PhD to CEO: Insights into Making the Leap

The road to success as an entrepreneur is never a straight line. It contains steep hills, sunken valleys, sharp detours around unexpected obstacles and a nearly constant fog that obscures everything but the immediate surroundings.

But while no two journeys on these imposing roadways are ever the same, they do often contain many of the same features. This is especially true for PhD students looking to turn their laboratory discoveries into impactful solutions that drive successful businesses.

Two prime examples of these differently similar journeys are recent Duke Engineering doctoral graduates Mike Valerino and Cambre Kelly.

When Valerino got to Duke in 2016, he had no clue that he was destined to embark on an entrepreneurial journey. He just knew that he didn’t want to be a chemical engineer, and that Duke had some interesting research starting up centered on how air pollution affects solar energy generation.

“I just wanted to work on a cool problem, and we didn’t really get inspired to pursue a startup until we stumbled across how big of a problem pollution actually is for the solar energy industry,” said Valerino, who earned his PhD in 2022 under the mentorship of Mike Bergin, the Sternberg Family Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering. “We saw the opportunity to translate what we were doing into a solution. It was a slow process to get from research to startup, but one that I think we did well.”

Fast-forward a few years, and Valerino’s small three-person company Solar Unsoiled is now cashflow positive and about to enter another round of investment funding as well as hiring. In a nutshell, the company uses predictive modeling and data analytics to determine the economically optimal times to clean solar farms.

As CEOs of early stage, technology-driven startups, both Valerino and Kelly say that one of the greatest challenges they’ve had to adapt to is having to wear many different hats. And that there is a very big difference between being on a team and leading a team.

“As CEO, you are the face, you are the storyteller, you are the fundraiser, the peacekeeper, backend accounting and HR—you are all of it,” said Kelly. “I didn’t fully realize how much bandwidth all of that was going to take up and that it would require me to build a new set of skills.”

Of all the different hats that a CEO has to wear, both agree that fundraiser is the most important. The number one job of a CEO is to make sure the business doesn’t run out of money, because that is the only way that a startup fails. And fundraising is essentially just another form of selling someone on your product and company, which comes more naturally to some than others.

Luckily, there is plenty of help out there for those who need it. Once Valerino determined he was going to give starting a tech company a shot, he spent a summer in an entrepreneurial training program and also went through a startup accelerator program. Those programs also came with small seed funding grants to get the ball rolling, which was great for Valerino given that he could only make one more month of rent when they came through.

Despite all of that training, however, Valerino says he still had a lot to learn about pitching investors. He eventually got the hang of it, however, once he realized he needed to stop talking about the technology he was building.

“It’s in our nature to focus on the technology, and that can be overwhelmingly negative,” Valerino said. “Wait until you’re asked about it, and then answer shortly. But if you start with a six-minute monologue about why the technology is great and different, it’s not going to work.”

Instead, both Valerino and Kelly say that you have to talk about the benefits of the technology and give a story about how it can help to solve a problem.

“I would always start with the problem that you’re going to solve and the value proposition around what you’re doing, why it’s different, where it fits in the competitive landscape, what the market size is,” said Kelly. “Then you can talk about what the secret sauce is.”

After learning how to pitch investors and raise money—which Kelly says is a muscle she built without even knowing it as part of her journey with restor3d—the most important and difficult role of a CEO is to recruit and maintain a team.

Finding the right people is much more than them having the right technical expertise for whatever your need is. They also must have the right soft skills and be a good fit with the rest of the group.

“Because when you’re a team of five or six people, if you have one person that doesn’t jive with the culture, it’s going to affect the whole team,” Kelly said. “You have to be a really good judge of not only someone’s resume, but also of if they are going to have the right energy, fit into the culture of the team, and the vision that is being built.”

If this all sounds like a lot, that’s because it is. Starting a company as a PhD student with unproven technology is an incredibly complex and difficult task. But nobody has to do it alone. Besides their immediate PhD advisors, both Kelly and Valerino say that they have had a ton of help and gotten a lot of good advice along the way.

Which leads to another piece of advice from Kelly:

If you know you want to start a company, pick a school and a lab with a strong track record of success and plenty of resources for you to draw from.

“Because that means your advisor is going to be supportive and be able to mentor you directly,” Kelly said. It’s also about having an entrepreneurial ecosystem to build within. For example, Kelly cites, “Duke Capital Partners has been an incredible partner for us and has led or participated in our financing rounds up to this point.”

“The most valuable thing for me has been Duke’s network of people who have already done this; professors and alumni who I could ask even the most basic questions to,” Valerino echoed. “And Duke’s network effect to be able to make introductions has been an incredibly valuable resource.”

If you do find yourself in a favorable situation at a school with a strong entrepreneurial spirit and plenty of resources—stay there as long as you can.

These schools and programs are a great little safe bird’s nest where you can stay and learn until you’re fully fledged and ready to fly.

“Stay in the lab setting or incubator inside the university as long as possible, not only to maintain access to those resources and people, but also from a financial standpoint,” Kelly said.

This also provides early entrepreneurs with the time and opportunity to conduct customer discovery early on in their doctoral program. Valerino especially found this useful on his journey, as he was forced to pivot several times from his initial business idea. But failing fast and failing often while still in a supportive environment can ultimately land you in a place where you can find traction.

And traction is what makes all of the trials and tribulations worth it in the end.

“The part of my job that I love most is problem-solving together on a team of people that are equally excited and motivated about the difference we’re going to be able to make in patients’ lives with the products that we’re developing,” Kelly said.