at C4C. Even though it is a much more relevant opportunity, it's not really the short track to finding work, either. A lot of this job hunting work doesn't seem to result in a job, it just primes you for when the job comes along. Wish me luck- both start in a couple weeks.
The other part time gig I'll be starting is as a commercial licensing intern at the University of Washington's Center for Commercialization (C4C) (Tech Transfer office). They have a nice program to provide Ph.D.s the opportunity to provide (unpaid) technical and intellectual support in terms of considering the commercial viability of ideas and products. I'll spend a few hours a week on campus interacting with licensing managers, Entrepreneurs in residence and innovators, digging up info on a tasked basis. And I'll get journal access, which I was worried was going to catch up to me eventually. It is awesome that they are able to provide this type of opportunity in the community, I am hoping to learn the language of business and expand my network while doing it.
While both of these feel like good opportunities, I still feel frustrated that the things I can do don't feel like they really get me that much closer to the prized job. Working as a teller will ease the financial burden of job hunting, and maybe give me some perspective to reassess what I really want out of my working life. But do you see that side-bar? Someone out there spend hundreds of thousands of dollars training up my brain, and I feel compelled to do something good with it. The internship is more like what I am looking for, but I have no expectation that a position will open up at C4C. Even though it is a much more relevant opportunity, it's not really the short track to finding work, either. A lot of this job hunting work doesn't seem to result in a job, it just primes you for when the job comes along. Wish me luck- both start in a couple weeks.
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