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MenuHow do we find serial entrepreneur or co-founders for technology that is built and tested in University/academic center and is now ready for spin-off?
What is the best way to find co-founding team (preferably with a serial entrepreneur) who is ready to partner with academic centers and spin off technology
Answers
Go to your Tech Transfer office and talk to them about what other technologies in a similar space have been spun out, who is involved in each company from the university and outside. Find out those faculty, entrepreneurs and investors and talk to them. They will know who is most interested in working with tech from your university and who already understands the issues involved with licensing university inventions to a startup vs. trying to license that tech to a big company.
I used to be the director and startup advisor at of one of the Purdue Research Parks, which is the largest university incubator in the U.S.
Feel free to call if you have more questions
Look at the evolving digital health startup ecosystem leaders, they are ( in this order) Startup Health, Rock Health, Blueprint Health and research the companies which have had successful exits, these founders may be interested in your next big thing! Another great resource on health accelerators as well as companies with successful exits is on Angelist, of course. Startup Health, for example keeps a nice database on exits here. I know many of these founders from my experience at Startup Health, and I'm always happy to help you in a followup call. Best of Luck!
This is not an easy process at all. I assume you are a University employee and an inventor. The first thing you have to do is to go to University Office of Tech Transfer office and get a right to commercialize the technology. OTT will make you sign a license agreement. I have been working with a number of startups that got burned by OTT because of license agreement that is greedy, so no business person would touch the technology because too much money will go back to University.
Getting a fair license agreement takes months of hard work. You need to have a business plan, comparative analysis to get into negotiation with OTT. http://www.anagard.com/services/TechnologyCommercialization.html OTT personal is not on your side, they want you to keep publishing papers and enhance brand name of the University, not help you get rich.
Most technologies developed at University are too immature for market place, so most likely the easiest way to commercialize it is via strategic partner, an existing company that can use this technology to enhance their own product line, or expand into a new one.
That's just generic answer without knowing more, but I have a lot of experience working with academics (NCSU, Duke, UNC) who want to commercialize their work and would be happy to help you.
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