{"id":118948,"date":"2013-05-24T16:19:32","date_gmt":"2013-05-24T19:19:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=118948"},"modified":"2013-05-24T16:19:32","modified_gmt":"2013-05-24T19:19:32","slug":"hidden-talents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/hidden-talents\/","title":{"rendered":"Hidden talents"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Nanox<\/span>From 1999 to 2002, during his undergraduate studies in chemistry at the Federal University of S\u00e3o Carlos (UFSCar), Gustavo Sim\u00f5es, now 32, used to tell his classmates that he wanted to be an entrepreneur.\u2028Public university courses did not promote entrepreneurship back then (and still don’t), so his peers thought he was out of his mind.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlmost everyone wanted safer professional options than starting their own business,\u201d he remembers. \u201cThere was no support, so becoming an entrepreneur seemed very difficult and far-off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sim\u00f5es refused to give up his plan. He began his graduate studies advised by Elson Longo at the Chemistry Institute of the Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp) in the city of Araraquara. In 2005, in the middle of his master’s program, Sim\u00f5es finally decided to go ahead and start his own company.<\/p>\n

\u201cElson Longo’s laboratory was different, it had a lot of contact with companies, and the opportunity to develop new products emerged as a matter of course,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Sim\u00f5es teamed up with two other chemists, Daniel Minozzi and Andr\u00e9 Ara\u00fajo, to found the new company, Nanox, based in the city of S\u00e3o Carlos, in the state of S\u00e3o Paulo. Since 2005, they have been producing materials containing silver particles that are able to eliminate fungi and bacteria.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur first financial support was through one of FAPESP’s Innovative Research in Small Businesses Programs (Pipe),\u201d Sim\u00f5es says. \u2028\u201cAt age 24, I was one of the youngest coordinators of a Pipe project.\u201d He went on to receive funding from the federal government and from a venture capital firm specializing in technology-based companies.<\/p>\n

He says that Nanox is growing \u2014 it currently has 10 employees \u2014 and plans to open a branch office in the United States before the end of 2013.<\/p>\n

In 10 years, however, little has changed for undergraduate students who want to set up their own businesses. Entrepreneurship classes are still rare at Brazil’s public universities \u2014 one of the few to be found is the class offered by the undergraduate-level engineering program at the Polytechnic School of the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (Poli\/USP).<\/p>\n

\u201cThe environment has improved, and access to venture capital has gotten easier, but initiatives to support entrepreneurship are still nothing but whispers in the academic environment,\u201d observes Sim\u00f5es, who finished his PhD in 2009, with Elson Longo still as his advisor.<\/p>\n

He believes that things could be different if university programs\u00a0 focused not only on science and technology research, but also on stimulating innovation for businesses. \u201cTo be an entrepreneur,\u201d he says, \u201cyou need support, opportunity and the means to take chances. Without these things, starting a business is either a sign of madness or desperation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chemist suggests additional support for potential entrepreneurs","protected":false},"author":475,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1204],"tags":[],"coauthors":[785],"class_list":["post-118948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-careers"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/475"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118948\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118948"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=118948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}