Aras Sheikhi: Bridging Academia and Entrepreneurship for Immigrant Innovators (Part Two)

Forbes Books presents the Startup Science Podcast with Gregory Shepard, brought to you by startupscience.io. Greg is an entrepreneur who's built and sold 12 businesses, a recipient of 4 private equity awards, featured TEDx speaker, and Ben Bella Publishing and Penguin Random House author. Here's Gregory Shepard.

I'm back with Arash Shekhi, and an 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?

Yes, for this successful exit that we had, it takes around 8 months during the negotiations with The buyer. The most important lesson for me during that time was flexibility and being flexible. This is very important lesson 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 this is a time you have to let it go and start the new job and start the new things to do to make the new impact in the world. So you should be flexible. You should be agile in doing this kind of decisions because, you know, 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 somehow mess up with lots of factors from different aspects. Just if you decide to Buy something, if you decide to sell something at that point in your vision and at the point in your career path, let's do it happen. Don't stick to something for all your life. You have to, all the people, the audience should have to somehow experience something new. Be flexible. be somehow agile in these kinds of decisions and leap into your next business, leap into your next era of your life.

So for people that are listening, can you explain what an innovation hub is, what an accelerator, incubator, et cetera, like what this is? If you're listening and you're a brand new founder and 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?

Yeah, if the audience considers themselves as an entrepreneur or have a plan to be an entrepreneur, in a very, very early 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 be, 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 next customers, for next investors. So you need to go for this kind of programs to turn into your idea into a prototype, into a 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 product, something that you can present it to your potential customers. Now that's time to add more features to it, make it functional, make it something that works as a product that people can use it, people can apply it in the real world. So you go for, for example, acceleration program and get ready to raise funds for, in a growth stage, for example. And that's the difference between incubator and accelerator. In Janus Innovation Hub, we consider themselves as an incubator. And when it means that We work with super early-stage startups. If you have any kind of ideas and if your character fits with our demands, with our— with Janus Innovation Hub, then we put you in the next roster and in next cohort. We collaborate with you. We're providing 3 different support. First, tailor-made mentorship. Second, we bundle you with a technical team. It's very important to get you this kind of services in super early-stage startups. And finally, we found that based on our experience, people in earlier stage has some kind of lack of product management. They do not have a enough understanding of being product managers. So they somehow waste their resources if they do not get enough support in product management services. So we bundle a senior product manager with them, with a high level of commitment with those teams and support them to make their MVP. during this 6 to 9 months cohorts. It's up to the program that they sign 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 the other investors for seed stage.

So let me shift a little bit. I'm interested in decentralized distributed data systems. And the decentralized data distribution systems lab that you have. Can you talk a little bit about what that is and what drove you to do that?

Yeah, decentralized distributed data system, that was the name of the lab that I had during— I was working in Sharif University of Technology as a faculty member. On that lab, we are working on blockchain technologies and tokenizations for different applications. That was one of the main verticals that we are still into it, that we are still working on that. And a few of these ideas that you can find in Janus Innovation Hub came from decentralized distributed data systems lab. And, you know, we think that in the future, the fintech This is the promising that the fintech will go to this kind of technologies in crypto on the side of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, especially with the new president-elect and their teams. I think that we will shift more and more to this part of the technology and yes, we will hear a lot about new kind of regulation that we will have in the US and new money that will influx to the blockchain and cryptocurrencies. And that's one of our verticals that we are still working on it.

How do you approach building and leading multidisciplinary teams from your perspective, specifically as it pertains to Janus Innovation? 'Cause now you're talking about A whole bunch of startups with all different disciplines. How do you approach working and leading with these teams?

Yeah, you know, the most important things that help us to learn these issues, to learn these skills, is, uh, was, um, COVID. Really, COVID was the best teacher, uh, of all of our, uh, teammates and co-founders of Janus Innovation Hub. We learned how we can manage teams from different places. We couldn't, we could not meet up anytime that we wanted. So we had to learn how we can collaborate with each other from different parts of Australia, from different parts of the world. So we sharpen our skills. We had to sharpen our skills. Otherwise, we Doomed to fail. For interdisciplinary teams, the most important thing is make a harmony between different disciplines. How you can translate, how you can interpret different teams, different people with different school of thought, with different hypotheses to talk with each other, how you can interpret this. Uh, based, 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 time to understand how people in a team can talk to each other. Communication, communication, communication. This is the most important things. I 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 know every corner of science, for example, or every corner of that discipline to talk with them. You only need to try to communicate with people well, have a general 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, We really believe into it. We educate them, we, those guys, we, our teams, 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 gonna fail.

Let me switch gears a little bit and ask you about Is 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?

That's a very good question, Dwack. I asked several times from different academia people, what is the best time for being entrepreneur? And you know what 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, uh, move out from, open the door and 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, for, 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.

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?

This is one of the not a good character of academia people. That's because they're not connected with real markets with the real world. They think that what they develop in their labs is the best solution for the world, is the best solution for the markets. You know, so if they're start— if they're attached to this kind of idea that they develop in their lab, they're going to fail for sure. So, uh, my advice for people from academia or for the other place, it's no, um, this is not a difference between where they're coming. I criticize the concept of North Star. This is not a North Star in the, in the, 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're gonna stick to it, you'll be a patriot of that idea, you're gonna fail for sure. Stay in academia.

What has been your most challenging startup experience and what did you learn from it?

Yeah, the most challenging startups that I had, I had startups in, uh, in Dubai. Uh, we were working on, uh, we were working on a game on that days, uh, the game based on cryptocurrencies and tokenizations. And what I learned from, uh, that startup, uh, failed on that time. And the most important things that I learned from that startup was the most lesson learned for me was, uh, the, the teams with high level of commitments. So, uh, if you, if you, uh, cannot, sometimes because of lack of money, you decide to, uh, rely on unreliable people. with low quality, so with low level of commitments. That's the single failure point.

I agree with that.

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 terms and conditions to Give them sharing instead of pay less money to low-quality people. And at the end of the day, your business would fail.

Yeah. What emerging market technologies or sectors do you see that you're most excited about right now?

Yeah, I'm very excited about blockchain technology.

Yeah, I agree.

Yeah, because not only because of some kind of political reasons, but also because of their, the security matters and in this era.

So reliability.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And accessibility and all. I think that blockchain is the Uh, next, again, they would be— blockchain will be the next big attractor, big absorber of money and resources again.

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 yeah, of course, that's a very cool idea.

Yeah, it's like the perfect use case, right? For, for blockchain is voting, you know, it's like—

Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.

Yeah, and you wouldn't have the concerns about people, you know, tricking the machines and that sort of stuff, 'cause everything would be on the block. So it just seems like it's just a, 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.

Thank you so much, Greg, for having me. And I'm really happy to get connected to you and Startup Science. Startup Science is one of the gems. I really appreciate it. And I'm sure that not very far from today, we will hear more and more about Startup Science.

Thank you so much. I hope you have a great day. I appreciate it.

You too. Have a good one.

And that's it for another episode of the Startup Science Podcast. If you can leave a 5-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 Shepard, 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 gregoryshepard.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.

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