Research Commercialization Academy (BETA 0.01)

STEVE MERCIL

Steve Mercil is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of RAIN Source Capital. He is a pioneer in bringing angel investment opportunities, which have historically been clustered on the coasts, to the Central states and to the often-ignored rural areas of those states.  He is currently spearheading efforts to set up regional investment networks of angel investors throughout the United States. Under his leadership, RAIN Source Capital established 24 RAIN Funds in six states with 450 investors that have invested $40 million in more than 80 companies.  These companies have been able to raise an additional $200 million in capital.  Mercil is a Principal in the InvestAmerica NW, LLC, and the General Partner of Invest Northwest, LP, which is a venture capital fund focused on middle market and later-stage companies located in Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota and Washington.  In addition, Mercil often puts his keen understanding of the needs of entrepreneurs and emerging businesses to good use by playing an active role with portfolio companies. He has served as an advisor, a member of the Board of Directors, and even as CEO and CFO for selected companies.  Mercil is on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Seed and Venture Funds, and recently concluded his board term as Treasurer for the Angel Capital Association.

DAVID S. ROSE

David S. Rose is a serial entrepreneur who crossed the aisle to become one of the country's leading angel investors... and then crossed it back to found Gust, filling a major need in the rapidly growing world of early-stage investing. As an entrepreneur, David has founded half a dozen companies since his first one at the age of ten, and has personally raised tens of millions of dollars of venture, strategic and institutional capital. He was named to the Inc 500 list as CEO of one of the country's fastest growing private companies, and has been described as a 'world conquering entrepreneur' by BusinessWeek. As an angel investor, David founded and is Chairman Emeritus of the New York Angels, one of the largest and most active angel investment groups in the US. He has personally invested in over 70 early stage companies, and serves on the boards of directors of KoolSpan, Magnify Networks, Social Bomb, Comixology, and Pond5. Outside of Gust, David is Managing Principal of Rose Tech Ventures, Chairman of Egret Capital Partners, and Track Chair for Finance, Entrepreneurship and Economics at Singularity University. He has been dubbed "The Pitch Coach" by BusinessWeek for his work with early stage entrepreneurs, a "top dog in tech"; by Crains New York Business, and "patriarch of Silicon Alley" by Red Herring magazine. David writes about early stage investing and entrepreneurship on Quora and Twitter as @davidsrose and on his blog, rose.vc/angelnotes.


About Gust

Gust provides the global platform for the sourcing and management of early-stage investments. Gust enables skilled entrepreneurs to collaborate with the smartest investors by virtually supporting all aspects of the investment relationship, from initial pitch to successful exit. Gust is endorsed by the world's leading business angel and venture capital associations, and powers over 750 investment organizations in 65 countries. More than 150,000 start-ups have already used the platform to connect and collaborate with over 35,000 individual accredited investors. The company was founded in 2004 under the name Angelsoft and is privately held. Gust is based in New York, New York, with a development center in Vancouver, British Columbia, and European office in Paris, France.

TONY STANCO

Tony Stanco, Esq. is the executive director of the Angel Investors of Greater Washington, executive director of the National Council of Entrepreneurial Tech Transfer. Previously he was the director of the Council of Entrepreneurial Tech Transfer and Commercialization (CET2C) of The George Washington University. Mr. Stanco was a senior attorney at the Securities and Exchange Commission, where he worked on more than two hundred IPOs. He also has worked on innovation policy, including start-up creation and funding by angel investors and VCs. At School of Engineering and Applied Science at The George Washington University, Mr. Stanco works with universities and governments around the world on innovation policy, start-up finance policy, software policy, Open Source, cyber-security, and e-Government issues. Mr. Stanco has appeared before the US Congress, various US defense and civilian agencies, the World Bank, the European Commission, United Nations, Inter-American Development Bank, Organization of American States, World Summit on Information Society, LinuxWorld, Advanced Computer and Internet Law Institute, and International Computer Law Association. Mr. Stanco teaches the Lab to IPO course dealing with start-up formation and funding. He has an LL.M. from Georgetown University Law Center in securities regulation and is licensed as a lawyer in New York state.

ASHLEY J. STEVENS, D.Phil (Oxon), CLP, RTTP

The Focus IP Group provides a variety of consulting services in intellectual property matters, including serving as an Expert Witness services in intellectual property disputes, technology scouting, technology transfer and teaching the commercialization of early stage technologies. For 15 years, he led Boston University’s Office of Technology Transfer. He then became Special Assistant to the Vice President for Research for two years before retiring from full time employment at BU. He remains a Lecturer in the Strategy and Innovation Department in Boston University’s School of Management, where he teaches two graduate-level, inter-disciplinary courses on Technology Commercialization. Before joining Boston University he was Director of the Office of Technology Transfer at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a teaching affiliate of the Harvard Medical School. During his tenure at Boston University, the Office of Technology Development spun out over 50 companies based on the University’s research, a number of which have raised substantial amounts of capital, and the University’s licensing income climbed steadily. He has recently been appointed a Guest Professor at Osaka University, Japan, where he teaches G-TEC, an intensive summer course on technology commercialization. Prior to entering the technology transfer profession, Dr. Stevens worked in the biotechnology industry for nearly ten years. He was a co-founder of Kytogenics, Inc., of which he is still a Director, was co-founder of Genmap, Inc., and was Vice President of Business Development for BioTechnica International. He started his career with The Procter & Gamble Company, where he held a number of positions in commercial development, sales, marketing, product management, strategic planning and acquisitions and mergers. Dr. Stevens publishes and lectures frequently on many aspects of technology transfer, including the Bayh-Dole Act, the economic impact of technology transfer and its role in economic development, the contribution of academia to the discovery of new drugs and vaccines, the role of technology transfer in global health and technology valuation. He was the recipient of the Bayh-Dole Award at the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) 2007 Annual Meeting and became President of AUTM in March 2010. He is also active in the Licensing Executives Society and the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council. Dr. Stevens holds a Bachelor of Arts in Natural Sciences, a Master of Arts and a Doctor of Philosophy in Physical Chemistry from Oxford University. He is a Certified Licensing Professional and a Registered Technology Transfer Professional.