Hi, my name is Thibault Helleputte. I am married with three children and in my spare time I like to travel and play drums in a rock band. I studied Computer Science at the University of Louvain, and had initially signed a contract to work afterwards for an IT company in the financial sector. However, shortly before starting at the bank I received an offer from my master’s thesis supervisor, Prof. Pierre Dupont, to do a PhD in his lab with funding. Although I never considered doing a PhD, this project really interested me. I knew I didn’t want to pursue a career in academia, but I liked doing research and becoming an expert in something. I took the PhD position and I haven’t looked back since.
During my PhD I became more interested in starting for myself through several collaborations with researchers in medicine that were partly funded by private medical companies. These companies were early adopters in the field of DNA data analytics, such as high throughput sequencing. Towards the end of my PhD, my supervisor and I started a company in this domain, DNAlytics. We founded the company in 2012 and by the end of 2014 the first external investors joined the company
DNAlytics is a company with its core expertise in data science. We mainly rely on two business models: Firstly, we help other players in the healthcare industry develop improved, faster and better positioned products such as new drugs and diagnostic tools. We provide consulting services to have a steadily growing cash-flow for our company. Secondly, we develop our own products such as RheumaKit, a diagnostic platform launched in 2014.
Before my PhD I never considered starting a company, but since my father was an independent worker, I did have a bit of an idea what the life was like, and what the pros and cons are. Furthermore, coming from engineering, there is already more of a drive to do applied research compared to other, more fundamental, branches of science.
The two main reasons why I like being an entrepreneur is that I like to set up new projects, and this lets me combine my background in engineering with my interest in medical science. In addition it allows me to have a somewhat more flexible schedule; and as a founder you have the advantage that you can pick where to locate your office. Running a company is what I would call anti-boring. There are never two days the same. It is very exciting and an emotional rollercoaster. Some days you have extreme highs, some other days, you can have severe lows. Overall, I really enjoy being an entrepreneur, although it is sometimes tough to maintain the work-life balance.
The most challenging aspect of being an entrepreneur is starting a company from scratch. You really must make it all happen. You need to have drive, you need to push and make room for your company. You must make people think about your company, convince them to adopt your product. If I had the knowledge of now back in 2012 when we started the company,
I would definitely put more focus on the commercial aspects, despite the fact that my personal objective was to practice science and play with technology. Furthermore, I would focus more on larger fundraising, lasting longer than a couple of years, since fundraising is very time consuming.
If you are considering starting your own company, then I would advise you that you have to be willing to take the risk. Either you succeed in building your business, or you learn a lot. You have to be willing to develop yourself continually. Your role in the company will always be changing. From being a scientist, to being involved in the commercial processes, to having to hire and manage competent people. Doing and learning all of this by yourself is very difficult. I can strongly advise you to find others with the expertise that you are lacking and learn from them. Either by taking them on as employees, having them on an advisory board or building up a close relationship with a mentor. Over the past years I have been lucky enough to have many people and mentors who were willing to help me in my journey. Amongst others, Roald Sieberath has been very inspiring to me -on top of being a close friend-, teaching me many of the aspects of innovation that I was unfamiliar with.
Written by Thibault Helleputte
Founder & CEO, DNAlytics
Thibault Helleputte founded DNAlytics in 2012 as a spin-off company of the UCL in Louvain-laNeuve. DNAlytics’ core expertise is data mining applied to the development of precision medicine solutions. This was also the topic of Thibault’s PhD, with which he graduated in 2010. Thibault also has a Master’s in Computing Sciences Engineering from UCL and a Master’s in Management Sciences from the Louvain School of Management. He received several awards both for his academic and entrepreneurship tracks, from Microsoft, IBM, the MIT and the European Commission.
