Rawy Iskander writes on The Tech Entrepreneurship Blog that selling to a Fortune 500 company is not a walk in the park but could be key to the long-term success of your start-up. If you have decided you want a Fortune 500 company as your customer, and strongly believe you can deliver on your sales promises, keep the following tips in mind while going through your sales cycle:

1. Don’t pretend you are much larger as a company than what you really are. Turn your small size and start-up spirit into an advantage. Show them the values of start-ups: innovation and speed of execution. Establish credibility early and never lose their trust.
2. Address their concerns about your small size and risks. Show how you have planned your project to isolate your customer from legal and business risks.
3. Be financially prepared to survive delivery milestones. Complex projects could require several delivery milestones before you get paid. Of course, it would be optimal to receive a large up-front chunk that helps you finance your project, but insisting on such a condition during negotiations may lower your chances of winning the contract unless you have a captive product with very little competition. The good news is some investors would be willing to finance your company or project once you have a Fortune 500 contract.
4. Don’t get caught up in your own world and your great technology. Nobody cares about you or your technology — they care about what you can do for them, and how their life will be different after buying your product. “If you manage to persuade them that it would be much better, you may have a chance of a second meeting,” Iskander writes. “This is where you need to spend a lot of effort preparing for your sales pitch. Try to understand the company’s top strategic objectives and programs. The more your offering can anchor tightly into one or more of these strategic objectives and programs, the more likely you will be successful.”
5. Find an internal champion. Your project will get lost in the maze of a big customer’s organization unless you establish a strong relationship with someone who believes in your project and has influence.
6. Keep your sales pitch simple and professional. Create some “Aha” moments in your presentation. Practice these very well. “It is difficult to get a first meeting, but a lot more difficult to get a second one,” Iskander points out. “You must earn it every time.”
7. Be confident. You are dealing with normal people, many of whom fancy the idea of working for themselves or in a start-up. They want you to deliver your product and to succeed as an entrepreneur.

Source: The Tech Entrepreneurship Blog

Posted February 1st, 2012 under Tech Transfer. [ Comments: none ]

Benjamin L. Hallen, assistant professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at London Business School and a contributor to Bloomberg’s Business Class, says there is a roadmap to venture-fundraising success. Hallen’s research, in collaboration with Stanford University’s Kathleen Eisenhardt, identifies four hallmarks of efficient prospecting for money. “By efficiency we mean attempts that take less than two months of formal, almost full-time fundraising, while yielding offers from desired investors,” Hallen writes.

Conventional wisdom holds that successful fundraising requires introductions to investors, a clear pitch, and the ability to signal the presence of a high-quality founding team. In tracking nine Internet-security start-ups that sought multiple venture rounds over their first five years and sampling companies across the U.S. that had raised at least one investment round, Hallen and Eisenhardt found these practices weren’t enough. Instead, they say, efficient fundraising also depends on four catalyzing strategies.

Step 1: Engage in casual dating. Meet informally, but deliberately and repeatedly, with a few investors a couple of months before formally seeking an investment. One entrepreneur strategically courted VCs for several months by seeking their advice on his start-up business model over a series of casual lunches, then disclosed he was raising a round. Within 10 days, a courted investor made an offer. Others followed. Investors become psychologically invested in ventures that follow their advice, Hallen says.

Step 2: Structure timing around proof points. Time formal investment requests around signals that indicate the accomplishment of an externally validated milestone, such as the attraction of the first paying customer. “Proof points are vital for fundraising, yet occur relatively infrequently,” Hallen points out. “Accordingly, some entrepreneurs with a recent proof point, but without an immediate need for capital, still went ahead and sought investments earlier than they otherwise might.” Timing around proof points provides a simple signal of progress that is credible and easy to understand, he adds.

Step 3: Assess the interest of potential funders. Just because a venture capitalist voices interest in a business idea doesn’t mean an investment is in store. Efficient entrepreneurs recognize that talk can be cheap; they don’t simply take a VC at face value.

Step 4: Craft alternatives. Efficient entrepreneurs establish multiple routes that can lead to fundraising success, because potential investors tend to be hesitant. As one financier told us: “There is no incentive for me to act too soon. I would rather give the company plenty of time to either prove to me that what they said three to four months ago was correct, or prove it was incorrect.” 

