A conversation with Ash Ravikumar on how entrepreneurship at CERN connects science and technology, business, and law
We sat down with Ash Ravikumar, Entrepreneur Development Officer at CERN’s Knowledge Transfer group, to discuss entrepreneurship at CERN and his session during the last IdeaSquare Open Doors.
Could you start by introducing yourself?
My name is Ashwin Ravikumar, and I’m the Entrepreneur Development Officer here at CERN’s Knowledge Transfer group. I’m an electrical engineer by education, but I’ve never worked as one. I’ve always worked with commercialisation or supporting scientists commercialise their work. What has given me joy in that role is that it has allowed me to develop a skillset across three different intersections - a venn diagram of science and technology, business, and law. So you have to understand patent law, alongside understand where it will be working and understand why the technology is an incremental gain and a game changer. That was always my niche, and I loved to play in it. It gives you boundary conditions where you can work in and think to yourself ‘what if this actually works the other way around?’ I have worked at five different universities, from the US to Australia to India.
Could you briefly explain your role at CERN?
I really have two mandates at CERN. One is that we have a lot of technologies at CERN, and we want start-ups to use them and take the technology, either incorporating it into their existing products and go to market with that, or create businesses based on these technologies. And these external startups exist in member states and associate member states of CERN. The second mandate I have is to create more startup founders out of CERN. We have a lot of amazing people who come here for a limited time and then leave. My hope is that we can capture a small percentage of those people who are interested in creating something and supporting them through that.
You were involved in the IdeaSquare Open Doors back in February, talking about entrepreneurship. Could you talk a bit about your experience of being part of the event?
When I came to CERN, a lot of people told me nobody from CERN would ever do a startup, with some people even saying that my role wasn’t really required. But my response was that the only way to know for sure was to go and ask people. So with the help of CERN alumni and those who had been at CERN and gone on to become entrepreneurs. And they are all at different stages. My question to them was what service would have helped them in their journey. Invariably, the biggest insight from all of them was that we have seen Nobel laureates at CERN, data scientists, engineers, technicians, but never an entrepreneur. But I’m a strong believer of representation matters. If you see someone doing what you’d like to do, you feel like you can become it. And so we asked them to come back and talk about their experience. For example, physicists can see others in their field making the leap, and they can think to themselves: ‘I can do that too.’ In a way, my talk during the IdeaSquare Open Doors event was more about showing that it’s something we can all do. But I brought in some other voices, so people didn’t just hear it about me - that way the audience could hear from people who are at all different stages of the entrepreneurship process - to hear about what they did, what they’ve learned. So the audience actually got a real perspective of a scientist embarking on their entrepreneurship journey. I’m a strong believer in people not just reading a book about entrepreneurship, but actually going out and doing something.
For me, the context really matters for every entrepreneur’s journey. But when there is a fear of the unknown, you always have a group of people saying that something isn’t possible, that it’s dangerous. If we think back to when someone first came up with the idea of using lasers. Now, we use lasers for so many things. You can weld something, cut a nerve, perform eye surgery. So there are really two challenges entrepreneurs face - one thing is to give it to people who have a need, and they will figure out a way to use it. The second challenge is to make that information available for the inventors to help them go through the journey of how they can make it, helping them ask questions such as: I’ve got this idea, now how do I make it? How can it be manufactured? That context is completely lost within science, where the mindset is ‘I can make it in a lab, so it’ll work perfectly’. But then in the real world, you have to make compromises for its performance. These things are often not taken into context when doing research. So in a way, if data is never going to come into research, how do you put that framework around an invention to actually ask if it’s feasible? And is it desirable? When you ask, how do I build one, how much will it cost for me to make it? But there will still always be people who say it won’t work.
But I think there is a fallacy that scientists have to be entrepreneurs. But for those who want to, it is about how we can help people with those skillsets develop.
What is the Cern Venture Connect (CVC) and how did you come to set it up?
As someone who wants to become an entrepreneur, you need to have the information and knowledge to ask yourself: how am I going to build a prototype? And how am I going to test it? CERN Venture Connector is the official programme of how we are going to do this at CERN. We have all of these technologies and all these amazing people working on it. But accessibility is a problem. So every startup gets asked the question about how their concept works, then gives the information to read about how it works. If you know enough about the concept, you can ask more detailed questions and discuss them. Our aim was to reduce time across the entire process from CERN. So you give out the documentation, saying ‘here’s a technology, go and read about it’. This is what I want to build with it, to say to people ‘here’s a prototype, go build it’ and if it works, then they can come back and say ‘Ok how am I going to make many of these?’ To do that, you need a lot of support from a lot of people - venture capitalists, incubators etc. And it takes time for you to meet them. And if you don’t know who's out there, then it’s an even bigger problem and takes more time. We decided to build a platform, and ask the best people in Europe who have startups, including startups from CERN built on certain technologies, to come and connect with people. And that sort of thing doesn’t happen much at CERN. So we really wanted to create the platform and look at the first principles of design by reducing the amount of time that the process takes. So there is a simple contract that we’ve negotiated with our legal team to get one contract - it doesn’t matter what you are doing, this is what it is. Rather than having to negotiate each contract bespoke, there’s a standard for everyone. Within the entrepreneur process, it’s hard to know the experts you will need. Instead, it’s better to tap into the expertise of people when you know more about what the startup means. So that’s what we are currently doing with CERN Venture Connect, and we are hoping to launch it this year.
What advice can you give other budding entrepreneurs at CERN?
My first and only advice to people is - align your true north. Some of the programmes I really love call it week zero, day zero or t equals zero. But whatever you want to call it, it’s asking yourself what does success look like? If you look at everything happening in the startup world, there are billions of dollars, and everything is crazy. You have to ask yourself if you go there, what are the compromises you will have? What are your negotiables? Where will you compromise? Where will you not compromise? For me, a work-life balance is important. My main advice is to figure out what is your baseline, and where you want to go. Work it out in milestones - where do I want to be in the next three months, then six, then 12. Because I’m an impatient person, everytime I’ve wanted to do something I would always look at the negatives and the things I didn’t manage to achieve. Because everytime you reach a goal, you’ll always look at the things you didn’t achieve rather than the things you did. Writing a plan helps you work out where you want to go and also help you recognise what you have achieved and highlights your progress.