Origin Story

Welcome to my page, where I will be sharing my experiences and ideas about transitioning from the research laboratory to the world of start-ups and business, as well as parenting wisdom and philosophy. 

Before I share the things I have learned over the years as a researcher turned co-founder, mum of 2 teens and ever evolving and learning human, I thought I would start by telling you a bit about myself and what I aim to share with you. 

Let me just preface with this caveat, I do not claim to be an expert business person nor am I in line for any parenting awards anytime soon, rather, I see myself like a masterpiece in the making with each life lesson learnt adding another brush stroke to the final picture. In life, I have often found great joy in teaching others and helping them progress in their own life’s journey and decided it was time to share this on a larger scale…..(cue blogging!)

So I hope you gain some enjoyment from reading my blog, and if you are able to take away at least one bit of useful information that you can integrate into your own life, great! If not, I hope I can at the very least, encourage you to think about things a little differently. 

Six years ago, I co-founded a start-up company, Woven Optics, which is building portable imaging technology for the agricultural industry and have worked in the role of Director of Operations. I also work as a Product Manager (~3 years) at a second start-up company which is also developing another type of imaging technology for the medical, agricultural & industrial sectors. You would be forgiven for thinking that I may have a background in either business, technology or agriculture, but the reality is that my professional training is in none of these areas. 

From 1999 to 2021, I worked in medical research and have a PhD in Medicine with a focus on Neuroscience/Pain Physiology and a Graduate Diploma in Secondary Education (Science). I have gained many skills in various laboratory techniques including microscopy (imaging things using various fancy microscopes), surgical skills, behavioural testing skills and immunofluorescent staining skills (making cells & tissue glow, which we view on the aforementioned microscopes), to name a few.

Reading this, it may beg the question, how did a medical researcher transition from the laboratory to starting her own business? 

The origin story, like many other start-up founders, is one of timing, opportunity and the right level of risk appetite. Be warned, this is not a manual on how to do things, but rather how I made it happen for me (and the story continues to evolve).

My co-founder (Dr Ben Pullen) and myself were collaborating on a project using some “cool tech” developed by a third collaborator. We thought it may have some potential to be used as a predictive tool for assessing heart health. Knowing that neither of us were particularly drawn to the life of a tenured academic, we were searching for opportunities to side-step out of research and into commercialisation of medical technology. With that in mind, and with the blessing and support of our third collaborator (the creator of said "cool tech”), we sought to learn how one would go about testing the commercial viability of the “cool tech” we were using and enrolled into a Entreupreneurship program run by the University of Adelaide (Tech eChallenge, for those wondering). This was based at the institute where we were carrying out our research at the time. This 12 week program helped us to learn about the basics concepts of creating a start-up, validating an idea and identifying the right type of people (market fit) that would actually want to buy our product. 

As researchers, this last part was the most challenging. My dear reader, you should understand that as researchers/scientists we often do what we do for the greater good, for the benefit of society, whether it is to cure a disease or simply to contribute to the pool of overall knowledge of how the world works. Being told that you have a great idea that could help many people, but it would suck as a business because no one would buy it, is a really bitter pill to swallow. It also made me realise that as people, we are closely connected to our ideas and afraid to say them out loud for fear of judgement or worse, ridicule from our peers. But that is a topic for a future blog post…(see what I did there!).

So here we were, Ben and I, trying to learn the fundamentals of developing a start-up business and how to validate our idea and pitch it to “investors” (or in this case a panel of judges choosing a team to be awarded prize money), when we were approached by an advocate of the agricultural industry that had been listening to us present and contribute to conversations throughout the course. He asked us a very interesting question; how could we use skills we had gained in medical research to solve problems in the agricultural sector. Admittedly, this is not something I had ever thought of myself, but I asked, what was the biggest problem he thought the industry was facing right now that needed a better solution? For some background information, each semester the prize money for this course is provided by various industry sectors, and this semester it happened to be the Australian Wool Innovation that was funding the prize pool. 

The problem we were presented with was that currently, most wool producers classify the quality of their fleece by visual and tactile inspection, which as you can imagine, without many decades of practice this method would be quite subjective and inaccurate. (For those of you that are curious, one of the biggest contributors to the value of the wool bale is the average diameter or micron value of the fibre. Finer fibres go to your Italian suits and high end apparel, while the coarser fibres are used for items such as carpets etc.)  

Our response was very simple and based on the kind of methods we had used many times in the laboratory. Take a picture on a microscope and measure the average diameter of the fibre using an automated system. Seems simple enough, right? Ah, but using a high end microscope in a lab with a trained technician is one thing, building something that can be used on a farm is quite another, let alone the analysis required to be done. Farmers don’t exactly have days to wait around for results, they need something in real-time to be able to make decisions on the spot. 

Lucky for us, the advocate was visibly excited by the idea and felt the industry would back us IF we could produce it. The judges must have thought it was a good idea too, as we were awarded the 2nd prize for our pitch and used the prize money to start our company, along with one of the judges, a wool producer who shared our vision and wanted to be part of the journey.

Now, remember how I said that creating a start-up is about good timing, opportunity and risk-appetite? Well let’s just say the timing was right and we seized the opportunity to see how far we could ride this wave and set about proving that we could do what we had claimed. This meant finding the right people through our existing collaborations and relationships both within and without the University ecosystem. 

Now, if there is one thing I have learned from this experience is that if you ever want to find a plethora of intelligent and skilled individuals to build a team, a university is a great place to start. It also doesn’t hurt if you collaborate across disciplines which Ben and I had the good fortune to have done so, thanks to work we carried out as part of the Australian Research Council’s Center of Excellence for Nanoscale Biophotonics team.  

We then spent the next 6 years creating and validating the technology, understanding the problem in a deeper sense (remember, we were not farmers nor had we ever handled a raw fleece) and also identified the gaps in our skill base and set about building the right team to ensure our success. 

Six years on and we have raised just shy of $1MIL (AUD) and built a few prototypes to test and are excited to be able to bring something to the industry very soon as they are eagerly awaiting. 

Within those same 6 years, both Ben and I have completed our PhDs in our respective medical fields as well as single parented our respective children. So a lot of juggling skills were required to keep our sanity during this time and I am sure I have learned more about myself in these last 6 years than I did in the many years before. My hope is to share some of the lessons I have learned along the way, from how I used my research and PhD skills to build a business to how I tried and tested various ways to manage family, work, studies and health. Let’s just say a LOT of personal growth was gained as an outcome of these experiences, which I will do my best to convey in my letters to you. 

My journey is far from over, but if any of what I am sharing resonates with you and you want to read more, then feel free to subscribe to my email list for an occasional newsletter and link to my blog. 

Stay curious :)

Vicky