About the Authors: John S. Tregoning * E-mail: john.tregoning@imperial.ac.uk (JST); Jason.McDermott@pnnl.gov (JEM) Affiliation: Department of Infectious Disease, St Mary’s Campus, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom ORCID logo http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8093-8741 Jason E. McDermott * E-mail: john.tregoning@imperial.ac.uk (JST); Jason.McDermott@pnnl.gov (JEM) Affiliations Biological Sciences Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Washington, United States of America, Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Oregon Health & Sciences University, Portland, Oregon, United States of America ORCID logo http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2961-2572 Introduction The biggest choke point in an academic career is going from postdoc to principal investigator (PI): moving from doing someone else’s research to getting other people to do yours. In the United Kingdom, this tends to be either an individual fellowship or a lecturer position, and in the United States, it generally starts with an independent position with associated funding—either as a start-up package or funded grant. Even if the net product from the day is a waste bin full of paper and some tea-stained scribbles—having a creative process, whatever that is, is very important (Fig 2). Be aware that if you are viewed as successful, you will be asked to take on even more. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007448.g004 As the head of a lab, you are responsible for fundraising, fund managing, purchasing materials and equipment (some of which is extremely specialist, even unique), training and managing staff working with dangerous materials, publicizing the current research, and planning future research.