>How did the solution to focus on easily billable pre-natal diagnostics present itself to a team with oncology expertise?

Make the most of what you have to work with.

I like to build laboratories using research equipment for money-making purposes, not biotech but industrial chemicals.

An ideal way to start can be with a procedure which the laboratory has recognized expertise in, often with a firm foundation of unique or advanced apparatus.

A lot of work involves instruments and they can be expensive and supported by very versatile (costly) infrastructure in academic or industrial research environments.

A worthwhile operation, well rehearsed on an earlier model of the same equipment, can often be invoiced repeatedly in a more businesslike way if the gear can be maintained without completely relying on costly manufacturers' service and supply offerings.

Especially once it's paid for, then even if the invoiceable work drops off you can leave the fully depreciated asset in the lab as long as you want anyway.

Without the institutional overhead a good niche is to offer very limited variety of functions which actually cost the researchers more to have accomplished in their own large laboratories. Plus if you can help them overcome delays or previously unsurmountable obstacles they will want you to work overtime.

If everything turns out good each project pays for itself and always performs profitably after that whenever needed.

But in between your invoiceable sessions you end up with way more instrument time than any institutional researcher, and have more freedom to do whatever you want most of the time.

That's a huge multiplier on the equipment productivity alone in case you do need to pull ahead in the experimentation & discovery department, you can often outperform a PhD who doesn't have nearly as much chance for bench discoveries, and many do not spend very much time at the bench anyway.

Simply too many bright PhDs of all ages would experiment more if they could but there has never been enough time across the board.

With a bootstrapped high-productivity structure, if you disclose the full one percent of your actual progress people will think you're highly accomplished and you can publish it yourself with handouts at conferences.

Until you decide to monetize any breakthroughs or milestones, you can survive or even thrive on the output of your documentation process if you can just issue a single page on average per day of laboratory data to a client. I'm sure there are a number of niches where the going rate is now over $1000 per page and it can be worth working up to it even if it takes a few years. Also took me a while to get a basic report onto a single page for each invoiceable process. After that I never had to publish anything I didn't want to unless somebody was paying for every page.

Plus then you can carry on your research however long it takes.

Without having to do any excess paperwork seeking grants or publishing lack-of-progress reports. You'll have to deal with business paperwork and client interaction instead. That can be just as frustrating but at least it pays the bills at the same time it can build shareholder value.

You don't need citations if you can give clients their money's worth and have an invoice printer attached to your instruments like they don't have at the university or places like DuPont research.

Plus once you're in business you'll have backups they don't have either.

I'll be doing it again, would recommend it.