Forming the Founding Team and Seizing the Opportunity

Lecture Description

Gajus Worthington, co-founder of Fluidigm, talks about how the three members of the founding team of Fluidigm met in Stanford Physics professor Doug Osheroff's lab.  Though the men went in separate directions after college, the bond that had formed between them remained.  When one of them approached the two others with a business proposition about ten years later based on his research at Caltech, they joined him, and Fluidigm was formed.

Course Index

1. Forming the Founding Team and Seizing the Opportunity
2. The Breakthrough Idea
3. Breaking Convention: Technology First, Market Opportunity Second
4. Building a Team and Picking the Right VCs
5. The Challenges of Building a Company
6. Product Development
7. Keeping a Financial Focus
8. Raising Money and Recognizing Interest in VCs
9. Can You Continually Increase Value?
10. Recruiting the Best
11. Challenges of Managing: Firing People
12. How to Recruit Top Talent
13. To MBA or Not?: Technical Degree or MBA
14. Envisioning the Future: Other Potential Applications of the Technology
15. Lowest Lows and Highest Highs
16. Going Global: Why Singapore?
17. Founding Team: Technical or Business Saavy?
18. Experimenting with New Technologies
19. Finding a Market
20. Disposable vs. Reusable in Biology
21. Establishing a Market
22. How Do You Establish a Decision-Making Process?