There are many similarities between startups, defined here as (relatively) young and agile companies with a few bright people trying to change the world by working on some cool idea(s), and academic research groups, defined here as (relatively) young and agile units within academic institutes with a few bright people trying to change the world by working on some cool idea(s). Err, yes.
Fortunately there are also many differences, so I have something to write about here. For some years now I’ve been running the TU Delft Medical Visualization research group, an experience that shall serve as the primary source of information for this piece. I’ve also had some experience of startup culture, first as one of two (and later three) engineers in a new business unit of Crusader Systems (now CSense) designing an embedded image processing product called FrothMaster, then at Stone Three as employee #1, then later at Treparel as a co-founder and architect, and more recently as scientific advisor to Clinical Graphics and co-founder of TimeScapers. In spite of this healthy dose of exposure, I’ve never actually run a startup as my main activity, so I will have to extrapolate and sometimes revert to wild guesses. I am trusting that some of the startup-involved readers will pipe up in the comments!