OXN Labs

Example "problem" slide for pitch deck:

"Manufacturers lose $50B annually to unplanned equipment downtime. Current maintenance is reactive—they fix machines after they break. Existing predictive tools produce too many false alarms."

Clear. Concrete. Costly.

That's what gets investor attention.

What NOT to include in your pitch deck:

❌ Literature review
❌ Detailed methodology
❌ Statistical validation
❌ Full list of publications
❌ Academic awards

Save these for the appendix.

Investors will ask if they need them.

Your pitch deck should be 10 slides, not 23 (or more).

The 10-slide framework:

1. Title
2. Problem
3. Market size
4. Solution
5. How it works
6. Traction
7. Business model
8. Competition
9. Team
10. Ask
Extra: Appendix for everything else

If it doesn't answer an investor question, remove it.

Academic pitch decks start with:

Background
Literature gap
Methodology

By slide 5, investors don't know what problem you're solving.

Investor decks start with:

Problem (what's broken)
Market size (how big is this)
Solution (what you're building)

Lead with why this matters, not how you got here.

You don't need to hide your entrepreneurial work. But you do need clear, confident language for talking about it.

Practice saying it out loud until it feels confident, not defensive. Then have the conversation.

Your work deserves to be explained clearly, not apologized for.

The reframe that changes everything for academic entrepreneurs:

❌: "I'm doing a startup on the side"
✅: "I'm testing whether our lab's work solves real problems"

❌: "I'm trying to make money from my research"
✅: "I'm ensuring research gets applied, not just published"

Same work. Different frame.

As an academic entrepreneur, here's what your students are worried about:

"Is my advisor still going to be available?"

"Does this mean they're leaving academia?"

"Should I be doing commercial work too?"

A good solution is to address it directly in a lab meeting and model transparency to them.

Company trajectory:
Pre-revenue or early pilots → Keep day job

$100K-$500K revenue, growing → Test 6 more months part-time, hire help, reassess

$500K-$1M+ revenue, scaling → Strong signal to go full-time

Raised $1M+ → Investors expect full-time

Know which stage you're in. Don't jump prematurely.

Financial reality check:
Academic salary: $80K-$200K+ with benefits

Founder salary (pre-funding): < $60K, no benefits

If you go full-time, can you take a $60K-$120K pay cut for 12-24 months?

If not, academia might give you MORE runway to build sustainably.

Financial stress = bad decisions.

Not all colleagues respond the same way to your entrepreneurial work.

Three types:

➡️Genuinely curious → Share openly
➡️Skeptical but not hostile → Reassure them
➡️Hostile → State your position and move on

Know which type you're talking to. Adjust accordingly.

Talking About Entrepreneurship Within Your Department "So... are you planning to leave academia?" (And how to answer that question)

"So... you're leaving academia?"

Every academic entrepreneur gets this question.

Most fumble the answer.

Learn how to talk about entrepreneurship in a way that makes sense to your colleagues.

Stop apologizing. Start framing it as research translation:

thespinout.substack.com/p/talking-ab...

The mistake researchers make:

Post a few times in January → Get minimal engagement → Decide it's not working → Stop posting.

Don't do that.

Content positioning is a 6-month game, not a 6-week game.
Commit to 6 months. Two posts per week. Then evaluate.

Consistency beats volume. Every time.

Your first few LinkedIn posts won't get much traction.
It's normal. You're building from scratch.
But post consistently (twice a week) for 6 months and get:

➡️People engaging regularly
➡️DMs from new prospects
➡️Invitations to conversations or partnerships

That's the positioning you're building for.

"What if I post and nobody likes it?"

Remember: you're optimizing for positioning, not popularity.

If 50 people see your post and 3 are potential customers who think "this person gets it," you've succeeded.

Engagement is a vanity metric. Positioning is strategic.

