From Breakthrough to Business
Turn Your STEM Innovation into a Scalable Startup
Practical Tools & Frameworks to Help STEM Founders Scale Faster
Starting a business in STEM isn’t just about having a great idea—it’s about making sure that idea turns into something commercially viable.
We’ve been in the trenches, navigating the uncertainty of commercialization, funding, and scaling.
Now, we’re giving founders like you the roadmap we wish we had.
Christine Johnson (Deep Tech & Commercial Strategy) and Annie Ratner (Operations & Business Systems) bring a wealth of experience launching, scaling, and operationalizing STEM startups.
We combine our expertise in business development and operations to help technical founders translate your innovations into viable, investable businesses—without wasted time, energy, or resources.
We created The STEM Founders’ Academy to provide you with practical, repeatable frameworks and tools that eliminate guesswork, so you can focus on what truly energizes you.
Find our exactly where your startup stands. Take our free commercial readiness assessment.
✔ Less than 10 minutes
✔ Personalized readiness report
✔ Actionable insights
Christine Johnson
Commercialization Expert
My journey into entrepreneurship has been anything but linear. From launching and scaling startups to navigating the highs and lows of commercialization, I’ve experienced firsthand the challenges of building something from the ground up. Programs like Duality at the University of Chicago and NSF I-Corps helped sharpen my ability to bridge deep tech with real-world business applications—learning how to validate markets, refine positioning, and develop go-to-market strategies that actually work. Now, I use that experience to help other founders gain clarity, structure, and momentum as they turn their ideas into sustainable businesses and infuse them with joy. I focus on repeatable frameworks that help founders realize value quickly and that can create the greatest impact.
Annie Ratner
Business Operations Expert
My niche is helping founders bring structure to their big ideas, turning vision into organized, scalable systems. Over the years, I’ve worked with a wide range of businesses—service providers, tech startups, media companies, and more—helping them streamline operations and build scalable infrastructure. I’ve seen firsthand how founders struggle to balance growth with efficiency, often stretched thin while juggling too many responsibilities. That’s why I focus on building scalable workflows and automating the tasks that drain time and energy. As a strategic partner, I help founders think more systematically at every stage of their business—so they can scale without adding to their workload (or their stress).