Noubar Afeyan’s story of becoming an entrepreneur

Noubar Afeyan, Founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, shared on LinkedIn:

“Back in 1985, my MIT thesis advisor sent me to an NSF conference in Washington, DC as his proxy.

At lunch, I randomly sat next to someone close to my father’s age. He asked me about my research and told me a bit about how he got his start. Over forty years earlier, he and a colleague had been educated in the then-new field of electrical engineering and didn’t know what to do next. So they’d decided to make a set of instruments for use in testing circuits, starting their company in a garage with a group of friends. We talked quite a while before I finally learned my dining companion’s name: David Packard – also known as co-founder of Hewlett-Packard.

A lightbulb went off for me that day: I too was becoming a new breed of engineer, as one of the first students in MIT’s then-new program in biochemical engineering. Maybe I can create a company to make the instruments this field is going to need. I left that chance encounter in Washington with the idea for my first company. I came back to MIT and learned everything I could about starting a company; I founded PerSeptive Biosystems a few years later; PerSeptive went public in 1992, and later merged into Perkin Elmer. Thus began my nearly 40 year journey in entrepreneurship, or as I like to call it, “entrepreneuring.”

Today is National Entrepreneurs Day and I’m again reminded of the many who’ve helped me on this journey, often in surprising ways, sometimes without even knowing. They’ve shared insights, ideas, experience, and thrown open many doors. Two days before Thanksgiving, I’d like to thank every one of them.

Twenty-three years and more than 115 companies ago, I founded Flagship Pioneering as an experiment in parallel entrepreneurship, creating companies that make breakthrough leaps in human health and sustainability. Many forces and factors have conspired to shape and nurture our success, but the wisdom gleaned from fellow entrepreneurs has been indispensable. ”

Source: Noubar Afeyan/LinkedIn