What to share in Post 2 (strategic thinking):

✅ A tradeoff you're navigating
✅ A decision framework you're using
✅ A mistake you made and what you learned

❌ Vague observations about "the future"
❌ Hot takes designed to be controversial

Show your thinking. Admit uncertainty. Invite conversation.

What to share in Post 1 (insight from your work):

✅ A customer conversation that revealed something surprising
✅ A pattern you're seeing across the market
✅ A problem most people don't realize exists

❌ Your latest publication (unless tied to market problem)
❌ Generic advice or inspirational quotes

The 2-posts-per-week structure:

Post 1 (Mon/Tues): Share a specific insight from your work.
→ Builds credibility

Post 2 (Thurs/Fri): Share how you're thinking about a challenge.
→ Builds thought leadership

~50 posts over 6 months = Credibility w/o burnout

Academic entrepreneurs think they need to post on LinkedIn every day.

Wrong.

You need to post strategically and consistently.

Two well-crafted posts per week will do more for your credibility than 30 mediocre posts.

You're not trying to become an influencer. You're trying to build positioning.

Academic culture teaches you that "selling yourself" is unseemly. Let your work speak for itself.

That works for tenure. But not for entrepreneurship.

Very few will read your publications to discover your brilliance.

They'll skim your LinkedIn in 30 seconds to see if you speak their language.

The 30-minute LinkedIn fix:

➡️Headline: Add commercial problem you're solving (5 min)
➡️About: Rewrite as problem → expertise → what you're building (15 min)
➡️Experience: Reframe activities as outcomes (10 min)

That's it. Don't overthink it.

When someone googles you, they make a snap judgment in 30 seconds.

If your LinkedIn reads like a CV and nothing else, they assume you think like an academic.

This means they assume you'll talk about methodology and publications, not customer problems and market traction.

Translation matters.

On LinkedIn for academic entrepreneurs...

Don't write: "Conduct research on machine learning for medical imaging"

Write: "Developed AI models that help radiologists detect early-stage lung cancer with 15% higher accuracy—piloted at [Hospital]"

Same work. But one is activity. One is outcome.

Your "About" section is probably a faculty bio listing:

➡️ Your research focus
➡️ Your publication record
➡️ Your grants

Rewrite it to answer:

✅ What problem exists in the market?
✅ Why are you positioned to solve it?
✅ What are you building now?

Most academic LinkedIn profiles answer the question:
"What do I do in academia?"

The better question:
"What value do I create, and for whom?"

Same work. Different frame.

Your LinkedIn Profile Is Lying About You Your LinkedIn reads like a CV. That's the problem.

Your LinkedIn headline is prime real estate.

Today, it likely says: "Assistant Professor of [Field]"

That's invisible to customers searching for solutions.

Add a second line: "| Helping [who] solve [what problem]"

Same credibility. Better positioning.

👉 thespinout.substack.com/p/your-linke...

The only way to fail at customer discovery is to stop asking questions.

Every "no" tells you something useful:

- Talking to the right people?
- Describing the right problem?
- Explanation makes sense?
- Has the market already tried to solve this?

All of that is data. And data moves you forward.

When 8 out of 10 people say "this isn't a problem for us," you've misidentified your customer segment.

When 2 out of 10 say it, those are outliers.

The difference matters.

Patterns emerge around conversation 15-20, not conversation 5.
Keep going.

Most people think resilience is something you have.

But from my research and learning, I've discovered it can be something you DO.

For those navigating academic entrepreneurship, this has been particularly challenging recently (pauses on grants).

I'll try to break down the 5 practices next week.

If you run an experiment and get contradictory results, you don't throw out the experiment.

You analyze what happened and update your hypothesis.

Customer discovery works the same way.

💡 "No" isn't failure. It's information about whether you've correctly identified the market.

After at least 10 customer conversations, you won't get 10 "yes" responses.

Here's what success actually looks like:

➡️ 6-7 confirm the problem exists
➡️ 2-3 already tried to solve it, but without success
➡️ 1-2 say "not for us" but refer you elsewhere

That's not failure. That's data.