Selling out, sort of

Okay, let's talk about this thing.

I have spent the last three and a half years on my PhD (nearly done!), and three years doing research before that. Back in 2022 I decided to not pursue a cushy job as a machine-learning software developer (the big bucks!), because somewhere along the way I had fallen for research instead. The prototyping, the protocol design, the overthinking of every small detail, the statistics, the writing. I love all of it. I even love the submission-and-rejection process. I really do.

So I was never the academic with a startup dream, the way a lot of my colleagues are. The research itself genuinely fulfills me. But I was also living in the fantasy land of scholarships, where my work, however important I believe it is, never actually had to reach the real world. I could write a section of design guidelines, say a quiet prayer that the right person at the right company reads the paper and applies what we found (you can distort someone's sense of time with a vibration, by the way), and move on. If nobody ever read it, I, personally, was never at risk.

Now that I am finishing, I find myself wanting something else from the work. Not money (sorry, Mum), not recognition (sorry, Dad), but actualization. The power to give my work, and my time, some meaning out in the world.

And as I edge toward the job market, I am realizing that wandering around after my own curiosity comes with a price tag. Academic grants are wonderful and necessary, but the well feels like it is drying up, and it will not keep all of us wanderers afloat. So. Commercialization it is.

For years my inbox has filled up with "How to Commercialize Your Research in 3 Easy Steps!", and I ignored every single one. Looked down on them, even. A true researcher is not moved by money, I said. (I still think my best colleagues are the ones with no dreams of being rich or famous. By a mile.) But here is the more honest version: you might be the one that needs to take your research to the hands of the people, and you need money for that.

And what better to start on than…

I grew up with my dad's snoring. It was loud, and for years it wrecked my mum's sleep, which, it turns out, quietly wrecks a lot of other things too. I always filed snoring under "a problem for the older generation". Then I got older. Now it is my friends living it, a couple of them close to breaking up over it, and honestly I would just like to save my friends' relationships.

And here is the part I did not see coming. Snoring might be the most interesting design problem I have ever been handed. It looks like a sleep-optimization problem (physiological optimization is my forte!), so I assumed I knew exactly what I was walking into. I didn't. Underneath, it is a relationship problem. One partner is asking the other to change something they genuinely cannot control, because they only ever do it while they are unconscious. And before you can even introduce a solution, you have to navigate that social conflict first. How delicious! We are building a sleep wearable, but I won't reveal all the secrets for now!

I almost talked myself out of entering. I am very glad I didn't. Tango came second in this year's Velocity $100k Challenge, the University of Auckland's entrepreneurship competition, which comes with $20,000 to actually start building and a place in Venture Lab, the university's incubator, for the next six months. So I am now, officially, the thing I never planned to be. The irony is not lost on me.

The prize goes straight back into the prototype, so I can make the thing genuinely wearable, accurate and affordable (and, please, not too ugly to wear). Venture Lab is where I get to find out what it actually takes to move something from a lab bench to a bedside table. My ambition is small and enormous at the same time. That no couple ever has to choose between their sleep and their relationship the way my parents quietly did.

A good night takes two.