Eric Fisher

Our goal with Labfundr is to help scientists make more discoveries. All my daily activities are focused on building awareness about Labfundr, helping people plan their campaigns and enabling the public to directly support research through crowdfunding.

That said, no two days are the same.

I spent my days communicating with many different people. Business involves a lot of talking in person, by phone, by email, text, Twitter, Skype, Facebook, and LinkedIn. You get the idea. And that’s just messages, not including actual social media posts. That’s another daily activity as well.

These interactions are with team members, scientists, CEO’s, administrators, potential investors, potential customers, advisors, the media, other startup founders and business professionals.

Other activities are a lot of research, marketing, administrative tasks, random errands, and attending educational events to learn more about running a startup.

It might sound surprising, but I use STEM skills all the time in my business activities.

Doing a PhD makes you learn how to be organized, manage your time, do presentations, think critically and creatively, and scour the internet for information you need.

On top of all that, my years of experience in the research community and exposure to how science funding works have been a huge help. In business, you need to deeply understand people’s problems to have any chance of creating a solution for them.

I regularly work on problem solving with team members, advisors and mentors. As the CEO, decisions fall at my feet, but I constantly get other people’s perspectives and insight on problems and business matters. No one person can know, or do, everything themselves. And you will get into trouble if you think you can.

In science, the best researchers are the ones who are open to give and take advice from their peers. Business is the exact same.

Lastly – and importantly – I have fun!!!