Chuck Witcowski at Protein Discovery

Our first visit was to a company called Protein Discovery in downtown Knoxville where we heard their founder, Chuck Witkowski, tell us about how he had started the company. Protien Discovery creates a product that prepares biological samples for protein analysis. Mr. Witkowski actually does not have a technology background but a business background. He received his MBA at the University of Tennessee and proceeded to start, what is now, Protein Discovery right after.

Mr. Witcowski started his entrepreneurial quest for two reasons. First, his father was an entrepreneur and taught Mr. Witcowski the basics of business and how to be an entrepreneur. Secondly, Mr Witcowski worked at Motorola for a while on a big project for about one and a half years and was told his project was not a priority and was never implemented. He felt he had wasted one and a half years of his life so he decided he wanted to be his own boss.
While in the MBA program at UT, Mr. Witcowski took a class called the Technopreneurial Leadership Center in which my professor, Dr. Lee Martin, taught. There he learned two main things that would help someone who wanted to start their own company. First was how to license technology. This allows someone without a technical background to partner with a scientist or firm who has developed a technology thus taking a lot of risk out the deal. Secondly was what he called the “greatest thing ever” which is the Small Business Innovative Research program. This is virtually the only place where you can get free money; everywhere else it costs you something. Both of these ideas helped Mr. Witcowski start Protein Discovery.

In Mr. Witcowski’s last semester of his MBA progam he wrote 25 SBIR’s and landed two of them. He and a friend who had an engineering background started this venture together licensing the technology from Oak Ridge National Laboratory being funded by grants in the beginning stages of their company. A critical part of his plan was that he could develop his technology at ORNL while only owning a small office building allowing him access to top level research labs. They had some short success and decided to raise some venture capital money from. They succeeded but shortly after, Mr. Witcowski’s partner quit because he had a child and couldn’t handle the uncertainty of the entrepreneurial lifestyle and wanted a more stable job. Having continued support from the venture capital firm, Mr. Witcowski persisted and continued on with his venture.

After continued development, he and his team then realized the technology they had been developing did not work as they had promised. They knew they had a real market need and so went back to their investors and got more funding. They hired new research and development staff and eventually came up with their first product, the passport system. It, however, was introduced a little late into the market and so they repackaged their product into the Gelfree system which they rolled out a short time ago. This system promises much more success and they have even been in recent talks with a leading company in their area about a possible liquidation event.

From Mr. Witcowski’s story, I gathered several things about successful entrepreneurialism. First is that it takes persistence. Mr. Witcowski never gave up, even after his partner quit, because he saw a real market need and believed he could gather the right group of people to realize this need. Secondly, it is extremely important to surround yourself with people smarter than you in areas that complement your skill set. As Dr. Lee Martin told us in our class, an entrepreneur is a jack of all trades but a master of none, therefore you need to surround yourself with the best people in order to have the best business. The next thing I took from Mr. Witcowsiki’s lecture was to try and hold off on investor financing for as long as possible because it is the best for all parties in the end. If you can get away financing your research with grant money, it is better than financing it investor capital because you give over part ownership in your company and they have a say in what goes on. Lastly, the market you are trying to get in is extremely important. It is better to have a B product in an A market than an A product in a B market. If you have the best product in a very small market, your sales will not be as high as having a good product in a very large market. Mr. Witcowski’s story was truly inspiring and informative and I look forward to the rest of the lectures this semester.