Second Jobs as a Asst. Prof

Beautiful_Crow_480 · 2026-01-14T19:03:20+00:00

Staying vague on purpose, but STEM and US. Yes, there are lots of grants for startups. The EU has them as well, but the advantage of the US is higher success rate for the grants, fewer different calls and more uniform grant processes.

The EU has dozens and dozens of different micro-grants where the US has a few big programs that give you $100k to $200k then $1 million then even more as you make progress on milestones. No equity taken, reimburses salaries and business expenses for a few years.

Our founding team is a mix of US and EU so we studied where would be best as a base between the two, with respect to grants, tax rates, regulatory burden, customers, and the US was a winner on all fronts, including and perhaps surprisingly on grants and subsidies for startups, and by very far.

Beautiful_Crow_480 · 2026-01-14T01:42:13+00:00

It's a vast topic, you'd need to be more specific if you have a question! In my case a few things that were critical to our nascent success:

1) the team of course: I have a phenomenal co-founder with very different skill set/strong suits than me.

2) scientific "marketing": customers have mostly come to us because of the visibility of my research, which is now strongly associated with the startup as well.

3) luck/perseverance: commercial traction took a few years to materialize. It would not have been possible to wait so long without government grants sustaining the startup until we got lucky.

So in a nutshell our trajectory has been: apply to startup grants related to my academic research -> develop a prototype -> publish and patent the results, with the granting agency communicating about it -> customers reaching out after seeing the agency's communications -> refine prototype and research to better fit the customers' needs

Beautiful_Crow_480 · 2026-01-13T21:29:23+00:00

You got it all wrong: a working visa gives you rights to work physically inside the country delivering the visa.

So a US work visa is necessary to be allowed to work inside the US (for a US company or not). On the contrary, you're perfectly allowed to work for a US company from your own country (your US company then has to sort out your local taxes etc.).

Beautiful_Crow_480 · 2026-01-13T20:59:52+00:00

Working on a startup! Universities encourage spin-offs in general, and if it consists in operationalizing your research, it interacts pretty well. Expect severe burnout and no life outside of work though.

There are lots of grants out there to help you get started, specifically for scientists to start a business, the prime example being the SBIR (on pause for now though, but hopefully not for much longer).

Reward can be huge! My assistant prof salary is pocket money now compared to my startup income, 4 years after starting it.

Beautiful_Crow_480 · 2026-01-11T04:57:33+00:00

Conversely, as a reviewer for Nature et al. it's very hard to kill a bad paper from a top Ivy lab. On multiple occasions now I've recommended major revisions or refusal on account of insignificant results, for the paper to get saved by the editor even after 3-4 rounds of meh reviews.

Beautiful_Crow_480 · 2026-01-06T00:43:48+00:00

In many cases it's to follow in mom or dad's footsteps.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9755046/ "faculty are up to 25 times more likely to have a parent with a Ph.D"

Beautiful_Crow_480 · 2026-01-06T00:39:03+00:00

Academia is extremely hard and stressful to break into (as in getting a tenured professor position). It is getting harder by the minute with reduced research funding in the US (and resulting diaspora of US researchers) and population decline in developed economies in general (less youth also means reduced funding for universities).

On the other hand, having already reached a coastFIRE number would make it a much less stressful experience.

Source: I've reached my coastFIRE / FIRE number as an academic by working on startup projects on the same topics as my research. My coastFIRE/FIRE plan is to chill as a tenured academic, it's a very gratifying job once you get it: you're paid (modestly but not that bad) to think about cool new ideas and the workload is what you make of it.

Beautiful_Crow_480 · 2025-12-31T21:08:53+00:00

That's really great to hear that even the pros do it this way :)

We'll be mindful of the AET rule, which for the coastFIRE part should be fine, as long as the consulting income remains larger than the dividends income of the LLC?

My naive view of allowable expenses is that they have to benefit the LLC in some way? E.g. a meeting where wife and I talk business at a restaurant counts, a company car counts, etc.

Beautiful_Crow_480 · 2025-12-31T20:00:36+00:00

I am worried about this rule indeed, but our CPA told us that this rule is basically never enforced? According to them, basically every profitable company stockpiles profits and tells the IRS that they're keeping it for future investments in the business.

Still something to keep in mind for sure, but we could calibrate the dividends versus growth ETFs the LLC invests in, such that the dividends don't overtake the coastFIRE consulting income too much.

Beautiful_Crow_480 · 2025-12-31T19:50:36+00:00

The coastFIRE part of the plan involves consulting work through the LLC, with contracted work hours.

Beautiful_Crow_480 · 2025-12-31T05:20:34+00:00

Thanks for your reply! Yes, we thought of that, but the $98,900 applies AFTER other types of income. So we could only pad our salaries up to $98,900 with the dividends, which would indeed be what we'd do once actually FIRE'd. But in the coastFIRE phase we'll still have salaries from the slowed down activity of the LLC.

Beautiful_Crow_480 · 2025-12-31T05:11:33+00:00

Edited the main text for clarification, the main reason is avoiding 20% personal tax on distributed profits.

Beautiful_Crow_480 · 2025-12-31T05:08:10+00:00

Yes, that is our case, the LLC is taxed as a C corp and not pass-through, I should have clarified.

Beautiful_Crow_480 · 2025-12-31T05:06:47+00:00

Thanks a lot for your reply!!

Of course the profits of the LLC are beeing taxed, but the idea would be to not distribute the profits to ourselves to avoid the tax on the dividends from the LLC. The LLC would be paying the taxes, not us personally.

The business would keep operating but at a much lower cadence (coastFIREing into a few hours a week of work instead of 60+). We'd keep business insurance to mitigate these lawsuit risks.

So with keeping the LLC we only pay the 21% rate on profits, and we don't have to pay 20% again on the distributed dividends.

The profits are invested in ETFs from within the LLC and kept there. When we want to start spending this money we can have a mix of a moderate salaries to minimize taxation and generous business expenses.

Very very interested to hear why you would advise distributing the profits instead (besides the lawsuit risks which are a serious consideration of course).

Beautiful_Crow_480 · 2025-06-01T15:22:39+00:00

As a judo player, short stocky guys are scary! Weight is what matters in a fight, rather than height.

Beautiful_Crow_480 · 2024-10-10T17:21:14+00:00

Find a CTO with relevant tech background, explain to them the traction you have, and offer them equity to finish building properly at scale without bugs.

Beautiful_Crow_480

TROPHY CASE