I'll share my journey of starting Gradio while doing my PhD at Stanford, diving into why I decided to launch a startup during my doctoral research. I'll talk about the real challenges and unexpected opportunities of building a company while still in academia, walk through our decision to sell, and give an honest look at what a startup acquisition actually involves. I'll explain why we chose to sell to Hugging Face, and share what the Gradio team is working on now and where we're headed next. It's a personal story about taking a research project and turning it into something much bigger, with all the ups and downs that come with that kind of leap.