A big mistake in my entrepreneurial road

Although I haven’t really started my own business, I had already made a big mistake.

I just ran away from what I really should do.

After my coming to Finland in August 2014, I have started to think about what business I should do.

At that time, I believed that high potential, high entrance barrier, high technology based business would be better choice for me, and the commercialization of research results in the university could match these characteristics.

I started to look for scientific labs and visit the commercialization service office in the university.

Then, I found a great lab where an amazing solution had been developed as a novel diagnostic kit with higher diagnostic accuracy and much lower cost comparing to the current available diagnostic methods.

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There were 2 main people in the lab for this project: one is a senior researcher who is both the leader of this project and the boss of the lab, and the other one is a master’s student who is in charge of all practical affairs of this project.

While listened to them, I felt the success rate of this product and business is very high and great fortune could be there waiting for me. As a result, even though the offer they provided to me is not as good as I expected (suspend my current master’s program and work as a full-time job for 1.5 years for clinical evaluation with the salary level of a new graduate from university), I just agreed to join them quickly without much hesitation. Inside their introduction of their plan, they will establish a company after 1.5 years.

I talked these to Mr. Kato in Japan, and I got some important advises.

“Joining this team will not give you chances to do top management jobs.”

“It will be very different from what you expected of being an entrepreneur.”

I spent plenty of time thinking the meaning of these words.

………….yes, that’s true.

It’s true that I won’t be able to do the top management job in this team in a short period of time. I’ll be in charge of marketing or something else not at the center of the business. The responsibility for final decision, budgets, business direction will belong to others. Therefore, being at the center of the business, finding operating problems, thinking of the problems of business and resolving the problems will not be my major works.

They did have a great product, but they didn’t have a great philosophy for their business. I don’t feel I can carry out my philosophy for business by joining their team. I won’t be a leader in a short period of time and I’ll only be a member.