Gamaya is a Swiss AgTech company – spin-off from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), created in 2015. Gamaya addresses commodity crops cultivation challenges by providing an integrated solution for large-scale diagnostics of field crops to boost yield productivity. Yosef Akhtman is the Co-Founder and CEO of Gamaya and was nominated as the Innovator of the Month May 2016.

IF Lausanne: What were the main factors that made you decide to go for a career as scientist-entrepreneur rather than for an academic career?

Yosef: My scientific career has encompassed a number of seemingly distinctive subjects including information theory, robotics, and remote sensing. I was extremely lucky to see all of those skills come together in my last academic project – Trans-Eurasian Flight Leman-Baikal. The project was so profoundly important to me that I could not possibly imagine just moving on when it was completed. The only way to realise the tremendous potential of our technology was to bite the bullet and turn it into a commercial venture.

IF Lausanne: What are the top three pros and cons of having chosen to become scientist-entrepreneur?
Yosef: Interestingly, exactly the same factors represent both top pros and cons for me:

• The science-heavy entrepreneurship is particularly hard because of the enormous gap between the basic scientific insight, the proof of concept, and the eventual viable commercial product. The journey is hugely exciting, but also full of risks and anxieties, whether we would be able to overcome the numerous technological challenges.
• The need to learn the entire new domains of management, business development and administration, acquire new skills on the fly that I never thought I would need. It feels great when it works, but also many a times I feel inadequate because my knowledge in some of these domains may not be sufficient.
• The crazy pace of places and events, the endless workload and the need to find common language with an extensive array of different people from posh investors to hardboiled farmers. It is intoxicating and satisfactory, but also exhausting and emotionally draining. It can go from top to bottom and back several times a day.

IF Lausanne: What are the most challenging situations that you encounter as young entrepreneur in a field that is dominated by more senior people with years of experience?
Yosef: Unfortunately, I can not count myself among the youngest of the entrepreneurs around. On the positive side, my experience and credentials help me navigate the ecosystem and communicate with some of its senior players. I think I am really lucky to have the best of both worlds, common language with the younger crowd and the understanding of the more mature worldview.

The transition between the academic and the business environment is also quite challenging. These are two different cultures with different values and priorities. Some of the senior business people can be very sceptical about the ability of scientists to execute a business plan, and I guess they have good reasons for that. Of course, we will need the help of business professionals to race forward, but we remain a very technology-centric startup, and I believe that the scientific thinking will remain key to our success.

IF Lausanne: Millennials –the generation who is currently coming onto the professional stage – are known to be highly ambitious, highly connected, somewhat narcissistic, and unbelieving in authority. Do you feel like this description fits you?
Yosef: I can certainly relate to some of these characteristics, but not all. I was fortunate to have experienced life in several countries with dramatically different mentalities and social orders. I have great appreciation of ambition, but even greater respect for humility and resilience to failure that comes with it. I have respect for authority, but never take its opinions as the final word. This is particularly true with some of the prevailing scientific theories, which are often confused with objective truth just because they are accepted by the academic establishment.

My opinion is that the authority is there for a reason, that its existence plays an important stabilising role, which should not be underestimated. On the other hand, its importance is only determined by the extent of its usefulness to the society. The status quo has to be constantly questioned, challenged and ultimately disrupted ones it becomes outdated. Clearly, with the current pace of change the role of establishment and common wisdom becomes ever more fragile, but also important in my mind. It’s a delicate balance.

IF Lausanne: What do you think are the most important factors that could drive more scientists from the Millennial Generation into becoming entrepreneurs?

Yosef: I think we need to better emphasise the role of science and differentiate it from dogma. In my view, science is a pursuit of useful insights and not any kind of eternal truths. Any theory, no matter how abstract and well established has to be considered for being useful for practical applications. And a good theory will always find its purpose. This does not contradict any “blue sky” research, quite the contrary, but we should avoid putting “pure” science over the applied science, as is sometimes still the case in academic environment.
The second point would be to make the entry barrier for aspiring scientist-entrepreneurs as low as possible. There are financial, administrative and cultural barriers and in some ways Switzerland is in the forefront, but certainly not on all fronts. I can testify that I wouldn’t get far without the support of the excellent startup ecosystem that exists around EPFL, so this is something that is certainly happening. There is still a large gap between the situation in Western Europe and the leading hotbeds for innovation like the Silicon Valley and Israel.