Just having finished medical school in the Netherlands, without basically any serious research experience, Lawrence Longo, Gordon Power and Ray Gilbert received this 25 year young man with open arms at the end of July 1977. The Center for Perinatal Biology of Loma Linda University (CPB) would become for the next 3 years not the just the center of my postdoctoral activities, it would also lay the foundation for the following decades. The next paragraphs will describe three key success factors that can be traced back to these formative years that have contributed so much to my professional career.