Startup Science Podcast with Gregory Shepard · 2025-01-29 · 20 min
This episode dives into Aras Sheikhi's transition from startup founder to academic entrepreneur at UC San Diego, where he leads the Janus Innovation Hub. Sheikhi emphasizes flexibility and agility as critical lessons from his eight-month startup exit negotiation, arguing that founders must be willing to let go of their creations and pivot when opportunities arise. He clarifies the operational distinctions between incubators - which transform early-stage ideas into MVPs through tailored mentorship, technical teams, and product management support - and accelerators, which scale existing products toward fundraising. At Janus, he deploys a six to nine-month cohort model combining mentorship, technical bundling, and senior product management. Sheikhi also discusses his Decentralized Distributed Data Systems Lab at Saarland University of Technology, which explores blockchain and tokenization technologies he believes will dominate fintech's future. For academics struggling with technology transfer, his blunt advice is to start now and pivot relentlessly based on market feedback rather than remaining attached to lab-developed solutions. Leading multidisciplinary teams, he argues, hinges on communication - a skill sharpened during COVID when distributed collaboration became necessary. His failed Dubai cryptocurrency-gaming startup taught him that team quality and commitment matter far more than budget constraints.
Incubators work with super early-stage startups to convert ideas into MVPs through tailored mentorship, technical team support, and product management; accelerators work with startups that already have MVPs and help them add features, become functional, and raise capital.
Flexibility and agility were critical - the eight-month negotiation taught him that founders must be willing to let go of what they built and pivot when opportunity arises, rather than clinging rigidly to their original vision.
Janus provides tailored mentorship, technical team bundling, senior product management support, and connections to acceleration programs and VC investors through six to nine-month cohorts.
Start now and commit to pivoting based on real market feedback; don't assume lab-developed solutions are best, because academics are often disconnected from real market needs and will fail if they remain attached to their original ideas.
Hiring high-commitment team members is more important than budget; relying on low-quality, uncommitted people due to lack of money is a single point of failure - use equity sharing or alternative structures instead.
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
In Part 2, Greg Shepard and Aras Sheikhi explore the intricate world of entrepreneurship, offering profound insights for academics and startup founders. They delve into the mechanics of innovation hubs and accelerators, revealing how early-stage startups can transform innovative ideas into market-ready solutions. Greg shares critical advice for researchers looking to commercialize their work, emphasizing the importance of flexibility, market adaptation, and continuous pivoting. The conversation spans multiple dimensions of entrepreneurial success, from leading multidisciplinary teams to identifying market needs and emerging technologies. With a particular focus on blockchain, they discuss its potential to revolutionize industries and create new opportunities for innovation. Drawing from personal experiences of transitioning from academia to entrepreneurship, Greg and Aras provide a candid look at the challenges and rewards of building startup ecosystems that support first-generation entrepreneurs and emerging technologies.
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
Speaker A: Forbes Books presents the Startup Science Podcast with Gregory shepherd brought to you by StartupScience IO. Uh, Greg is an entrepreneur who's built and sold 12 businesses, a recipient of four private equity awards, featured TEDx speaker, and Ben Bella Publishing and Penguin Random House author. Here's Gregory Shepherd.
Speaker B: I'm back with the Raw shakey and entrepreneurial lead at UC San Diego and CEO of the Janus Innovation Hub. We've been discussing how he transformed his academic career into a mission of empowering immigrant entrepreneurs. So Aris, what lessons did you learn from launching and exiting your first startup that you're using now in the Janus Innovation Hub?
Speaker C: Yes, for this successful exit that we had, it takes around eight months during the negotiations with uh, the buyer. Uh, the most important lesson for me during that time was flexibility, uh, and uh, being flexible. This is very important. Listen, during that time for me, when you want to negotiate with someone, when you want to get something that you create with your hand and you know, you make it on your own. But uh, this is a time you, you uh, have to let it go and start the new job and start the uh, new things to do to make the new impact in the world. So you should be flexible, you should be uh, um, agile in doing this kind of uh, decisions because you know, uh, the opportunity is not happen all the time. The opportunity is not. You are not in a flow, an influx of opportunity. If you get an opportunity to do something and if you think this is the right time, do that at the, at that moment. Don't let it go and don't uh, um somehow uh, mess up with lots uh, of factors from different uh, aspects. Just if you decide to uh, buy something, if you decide to sell something at that point in your vision and at the point in your carrier um, path, let's uh, do it happen. Don't stick to uh, something for all your life. You have to. All the people, the audience should have to somehow experience something new, uh, be flexible, be uh, somehow agile in this kind of decisions and leap uh, into your uh, next business, leap into your next, next era of your life.
