Like most entrepreneurs, for Shankar Menon, the journey to launching his first company started with a problem and ambition.
A quantum science and engineering graduate student at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, Menon and his colleagues in the lab of Hannes Bernien discovered how to combine two powerful technologies – trapped atom arrays and photonic devices – to yield advanced systems for quantum computing.
Unclear, however, was how to advance the work.
The next steps would require a lot of effort and money, and while the lab was a great place for de-risking and experimenting, Menon said, building a large-scale quantum system would be difficult within the bounds of academia.
This challenge in part is why so many quantum companies have sprung up, including UChicago spinouts Super.tech (now part of Infleqtion) and memq.
“I saw people here doing some good things,” said Menon of the startups, which both participated in the Polsky Center’s quantum accelerator, Duality. “Knowing that they could do it influenced me, and made me think that there’s a possibility there.”
Menon also was able to join the field at a time of growing excitement about the emerging field, which he said contributed to his own excitement about potentially pursuing a startup.
“I think there is a lot of opportunity to make something happen – to make a large quantum system that can produce tangible, useful applications,” said Menon. But at the time, he wasn’t sure about the best path to take.
“Should I be a researcher and explore problems to solve, or solve this bigger problem that we know, but that takes a lot of effort and money to solve?” Menon said he asked himself. And it took years to convince himself to pursue the latter.
“I have the experience and I have the vision to make it happen,” he said. “That’s how I decided to pursue entrepreneurship.” As one of the first steps, Menon was connected with the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and its network of mentors.
“We had built this amazing system in the lab, but I didn’t know what to do with it,” he said. The system enables the construction of large, scalable quantum systems.
“It is not only fundamentally interesting to see how we can scale quantum systems in this way, but it also has a lot of practical applications,” said Hannes Bernien, senior author of the work, which was recently published in Nature Communications.
To explore these potential applications, Menon applied to the Polsky Center’s I-Corps program and connected with an undergrad and a Chicago Booth student through the Polsky Center’s team-building tool. “Going into I-Corps, I thought I was going to make a quantum internet with the platform, but coming out, my conclusion at the end was maybe that’s not the thing we go for,” said Menon.
The I-Corps program – designed to empower researchers to test the commercial potential and impact of their ideas – helped narrow in on the value propositions, which he is continuing to pursue as a Polsky Commercialization Fellow.
The fellowship launched last year with an inaugural cohort of six PhD students. The structured, milestone-driven program supports students in translating their research into real-world impact through a comprehensive 11-month experience.
During this time he also pitched at the Collaboratorium and connected with students with whom he’s been able to bounce ideas and hear “a business person’s perspective” – a perspective Menon himself has been honing through the fellowship program.
“I got to hear about all the incorporation details, vesting schedules, and was connected with the law school where I got to know about a lot of the legal issues that startups face,” he said, speaking to the experience. Other classes outlined how to form a business plan, establish milestones, and budget. He also has started talking to venture capitalists to get feedback and think through funding requirements.
“These are a lot of the things you take for granted, because people have thought about it before, so you don’t have to start from zero,” Menon said. “I think it’s quite useful for people who want to be entrepreneurial and do something that grad school doesn’t prepare them to do. It’s a great opportunity.”
Today, Menon’s work has culminated in CavilinQ, which was recently named a finalist in the George Shultz Innovation Fund. CavilinQ is creating a fundamentally scalable quantum computing architecture based on precisely controlled arrays of neutral atoms interconnected via optical cavities. Its name pays homage to this – inspired by “Cavity-Link,” with a “Q” for quantum.
Ahead of the Innovation Fund Finals on May 29th, Menon is busy perfecting his pitch and working with his mentors, whom he said are making sure he delivers on what he promises.
“You start with a problem and ambition,” he added. “The programming helps turn that ambition into a structured way of thinking about finding a problem that people really care about, the market size of that problem, and how to go about finding a solution.”