The Origins of SageMath; I am leaving academia to build a company [pdf]
Does make sense - academia is about theory, businesses are part of implementing end user solutions. most of academia runs on a tech stack delivered by commercial entities anyway. Building products is not as much about creativity as delivering a fixed product with a service plan and support chain in addition to product development. Companies have various operations to create full fledged products - academia can supply only the r&amp;d part. And this is a good divisionoflabour, IMO.