Interest: Nat Goldhaber, managing director at Claremont Creek Ventures in Oakland, said venture capitalists have long been known to toss the occasional bone to an entrepreneur working 100-hour weeks on a meager startup salary. But we're talking pay-down-the-mortgage money, not retire-on-a-private-island money.
Interest: Durham said the state agency also will work to revamp the tax credits made available to businesses, with a greater emphasis on sparking research. “I’d like Iowa to be the R&D capital of the world,” Durham said, adding she hopes to propose creating a $5 million to $10 million fund for university research and commercialization.
Interest: The former head of Google China and founder of a start-up incubator Innovation Works said by phone that Chinese schools focus too much on memorization and don't encourage critical thinking. "It's not that Chinese are not smart or don't have the potential. Look at Jerry Yang of Yahoo Inc. and Steve Chen of YouTube," he said, referring to the two Internet entrepreneurs who were both born in Taiwan and migrated to the U.S. at young ages.
Interest: The U.S. Commerce Department's Economic Development Administration awarded the UConn Office of Technology Commercialization a five-year $483,830 grant. The EDA administered the grant to UConn through their University Center Program, which is designed to improve regional economic development tools that will create jobs.
Interest: The total impact of $1.4 billion is created by direct spending by the university as well as direct, indirect, and induced impacts of spending by the campus’ students, visitors, and retirees. Overall, the direct and induced impacts of UCR spending support 16,335 jobs annually – most of them located within Inland Southern California.
Interest: Through Sept. 30, there have been 35 venture-backed IPOs compared with 46 in all of last year. But the fourth quarter of 2010 saw 14 IPOs, and in 2007, the best year for IPOs since 2000, 27 companies went public in the fourth quarter.
Interest: From his lab in Lake Nona's Medical City, cancer researcher Philip Arlen is strategizing ways to take his new technique for studying DNA to market. And he is going entrepreneurial in hopes of making that happen.
Interest: The Site and Building Development Fund will award about $3 million to help meet the needs for ready-to-develop commercial and industrial sites, with awards ranging from $250,000 to $500,000. The state appropriation initially will be devoted to developing parcels of land and infrastructure as well as rehabilitating buildings that may exist already.
Interest: Desmond-Hellmann, a biotech industry star from her days running drug development at Genentech, has her work cut out in her third year as UCSF’s chancellor. Like any executive arriving on campus, she’s had to learn a lot in a hurry. UCSF is a complex, 23,000-employee enterprise that does everything from studying the basic functions of stem cells to helping discover new drugs to treating patients.
Interest: As a venture capitalist, I review hundreds of business plans each year and physically meet with roughly 100 entrepreneurs seeking capital. I have the advantage of doing this through the eyes of someone who has been on the other side of the table, having raised venture capital for my own start-up before becoming a VC.
Interest: He admitted that it’s difficult to inform policy decisions to help small businesses, but the conclusion of the report suggested that subsidies targeted at increasing innovative risk taking and overcoming financing constraints may be misguided. They suggest lowering the costs of expansion, which can be taken up by the much smaller share of small businesses aspiring to grow and innovate.
Interest: Jeff Kurtz, executive director of Main Street Waterloo, said the arrangement not only meets the loan requirements but will help both organizations. The RBC will house eight incubator spaces --- six of which currently are vacant --- and give Main Street staff more room to work.
Interest: The new center is the result of a multi-year effort by UT Dallas faculty, administration, the Research Office, the Office of Technology Commercialization, and the Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at UT Dallas to assist in the commercialization of UT Dallas innovations through the creation of new businesses. Within the last three years, UT Dallas has had 13 spinoff companies that have created more than 50 jobs.
Interest: The i6 Green Challenge is undeniably a very small program; the challenge website acknowledges that approximately $12 million was available for “proof of concept” models. Under business-as-usual in Washington, D.C., the expenditure of $12 million would look like a departmental rounding error.
Interest: Five major companies —Intel, IBM, Global Foundries, TSMC ands Samsung — have entered into agreements with the state to advance the next generation of computer chip technology in New York. About 450 jobs are expected to be associated with a planned Computer Chip Commercialization Center, known as the Quad C, and Center for Advanced Technology at SUNYIT’s Marcy campus.
Interest: As governor, Perry has a mixed record on science-related issues. Now, on the national campaign trail, his views have earned him rebuke from fellow Republicans who fear his controversial views -- while popular with the right wing -- ultimately will alarm independent voters in the general election.
Interest: The Tech Transfer Office received about $16 million in revenues from its licenses and equity stakes in 2010-11. That was down from $39.8 million in the previous year, when revenues were inflated due to a one-time royalty payment connected to the university’s decision several years ago to license the FluMist vaccine.
Interest: KTEC's efforts included the launch of the Kansas Pipeline entrepreneurship grooming program. The program, largely through the efforts of CEO Joni Cobb, has raised awareness of Kansas investment opportunities among venture capitalists in California, Texas and Illinois.
Interest: Small businesses on the hunt for cash may, however, benefit from the massive cash hoards that large companies possess. According to one recent study of more than 800 public companies, cash balances at the end of 2010 had more than quadrupled, on average, compared with 10 years earlier. Indirectly, these deep pockets may help growth companies by providing tired investors with renewed liquidity.
Interest: To help facilitate tech transfer out of universities, Obama announced three other initiatives. The first launches the University Commercialization Prize, a $400,000 program supported by NSF, the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The competition is intended to identify and promote incentives to adopt best practices that improve university commercialization efforts.
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