When Dr. Mark Roth launched his first startup company in 2005, the biologist had a relatively straightforward goal: Translate the preliminary but promising results he’d seen in his Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center lab to a medical treatment that could actually help people.

Measured simply in dollars and cents, the company, Ikaria, was a success. Buoyed by Roth’s own scientific achievements—he was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2007and had notched several high-profile scientific publications— Ikaria acquired another biotech company before being bought itself by the U.K. pharmaceutical company Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals for more than $2 billion.

But by Roth’s measure, he had failed.

Ikaria didn’t move his ideas—to use certain simple salts to stem injuries caused by loss of blood flow—to a clinical trial, let alone to market. Ikaria — and later Mallinckrodt — ended up focusing on different types of therapies. Roth knew he needed outside investors to get his company off the ground. But once he’d found financial partners, his work shifted from the traditional academic path.

As a lifelong academic scientist who’d relied mainly on funding from the government, Roth had a lot to learn about how the investment world works, what it’s like to strike compromises with your financial partners and how to work toward a product or company that’s not only financially successful but successful in improving human lives as well.

It was a lot to take in.

That’s not unusual for scientists trying to start a company after decades of working in the academic model, said Dr. Patrick Shelby, director of technology management at Fred Hutch. These scientists might feel at a disadvantage throwing their hat into the ring with serial entrepreneurs. But where they have an advantage is that their ideas are often much further developed because they are built on years of work in an academic lab, Shelby said.

Read the full article about scientists launching startup companies by Rachel Tompa at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.