A global challenge exists today in the need to bring new innovations to market. The University FundsSM is a new kind of venture capital firm focused on addressing this need by accelerating the commercialization of emerging technologies that demonstrate market disruptive potential. The focus areas for The University Funds are Healthcare/Life Sciences, Alternative Energy and related “Green” Technologies, and Advanced Computing/Communication Technologies.
Multiple barriers face new ventures along the path to commercialization, including business formation, funding, building a strong leadership team, accessing business expertise and defining an exit strategy. Often universities, research labs and emerging companies do not have the appropriate expertise, business structure or funding sources necessary to bring innovations to market. Corporate research divisions often develop promising technical innovations that could ultimately support their business objectives, but require outside development before significant internal investment is warranted. The result of these constraints is that countless market-changing opportunities never reach commercialization.
The University Funds uses an unconventional approach to overcome these barriers, by first identifying market needs that define commercialization opportunities, then licensing promising technologies from a global network of Universities, National Research Institutions and Corporate Technology Partners. We often combine complementary technologies to form portfolio entities, commit funding, and provide teams of hands-on business executives with a variety of critical skills and experience to build products and manage those companies.
Two core components of The University Funds innovation commercialization model are its Emerging Technology Fund and the Business Accelerator. Funding is committed in a structured series of investments, which are tied to specific development milestones. The Business Accelerator provides critical strategic planning and executive oversight, and launches the new entities using a disciplined Managed Launch Process. By providing centralized administration and shared services resources across all portfolio companies, the Accelerator reduces costs and allows the management teams to focus on the most critical product and business development issues.
The University Funds is unique in that it brings together of all these synergistic elements into a framework for creating successful new ventures. This framework is leveraged by our growing network of global research institutions, technology advisors, corporate partners, executive partners and investors to accelerate today’s research innovations into tomorrow’s market solutions. |
|
