Escape Velocity:
When a new technology gains enough momentum to spin out of academia as a scalable business venture.
Whether the breakthrough is in novel gene therapies, untapped energy sources, or new techniques for recovering critical minerals, Tough Tech solutions typically start as a research breakthrough in an academic lab. These technologies are united by their potential for transformative impact on our health, our industries, and the way we live on this planet — but only if they make it out of the lab and develop into commercial solutions.
This path from the lab to the market is far from guaranteed. It wouldn’t be called Tough Tech if it was easy. Over the last decade, The Engine has worked with hundreds of scientists and engineers across all stages of this journey. From my perspective running The Engine’s tech translation programming, including Blueprint by The Engine™ and Whiteboard by The Engine™, I’ve worked closest with researchers just as they’re making the transition from academia to entrepreneurship.
In that time, I’ve learned a few things about what it takes to successfully achieve escape velocity: the critical threshold where a new technology gains the momentum it needs to leave the gravitational pull of academia and become a scalable business venture.
If we extend the analogy, a rocket needs several critical ingredients in place to achieve escape velocity and exit the atmosphere: the launch pad, the rocket fuel, and the astronauts themselves, equipped with the expertise to pilot their spacecraft. The same is true for startups spinning breakthrough technologies out of academia. In this post, I’ll take a closer look at the ingredients required for new technologies to achieve escape velocity.
The Launch Pad: The University or Research Lab
A rocket is not going to get off the ground without a stable launch pad and all the supporting launch infrastructure that goes with it. Tough Tech startups are no different, only in this case the launch pad is the university. If the university isn’t oriented towards spinning out startups, technologies will have a harder time achieving escape velocity.
MIT and Stanford provide excellent models, spinning out dozens of startups every year. Entrepreneurship is built into the university culture, and research is closely tied to real-world problems. Programs like the MIT Startup Exchange prepare entrepreneurs to engage with industry, while the complementary MIT Industrial Liaison Program facilitates their collaborations with industry.
Of course, not every university will have the same resources and networks that MIT or Stanford have. But they can still build a culture of entrepreneurship that supports researchers spinning out breakthrough tech. For example, University of Colorado Boulder, University of Michigan, Arizona State University, and Purdue University are all spinning out startups at a high rate — despite being far from first-tier venture capital ecosystems.
Another good model is what I’m seeing from the various NSF Engines, who are exploring novel ways to streamline technology licensing across their regional innovation ecosystems: everything from pooling IP, standardizing IP agreements across whole ecosystems, and making structured on and off ramps for IP to match the uniqueness of the tech and the market.
“One principle is clear: technologists need a transparent, navigable licensing pathway so years of progress are not stalled by convoluted, bureaucratic patent processes.”
Technology licensing is critical to any successful spinout. Some technology licensing offices (TLOs) and tech transfer offices (TTOs) are more startup oriented, helping researchers file patents and licensing it back to them. Others are oriented towards maximizing the value of the IP, prioritizing IP licensing to established corporations. And there are a range of TLOs who sit somewhere in between.
Whatever strategy is chosen, each carries the risk of undermining a technology’s escape velocity. A startup-focused approach can still fail if licensing terms or equity demands are so onerous that they drive away investors and make it impossible to raise capital. A licensing-to-corporations approach, meanwhile, should not mean sidelining breakthrough technologies that could grow faster and further in a startup context. Either way, one principle is clear: technologists need a transparent, navigable licensing pathway so years of progress are not stalled by convoluted, bureaucratic patent processes.
Escape velocity also depends on the university’s entrepreneurship culture. This starts from the top down, with the deans and departments who shape the educational journey. Are there entrepreneurship courses available, and are they encouraged? Are there academic advantages for student entrepreneurs? Are students exposed to applied research projects and established startups? In Boston, for example, there is a rich entrepreneurial ecosystem for students to connect with. They can easily see innovation spaces and speak with founders. In the age of Zoom, these kinds of connections are no longer restricted by geography.
One thing I’ve learned working across the 130+ institutions represented in Blueprint and Whiteboard is that entrepreneurial culture isn’t binary. You might have principal investigators (PIs) driving translational, startup-worthy research, but have PhDs opting for stable, high-paying jobs over startup risk. Or vice versa: PhDs eager to spin out companies, but the faculty or research structures aren’t set up to support them.]
“Every ecosystem must diagnose its own cultural gaps and decide: what kind of launchpad do we want to be, and for whom?”
At the faculty level, if professors and PIs risk losing their tenure, they will be discouraged from commercializing their research. In other cases, faculty may not have exposure to the entrepreneurial process. The Engine’s Whiteboard program is designed to help faculty understand this process, connecting faculty with professors and PIs that have successfully founded startups or spun out their research. But there is more work to be done in making PI entrepreneurial education more accessible and a standardized, integral option to the professorship pathway.
