Francois Chaubard knows both sides of the transition. He worked in Fei-Fei Li’s lab, founded Focal, and now advises startups as a visiting partner at Y Combinator while still finishing a PhD. Most academic founders fail, he argues, because the instincts that earn publications can sink a company.
In this Startup School session he walks through the shifts that matter: treating vanity metrics as a warning, telling an important idea apart from a merely interesting one, abandoning the finish line mentality, and learning that you cannot delegate the hard parts.
