For many academic fields there's no equivalent startup tech sector (which is the actual problem for scientists here) since the most important aspect seems to be the ability to become a horse with a horn. This means that before all else, there needs to be a huge potential market.
As a scientist working on a very specific topic, I can assure you that my market would be approximately five companies in the whole world. Although every computer and smartphone user could ultimately benefit from advances in my field of research, my customer would not be the end user, but the manufacturers.
I assume that this applies to the vast majority of scientists so the picture actually looks quite grim if you want to keep working in your profession. Many scientists need to change to an unrelated or remotely related field in order to get out of academia.