>Agents and IPOs: A retrospective of my academic career
>(2000-2050) Simon H. Friedman*
>
>It's been a long and exciting career as an academic
>scientist, and as I look back on the time I spent doing
>science, I realize that perhaps my greatest contributions
>were in the way science is done and not in my specific
>academic contributions.
>
>Early in my career as an assistant professor, I was being
>eaten alive in negotiations, especially by MBA types from
>venture capital firms. It seemed their whole lives were
>centered around setting up deals, and their skills were
>honed for that purpose. I, on the other hand, spent most
>of my timethinking of ideas, working in the lab and writing
>grants.
>
>Oh sure, there are minor negotiations that permeate human interactions, but
>I was completely out of my league in talking to these guys.
>
>As an assistant professor in aero/astro, I had come up with
>a small, personal jet pack that would allow people to move
>through the airspace of crowded cities with ease, crossing
>Manhattan in about 2 minutes at rush hour, compared with a
>30-minute drive in traffic. There were specific scientific
>issues that needed to be resolved, including the
>characterization and refinement of a lightweight composite
>material (one of my areas of specialty) that was key for
>making the jet packs light. There was considerable interest
>from a couple of venture capital firms in supporting the
>work.
>
>However, when I went to discuss the nitty-gritty details
>with them, it became clear that by signing on, though I
>would get the quick infusion of money I needed to push the
>research forward, I would also quickly lose control of my
>ideas and labor. It was a source of frustration.
>
>It was around then that I met a man who was to turn around
>my situation and, at the same time, start a revolution in
>the way academics pursue research and funding. I played
>racquet ball at a health club in the Los Angeles area and,
>by joining a "ladder," I played different people of similar
>ability a couple of times a week. One guy I kept playing
>and grew friendly with was Ed "Buddy" Miller. Ed was an
>agent involved in the music industry and represented a
>bunch of folks (most of whom I hadn't heard of but was
>assured were "big names").
>
>He found my stories of negotiations with the venture capital
>firms interesting, and he liked to point out the parallels
>between the two businesses, which I didn't quite see. "You
>know, these situations are almost identical ...," he told me
>one day after a game. "In the music biz, like in the science
>biz, you have talented individuals with ideas and skills that
>are rare or unique. It makes negotiations for me pretty straightforward. Of
>course, there is this unknown aspect of
>the final product: do people want it, are they going to buy
>it? But once you have a 'hit-maker,' negotiating a great deal
>just isn't so hard."
>
>I just laughed. The idea of having an agent for negotiating
>in science seemed silly. Ed continued: "You know, a generation
>ago musicians were signing their own deals too. These kids got
>screwed in the process. And you know why? Because they were
>like you!" I frowned and raised an eyebrow. Ed laughed: "Hey,
>relax! They are like you in a good way, but it's a way that
>gets 'em screwed every single time. They love music, like you
>love science. They spend their lives thinking about songs,
>writing lyrics, honing their chops. You do the same thing. But
>because of that, you got no skills with the people! Not only
>that, but as soon as someone waves a little green in front of
>your nose to do your creative thing, you think you've died and
>gone to heaven. 'They like me! They think I'm great!' What a
>bunch of egos!" He winked at me and I just said, "Yeah, yeah,
>yeah."
>
>He continued: "Of course, that ego stuff is great, but it
>screws you over good. After going through the grinder (that's
>the small clubs for these bands and grad school for you I'm guessing), they
>are so beat down that the first person to
>smile at them gets the nod. Some of them get into contracts
>that they never get out from under!"
>
>I nodded and said, "The time I spend on the business side
>of science just drains me. I don't want to use energy to
>worry about the kind of deal I'm setting up or whether it
>will give me enough money to really explore my ideas." I
>paused, and then looked up quickly, "Hey! Maybe you should
>negotiate for me, Ed. You could be my academic agent!"
>
>He looked up at me and didn't smile. "You know, that would
>probably be the best thing you could do for yourself."
>
>Over the next weeks, we talked about it more, and finally we
>set it up. Ed was going to be my agent. He waived the 15% fee
>he normally charged: "First of all, this is going to be a
>learning experience for me, so I don't feel right about
>charging. Second, if this thing works out like I think it
>will, I think there is going to be a big future for this
>business, and I'm going to be in on the ground floor." Well,
>it turned out Ed was right. There was a big future for
>academic agents.
