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While working as an engineer at Tesla, Niccolo Cymbalist never planned to start a business. But he’d been considering an idea for new technologyan autonomous, wind-powered cargo ship. Then, while on paternity leave in 2024, he discovered a free program that helps scientists and engineers launch businesses for the first time. Weeks after finishing the program, called 5050, Cymbalist had launched a startup called Clippership. The companys first ship is being built in the Netherlands this year. Without the accelerator, he says, the company likely wouldnt exist. The program has now helped scientists and engineers launch 100 businesses, from Huminly, which uses enzymes to make clothing infinitely recyclable, to Plasmidsaurus, which offers ultra-fast DNA sequencing. [Photo: courtesy Fifty Years] The course is run by Fifty Years, a San Francisco-based VC firm focused on deep tech that tackles the worlds largest problems, from disease to climate change. Soon after the firm started a decade ago, the team saw that good ideas were stuck in academic labs. The transition from academic scientist to founder is actually much more difficult than the transition from sophomore dropout to founder, for a whole host of reasons, says Seth Bannon, a founding partner at Fifty Years. Because of that, the best people to start these startupsthe scientists that invented the technologyweren’t doing that. So we said, ‘okay, can we help fix that?’ [Photo: courtesy Fifty Years] From idea to startup Potential founders go through a 13-week programwith some in-person weekends and weekly Zoom sessionsthat helps them figure out if their idea is worth pursuing and whether it’s ready to commercialize. The founder of Plasmidsaurus, for example, who was a postdoc at Caltech, initially joined the program planning to turn his lab research on synthetic gene circuits into a medical product. But the 5050 team helped him realize that it was around 10 years from being commercializable, and one of his other ideastechnology he’d developed to speed up his own researchwas ready now. The company is growing quickly. “At year one, they just crossed a $50 million run rate,” Bannon says. “They’ve been profitable every month since they started. And they’re now one of the most beloved names in biology.” [Photo: courtesy Fifty Years] Participants also learn how to build a startup team, understand what makes founders successful, and decide if entrepreneurship is a fit for them. “One of the workshops that we do is the ‘story of self,’ where it’s a deep dive into their core motivationtheir entire story of life and like what they’re doing today to really make sure that they’re actually pursuing something that they’re really really excited about,” says Ale Borda, who runs the 5050 program. “Then they can use that same story to share about their work and why they will go through walls to enable this to happen.” [Photo: courtesy Fifty Years] They learn about how to communicate differently. “In academia, just as one example, you are taught to communicate with data, data, dataand then here are the 10 ways my data might be wrong,” Bannon says. While that’s good for research, “if you communicate that way as a startup founder, you will have trouble hiring anybody, you’ll have trouble raising money, you’ll have trouble getting press,” he says. “And so you have to learn to talk in directionally correct abstractions.” Universities often also have programs to help move tech to the market, but schools are disconnected from the startup world, and Bannon says the programs aren’t very effective. (Mentors might be Fortune 500 executives, for example, rather than other startup founders with direct experience.) There are also conflicts of interest. Universities own the IP for new inventions scientists develop on campus; scientists have to go through a complicated process of negotiating for the rights to the tech. The program at 5050 includes coaching onnavigating that process. Turning scientists into founders So far, the approach is working. “The stat we’re most proud of is that 96% of the teams that went out to raise a round were able to,” says Bannon. “That’s an insanely high stat for a program that accepts people who don’t have companies when they join.” In the current political climate, as federal funding cuts have hit university labs, the program is already seeing an increased interest from scientists at a career crossroads. “A lot of them are seeing that they might not be able to continue their life’s work in academia anymore,” Bannon says. “Some of them happen to be lucky and be in a spot where maybe it could be a startup.” In the short term, he says, funding cuts might lead to more startups, though they’ll slow down future growth. [Photo: courtesy Fifty Years] Of the 100 companies that have launched from the program so far, around half wouldn’t have started without it. Others launched faster than they would have. “I probably would have started a company, but it almost certainly wouldn’t have been at the time that I did,” says Daniel Rahn, a former SpaceX engineer who launched Metal as Fuel, a company that makes metal fuels to decarbonize heavy industry. “These are counterfactual companies,” says Bannon. “These companies are combating the climate crisis, they’re defeating disease, they’re doing important stuff. And so it just feels really, really good to help companies come into existence that wouldn’t otherwise.”
