Perhaps I did write a great protocol for communicating among nodes in a network, how would I go about marketing that and selling it to somebody? It makes much

Perhaps I did write a great protocol for communicating among nodes in a network, how would I go about marketing that and selling it to somebody? It makes much more sense to work in the opposite direction: start with an idea for a product and use your specialized knowledge in the implementation details. On a related note: I think it's a mistake to do compsci R&D in a startup. If you run into a problem that can't be easily solved by today's common algorithms, data structures, and protocols, it makes more sense to "weaponize" an existing PhD thesis than to build something from scratch. After all, startup rule #1 is "Make something people want." People want products. They don't care about the underlying technology.