Speaker B: So for people that are listening, can you explain what a Innovation Hub is, what a accelerator, incubator, et cetera, like what this is. If you're listening and you're a brand new founder and you're, you're, you're not even a founder. You're what we call a wantrepreneur, right? And you're sitting there going, I really want to be an entrepreneur and I like listening to the podcast. What Is an accelerator. What is an innovation hub? What is an incubator and how can it help me?
Speaker C: Yeah, if you're, if if the audience are uh considers themselves as an entrepreneur or have a plan to be an entrepreneur. Uh the the very in a very very earlier stage they need to get some kind of support from friends and family people that they have some, some kind of experience or maybe from incubators. Incubators are some places or some uh firms that help you to make your super early stage idea into something more tangible to the uh some kind of MVP minimum viable product or prototype that you can present it for your potential customers. Make something solid, make something rigid for your um uh next customers, for next investors. So you need to go for this kind of programs to turn your idea into uh prototype into uh minimum viable product, minimum presentable product to the next level of your journey. The acceleration when we talk about acceleration it means that now you have mvp, now you have minimum viable products something that you can present it to your potential customers. Now that's time to uh m Add a more feature to it. Make it uh functional make it something that works as a product that uh people can use it, people can apply it in the real world. So you uh go for for example acceleration program and get ready raise fund for uh in a ah gruesome stage for example. And uh that's the difference between um incubator and accelerator. In Janus Innovation Hub we consider themselves as an incubator and when uh it means that we work with super early stage startups. If you have any kind of um ideas um and if your character fits with um um fit with our uh demands with our um with Janus Innovation Hub then we put uh you in the next roasting roster and next cohort we collaborate with you um we providing three different support. First uh tailor made mentorship. Uh second we bundle you with a technical team. It's very important to get you this kind of services in a super early stage startups. And finally we found that based on our experience people in earlier stage uh has some kind of lack of product management. They do not have a enough uh understanding of being product manager so they're somehow uh waste their resources if they do not get enough support in product management services. So we bundle a senior product manager with them uh with a high level of commitment with those teams and support them to make their mvp uh during this six to nine months cohorts it's up to the program that they sign um up for that and at the end of the day we connect them to the acceleration programs, we connect them to the VC pool that we have to um, the other investors or uh see the stage.
Speaker B: So let me shift a little bit. I'm interested in decentralized distributed data systems and the decentralized data Description Systems Lab that you have. Can you talk a little bit about what that is and what drove you to do that?
Speaker C: Yeah, uh Decentralized Distributed Data System that was the name of the lab that I had uh during I was working in Sheriff University of Technology as a faculty member on that uh lab we are working on uh blockchain uh technologies and uh tokenizations for different applications. That was one of the main vertical that we are still into it that we are still working on that. And uh a few of this idea that you can find in Janus Innovation Hub came from uh decentralized distributed data systems Lab and we think that in the future the fintech, this is the promising that the fintech will go to this um kind of technologies in crypto on the side of cryptocurrencies and blockchains technology especially with the new President elect and their teams. Um I think that uh we will shift uh more and more to this part of the technology and uh yes we will hear a lot about new uh kind of regulation that we will have in the US and new uh money that will uh influx to the uh blockchain and cryptocurrencies and that's one of our uh verticals that we are still working on it.
Speaker B: How do you approach building and leading multidisciplinary teams from your perspective specifically as it pertains to Janus innovation? Because now you're talking about all whole bunch of startups with all different disciplines. How do you approach working and leading with these teams?
Speaker C: Yeah, you know the most important things that help us to learn this issues, to learn this skills is uh was um Covid really Covid was the best feature uh of uh all of our uh teammates and co founders of Janus Innovation Hub. We learned how we can manage uh teams from different places. We could uh, we could not meet up anytime that we wanted. Ah so uh we had to learn how we can collaborate with each other from different parts of the Australia, from different parts of the world. So we sharpen our skills, we had to sharpen our skills otherwise we uh dooms to fail. For interdisciplinary uh teams the most important things is make a harmony between different um different disciplines. How you can uh translate, how you can interpret uh different teams, uh different people with different school of thought with different hypothesis to talk with each other. How you can interpret this? Uh, uh, based on our experience, we found that every team has different features, has different character. You need to understand uh, the character of the teams and it takes, and it really takes times to understand how people in a team can talk to each other. Communication, communication, communication. This is the most important things, uh, learned from COVID If you want to be on the same page, you need to communicate as much as possible. You don't need to delve into the old disciplines and uh, know every corner of science for example, or every corner of that disciplines to talk with them. You only need to try to communicate with people. Well, have a general um, knowledge of that and ask people, ask the different disciplines, ask the different teams to talk with each other. The most important things that we do for interdisciplinary team is to help them, is trying to support them to talk with each other more and more, to communicate each other more and more, to listen to each other more and more. So when we talk about effective communication, uh, we really believe into it. We uh, educate those guys, our teams, uh, uh, we not only learn but what also try to push them. Yeah, if you want to be on the same page, you need to communicate guys, otherwise we're going to fail.