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E-Commerce
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will attend the Supreme Court’s oral argument Wednesday in a case involving the attempted firing of Fed governor Lisa Cook, an unusual show of support by the central bank chair.The high court is considering whether President Donald Trump can fire Cook, as he said he would do in late August, in an unprecedented attempt to remove one of the seven members of the Fed’s governing board. Powell plans to attend the high court’s Wednesday session, according to a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity.It’s a much more public show of support than the Fed chair has previously shown Cook. But it follows Powell’s announcement last week that the Trump administration has sent subpoenas to the Fed, threatening an unprecedented criminal indictment of the Fed Chair. Powell appointed to the position by Trump in 2018 appears to be casting off last year’s more subdued response to Trump’s repeated attacks on the central bank in favor of a more public confrontation.Powell issued a video statement Jan. 11 condemning the subpoenas as “pretexts” for Trump’s efforts to force him to sharply cut the Fed’s key interest rate. Powell oversaw three rate cuts late last year, lowering the rate to about 3.6%, but Trump has argued it should be as low as 1%, a position few economists support.The Trump administration has accused Cook of mortgage fraud, an allegation that Cook has denied. No charges have been made against Cook. She sued to keep her job, and the Supreme Court Oct. 1 issued a brief order allowing her to stay on the board while they consider her case.If Trump succeeds in removing Cook, he could appoint another person to fill her slot, which would give his appointees a majority on the Fed’s board and greater influence over the central bank’s decisions on interest rates and bank regulation. Christopher Rugaber, AP Economics Writer
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E-Commerce
French President Emmanuel Macron says the European Union should not hesitate to use the trade bloc’s Anti-Coercion Instrument in face of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff threats over Greenland. Macron, speaking at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss Alpine town of Davos, pushed back against aggressive U.S. trade pressures and an endless accumulation of new tariffs. The anti-coercion mechanism is a powerful instrument and we should not hesitate to deploy it in todays tough environment, he said Tuesday. The European Union’s top official on Tuesday described U.S. President Donald Trump’s planned new tariffs over Greenland as “a mistake especially between long-standing allies” and called into question Trump’s trustworthiness, saying that he had agreed last year not to impose more tariffs on members of the bloc.European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was responding to Trump’s announcement that starting February, a 10% import tax will be imposed on goods from eight European nations that have rallied around Denmark in the wake of his escalating calls for the United States to take over the semi-autonomous Danish territory of Greenland.“The European Union and the United States have agreed to a trade deal last July,” Von der Leyen said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “And in politics as in business a deal is a deal. And when friends shake hands, it must mean something.”“We consider the people of the United States not just our allies, but our friends. And plunging us into a downward spiral would only aid the very adversaries we are both so committed to keeping out of the strategic landscape,” she added.She vowed that the EU’s response “will be unflinching, united and proportional.”Trump has insisted the U.S. needs the territory for security reasons against possible threats from China and Russia.Earlier Tuesday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said America’s relations with Europe remain strong and urged trading partners to “take a deep breath” and let tensions driven the new tariff threats over Greenland “play out.”“I think our relations have never been closer,” he said.But Danish Prime Minister Mette Fredriksen, speaking in the Danish parliament, said that “the worst may still be ahead of us.” She said that “we have never sought conflict. We have consistently sought cooperation.” Trump’s threats spark diplomatic flurry across Europe The American leader’s threats have sparked outrage and a flurry of diplomatic activity across Europe, as leaders consider possible countermeasures, including retaliatory tariffs and the first-ever use of the European Union’s anti-coercion instrument.The EU has three major economic tools it could use to pressure Washington: new tariffs, suspension of the U.S.-EU trade deal, and the “trade bazooka” the unofficial term for the bloc’s Anti-Coercion Instrument, which could sanction individuals or institutions found to be putting undue pressure on the EU.Earlier Tuesday, Trump posted on social media that he had spoken with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. He said “I agreed to a meeting of the various parties in Davos, Switzerland.” France’s Macron suggests G-7 meeting in Paris this week Trump also posted a text message from Emmanuel Macron in which the French president suggested a meeting of members of the Group of Seven industrialized democracies in Paris after the Davos gathering. An official close to Macron, who spoke anonymously in line with the French presidency’s customary practices, confirmed the message shared by Trump is genuine.Later, Trump posted some provocatively doctored images. One showed him planting the U.S. flag next to a sign reading “Greenland, U.S. Territory, Est. 2026.” The other showed Trump in the Oval Office next to a map that showed Greenland and Canada covered with the U.S. Stars and Stripes.In a sign of how tensions have increased in recent days, thousands of Greenlanders marched over the weekend in protest of any effort to take over their island.In his latest threat of tariffs, Trump indicated that the import taxes would be retaliation for last week’s deployment of symbolic numbers of troops from the European countries to Greenland though he also suggested that he was using the tariffs as leverage to negotiate with Denmark. Calls for a stronger Europe against Trump’s threats Denmark’s minister for European affairs called Trump’s tariff threats “deeply unfair.” He said that Europe needs to become even stronger and more independent, while stressing there is “no interest in escalating a trade war.”“You just have to note that we are on the edge of a new world order, where having power has unfortunately become crucial, and we see a United States with an enormous condescending rhetoric towards Europe,” Marie Bjerre told Danish public broadcaster DK on Tuesday.Speaking on the sidelines of Davos, California Gov. Gavin Newsom slammed Europe’s response to Trump’s tariff threats as “pathetic” and “embarrassing,” and urged European leaders to unite and stand up to the United States.“It is time to get serious, and stop being complicit,” Newsom told reporters. “It’s time to stand tall and firm, have a backbone.”On Monday night, Greenland’s European backers looked at establishing a more permanent military presence in the High North to help guarantee security in the Arctic region, a key demand of the United States, Swedish Defense Minister Pl Jonson said.Jonson said after talks with his counterparts from Denmark, Greenland and Norway that European members of NATO are currently “doing what’s called a reconnaissance tour in order to identify what kind of needs there are when it comes to infrastructure and exercises and so forth.”In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov strongly denied any intention by Russia and China to threaten Greenland, while also describing Greenland as a “colonial gain” for Denmark. At a news conference, he said that “in principle, Greenland isn’t a natural part of Denmark.” US-UK tensions over Chagos Islands In another sign of tension between allies, the British government on Tuesday defended its decision to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius after Trump attacked the plan, which his administration previously supported.Trump said that relinquishing the remote Indian Ocean archipelago, home to a strategically important American naval and bomber base, was an act of stupidity that shows why he needs to take over Greenland.In a speech to lawmakers at Britain’s Parliament on Tuesday, U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson said he hoped to “calm the waters” as Trump roils the trans-Atlantic relationship with his desire to take over Greenlnd.Johnson said the U.S. and the U.K. “have always been able to work through our differences calmly, as friends. We will continue to do that.” AP writers Sylvie Corbet in Paris, Jill Lawless in London, Lorne Cook in Brussels, and Elaine Kurtenbach in Bangkok contributed to this report. Jamey Keaten, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
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