>
>He liked to say, "Money is generic ... lots of folks have
>money, but your talent is unique. Don't undersell it." He
>almost doubled the amount I had coming from the venture
>capitalists and cajoled more lab space from my dean. By
>2010, a majority of top academic scientists had agents.
>Indeed, getting noticed by an agent had become part of the
>academic process, right out of grad school. As academic agents
>became more and more knowledgeable about science, they had made inroads into
>helping postdocs find academic positions. There
>was even talk about instituting a draft, like in pro sports,
>and that came to fruition in the 2030s.
>
>Perhaps the biggest advancement came around 2015, when Ed and
>I came up with the idea of the academic IPO (initial public offering).
>Although my career was going well and my ideas were maturing and moving
>forward, I had become increasingly tied to
>the desk writing grants, especially for the more "academic"
>areas I was interested in. This was a source of frustration,
>as I loved doing science and thinking about science, but I
>found myself spending about half my time on the grant process.
>
>I was complaining about this to Ed one day, and he said,
>"I've been thinking about this whole funding issue, and I
>think I have a solution: an academic IPO. What we do is an
>initial public offering, selling shares of your future career."
>My forehead furrowed. "OK, just hear me out. The money you
>raise from the sale of shares is invested and the interest is
>used to support your research. It will be like a permanent endowment." I
>shot a rubber band across my office. "So how
>much money are we talking about and why are these
>people giving it up?" I queried.
>
>"I think we can raise $30 million easy in an initial sale
>of shares of your future career. These would represent a
>total of 49% of your future career proceeds. Forty-nine
>percent of any awards, honoraria, or patent proceeds would
>be distributed to your shareholders. In return, they give
>you complete academic freedom for the rest of your career.
>You will have about $1 million to $3 million a year for
>research to do what you want with, depending on how it's
>invested." Ed continued: "With the success of your jet pack,
>aside from a few unfortunate outstanding law suits, I think
>it will be easy to convince folks that you will be generating
>more money-making ideas in the future."
>
>I countered, "Look, Ed, we've had this discussion before;
>'money-making ideas' is not what I'm about. I don't mind commercializing my
>ideas; heck, I think it's a good idea
>even, but I don't think I can sell myself as a money-making
>fund for investors."
>
>Ed considered this for a minute and responded, "You are not
>selling yourself as anything like that. These investors are
>savvy enough to know that every once in a while, what you
>happen to find interesting and study because of purely
>intellectual curiosity may in fact be the basis for an
>incredibly lucrative entity. You don't have to misrepresent
>yourself in any way, shape, or form."
>
>I wasn't convinced, and we decided to call it a day. I still
>had misgivings about the idea, but eventually the lure of a
>constant source of funding and the freedom from grant writing
>won me over. On July 18, 2016, we had an initial public
>offering of shares of my future career. Thanks to some
>well-organized hype, these sold fast and brought in more than
>Ed had envisioned originally: a total of about $50 million.
>
>Since that day, I've never had to worry about funding my
>lab, and in the end, Ed was right: Although most of my
>research was of purely academic interest and had no
>commercial spin-offs, I managed to hit on a few more
>lucrative ideas that paid off my shareholders many times
>over. And now, here it is 50 years after I started my career.
>If I am honest with myself, I have to say that I will probably
>be remembered more for the revolution I helped start and not
>for my scientific accomplishments. The use of academic agents
>and academic IPOs forever changed the face of science and were
>even more revolutionary than the use of ultralight personal
>jet packs.
>
>This essay is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,
>and incidents either are the product of the author's
>imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
>actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------
>
>The author was a freewheeling and care-free postdoc in the
>chemistry department at Caltech when he wrote this essay; now
>he is a harried and stressed starting faculty member at the University of
>Missouri in Kansas City with not nearly as much
>time for such philosophical musings. Simon H. Friedman, Division
>of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Missouri, Kansas City,
>MO 64110, USA. E-mail: FriedmanS@umkc.edu
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