Speaker B: Let me switch gears a little bit and ask you about some advice you would have for academic researchers who are looking to commercialize their work. There's a lot of academics out there who get patents and file things and there's a whole, there's an entire area called technology transfer from people in academia who can't figure out how to commercialize what they do. What advice would you have for them?
Speaker C: That's a very good question, Dweck. I asked um, several times from different academia people what is the best time for being entrepreneur? And you know, what's my answer is? My answer is now. Now. If they ask me this question next year, I say now. If they ask me this question last week, I say now you have to move, uh, out from, open the door and uh, start your journey. Otherwise you cannot learn. This is not something you can find from the book. This is not something you can find from with getting uh, courses, with watching YouTube. Yeah, of course you should do that. But first of all, you need to dive into the ocean of entrepreneurship. Otherwise that's just, that's just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker B: How would you, what, what advice would you have for people to identify market needs and the potential for new technology solutions as an academic, like let's say they haven't come up with something but they want to be an entrepreneur. How would you, how would you give them advice on identifying market needs and what potential there is for new innovations?
Speaker C: This is one of the, not a good character of uh, academia people. That's because they're not connected with uh, real markets, with the real world. They think that what they develop in their labs is the uh, best solution for the world, is the best solution for the markets. Uh, you know, so uh, if they're start, if they're attached to this kind of idea that they develop in their lab, they're gonna fail for sure. So uh, my advice for people from academia for the other place, um, this is not a difference between where they are coming. I criticize the concept of North Star. This is not a North Star. In the uh, current world, the only North Star is pivots. If you want to make something work, you should pivot. Pivots. Pivots, pivots and proceed. Otherwise if you have an idea and you get to stick to it, you uh, you'll be a patriot of that idea. You're going to fail for sure. Stay in academia.
Speaker B: What has been your most challenging startup experience and what did you learn from it?
Speaker C: Yeah, the most challenging startups that um, I had, I had startups in, in Dubai. Uh, we were working on uh, we are working on a game on that days. Uh the game based on cryptocurrencies and tokenizations and what I learned from uh, data startup um, failed on that time. And the most important things that I, I learned from that startup was the most lesson learned for me was um, fee the teams with high level of commitments. So uh, if you uh, cannot sometimes because of lack of money you decide to uh, rely on unreliable people with low quality, with low level of commitments. That's the single failure points.
Speaker B: I agree with that.
Speaker C: Yeah. I think that if you're, if you, if you, if you do not have enough money for that, try to find the high quality people but change the approach of collaborate with them. For example, uh, use some kind of term and conditions to um, give them sharing instead of pay less money to low quality people. And at the end of the day uh, your business would fail.
Speaker B: Yeah. What emerging market technologies or sectors do you see that you're most excited about right now?
Speaker C: Yeah, I'm very excited about blockchain technology.
Speaker B: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker C: Yeah. Because uh, not only because of some kind of political reasons but also because of their, the security matters and uh, in this era the reliability. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And accessibility. And um, I think that blockchain is the uh, Next again they would be blockchain will be the next big attractor, big absorb, absorber of money and resources again.
Speaker B: I think so too. I mean, I think that I was thinking about it too with regards to elections and how awesome it would be if elections were run on blockchain because
Speaker C: yeah, of course that's a cool idea.
Speaker B: Yeah, it's like the perfect use case, right, for, for blockchain is voting. You know, it's like.
Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.
Speaker B: Yeah. Uh, and you wouldn't have the concerns about people, you know, tricking the machines and that sort of stuff because everything would be on the block. So it's just seems like it's just a way better way to go about it. Eris, I really appreciate your time and your energy. Thank you so much for joining the Startup Science Podcast. I really appreciate it.
Speaker C: Thank you so much Greg for having me and I'm really happy to get connected to you and uh, Startup Science. Startup Science is one of the gem. Really appreciate it and I'm sure that uh, not very far from today we will hear more and more about Startup Science.
Speaker B: Thank you so much. I hope you have a great day. I appreciate it.
Speaker C: You too, have a good one.
Speaker B: And that's it for another episode of the Startup Science podcast. If you can leave a five star review on Apple or Spotify, I would deeply appreciate it. Founders, As a thank you for changing our world, I'm offering free access to my startup platform Visionaries by Gregory Shepherd. A one stop shop for founders with everything from a startup academy investor match, grant finders, pitch finders and a whole lot more. Go to gregory shepherd.com to get visionaries access, use code founders all capital for free access to the platform and check it out yourself until I see you next time, my friends. Namaste.
Speaker A: The Startup Science Podcast with Gregory shepherd is brought to you by StartupScience IO. Founders can log on to StartupScience IO and use code Forbes to get free access. To connect and find out more about Greg, go to gregorysheppard. Com. The Startup Science Podcast is a production of Forbes Books.
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