One of the biggest challenges with the “launchpad” is alignment: you need PhDs with entrepreneurial spirit, education that nurtures it, and translational processes that make startups viable. And there’s no template. Every ecosystem must diagnose its own cultural gaps and decide: what kind of launchpad do we want to be, and for whom?
Above all, the university has the power to shape perhaps the most important ingredient to a successful venture: the entrepreneurs themselves. By teaching the necessary skills, instilling the confidence to lead, and providing access to the right resources, universities can prepare their students for the founder journey ahead. In Tough Tech, this journey will be particularly long and well, tough.
Preparing Tough Tech Entrepreneurs for Liftoff
Being an entrepreneur doesn’t have quite the same life-or-death stakes as being an astronaut, but it similarly requires years of training, exceptional mental fortitude, and a rare combination of skills. If founders aren’t prepared for the rigors of the entrepreneurial journey in Tough Tech, their ventures are more than likely to end in failure.
Many Tough Tech founders don’t have MBAs or experience running a business. They have PhDs, and their expertise is in the lab. But that doesn’t mean they can’t learn the skills to be a competent and confident business leader: team building, fundraising, networking, business strategy, communication, and more.
From my experience, it's not just about the skills, but also the mindsets. Scientific entrepreneurs need to be resilient, able to fail again and again and keep going. They need to be able to make decisions in the face of ambiguity, letting go of the certainty needed in a research setting, while still setting realistic expectations to maintain credibility. As a founder, you’ll deal with many different stakeholders — investors, board members, employees, and customers — all credible people with different and often conflicting opinions. It takes conviction to cut through the noise.
That conviction may be the most important mindset to develop of them all. When you were in high school, did you even consider the possibility of dropping out? For most people on the PhD or entrepreneur track, that was never even an option. You need even more conviction as a founder in Tough Tech, where many of the solutions have never been built or even attempted. If you radiate confidence in the promise of your technology and your startup’s ability to commercialize it, others will be drawn to follow your vision. The challenge lies in finding that confidence even as your academic, research-oriented mind is trained towards skepticism.
Wherever you are on the entrepreneurial journey, whether you’re just exploring the commercial potential of your technology or pitching investors for your first funding round, The Engine offers programs and resources to support your development as a founder. To start, I’d suggest checking out our resource library for helpful tools, templates, guides, and articles on the essential skills you’ll need to cultivate as a founder, from product development and IP to fundraising and networking.
“If you radiate confidence in the promise of your technology and your startup’s ability to commercialize it, others will be drawn to follow your vision.”
The Rocket Fuel: Capital to De-risk and Scale
A cooperative university and capable founders can get a Tough Tech startup off the ground. But to achieve escape velocity, it needs significant fuel — in other words, capital.
Tough Tech startups require significant capital long before they’re able to demonstrate commercial traction. This is not because they’re inefficient, but because the nature of their work demands it. You can’t validate fusion energy, advanced therapeutics, or next-gen manufacturing with a prototype on a laptop. It takes purpose-built lab space, specialized equipment, physical materials, and sometimes megawatts of power just to get started.
This creates a well-known gap. The capital needed to build early infrastructure often exceeds what startups can raise on their own. And yet, without it, they can’t prove out their technology or chart a credible path to scale. What’s needed is not just more capital, but aligned capital: support from investors, policymakers, and corporate partners who understand the timelines, the risks, and the transformative impact potential of Tough Tech.
Capital can come in many forms. Equity-based, dilutive capital, funded by venture capital firms and angel investors, is a common path for startups. Non-dilutive capital, on the other hand, may be more appealing as it doesn’t dilute founders’ ownership stake in the company and is often suited for Tough Tech companies in their earliest stages while still de-risking their tech. This can come in the form of grant funding, government contracts, and strategic corporate partnerships, among other routes.
“What’s needed is not just more capital, but aligned capital: support from investors, policymakers, and corporate partners who understand the timelines, the risks, and the transformative potential of Tough Tech.”
At The Engine, our role is to provide Tough Tech startups with both the specialized infrastructure they need to de-risk their technology through our Residency program, as well as access to the investor and partner networks they will need to fund it. We acknowledge that funding can be difficult to achieve before a startup reaches critical technical milestones. That’s why we offer grants to subsidize the costs of Residency for select companies with limited funding or on a time-bounded basis between fundraising rounds.
As a mission-driven organization, our focus will always be on accelerating the trajectory of Tough Tech startups and removing the barriers between their bold ideas and the transformative impact they can deliver. It’s about creating the conditions for escape velocity — so that the most promising Tough Tech companies can reach the market, not in spite of the obstacles, but because they had the support to overcome them.