Source: Bloomberg

Posted February 1st, 2012 under Tech Transfer. [ Comments: none ]

Stony Brook University has signed a multi-year research collaboration with Sanofi Aventis Group, of Paris, on a potential treatment for tuberculosis (TB) and other bacterial infections. The collaboration is based on novel compounds that inhibit bacterial cell division by interfering with a cellular protein called FtsZ, which is essential for bacterial cell maintenance and division. By interfering with FtsZ assembly, the bacteria are unable to maintain, divide and propagate.

Iwao Ojima, director of the Institute of Chemical Biology & Drug Discovery and distinguished professor of chemistry at Stony Brook, and colleagues who discovered the benzimidazole-based compounds will work with Sanofi to optimize them with the goal of identifying drug candidates ready for investigational new drug filing and clinical development in treating TB — especially multi-drug resistant TB. The CDC estimates that one-third of the world’s population may be infected with latent TB, and approximately 12 million people suffer from active infection.

Source: Stony Brook News

Posted February 1st, 2012 under Tech Transfer. [ Comments: none ]

What factors affected your TTO’s global IP strategy in 2011? What is your outlook for 2012? Participate in inovia‘s 3rd annual U.S. IP Trends Survey to weigh in. The results, which will be summarized in Tech Transfer eNews, will provide an in-depth look at the foreign filing strategy of U.S. patentees and their global outlook for 2012. The survey takes less than 15 minutes to complete and individual responses are strictly confidential. Only aggregate, anonymous information will be shared. Click here to respond on behalf of your university or organization.

Source: inovia.com

Posted February 1st, 2012 under Tech Transfer. [ Comments: none ]

With so much interest and attention focused on express licensing vehicles, it was perhaps just a matter of time before the approach was applied to IP arising from sponsored research agreements. Now, Binghamton University in Binghamton, NY, has done exactly that with an instrument that it hopes will greatly streamline the sponsored research negotiating process while also establishing standards and predictability for its industry partners.

While university administrators were certainly aware of the express licensing agreements unveiled at the University of North Carolina, the University of Hawaii, the University of Maryland, and other institutions, the only thing they borrowed from these other instruments was the express concept, explains Eugene Krentsel, Binghamton’s assistant vice president for entrepreneurship and innovation partnerships. “Those are strictly licensing deals. Ours is targeted at a different stage of negotiations, at the time when we negotiate a sponsored research agreement,” he says. Consequently, the structure, purpose and clauses are all aimed at a different demographic.

“We have about 18% of our external sponsored research coming from industry,” says Krentsel. “And we were struggling, just like everyone else, to find a way to limit inefficiencies in the negotiation process, especially in the early stages.” Among the principal hang-ups were all the IP-related clauses that are necessarily part of the process. “As our office plays a major role in helping to negotiate these clauses in sponsored research agreements, we were brought in every time, again and again, and the negotiation was something that took a very long time,” he explains. “However, at the end of the day, it was not necessarily a good investment of that time.”

To get around these problems, the university developed what it is calling the Binghamton Express Square Terms or BEST Deal License, a nonexclusive, royalty-free license on patentable innovations that arise from sponsored research. “Structurally, the BEST becomes an exhibit to the research agreement, so it is designed as a seek-and-obtain style license, with the company sponsor having the option that it can exercise,” explains Scott Hancock, the director of IP management at the university. “We are looking at a very modest licensing fee and then we are looking to recover our patent costs.”

Only the company sponsoring the research is entitled to the BEST license, explains Krentsel, noting that this is in exchange for actually validating the technology and proving its commercial value. “It actually increases the value of the license for anybody else,” he says. “If another company wants to come in and get a NERF [non-exclusive, royaltyfree license], yes they can do that, but it will cost them more money. We are guaranteeing this [to the sponsoring company].” A detailed article on the BEST license appears in the December 2011 issue of Technology Transfer Tactics. To subscribe and access the full article, plus more than four years of archived back issues filled with practical TTO success strategies, CLICK HERE.

Posted January 25th, 2012 under Tech Transfer. [ Comments: 1 ]

Jeff Clavier, managing partner at SoftTechVC, has his hands in many start-ups. He’s closed 114 deals, and five of his start-ups have been acquired by major companies like Yahoo, Intuit, and AOL. Clavier tells Business Insider what entrepreneurs need to keep in mind when pitching him.

Get in front of people. “We only meet with 15% to 20% of the teams that talk to us,” Clavier says. Make sure you “get the meeting” by doing your homework to target investors, using tools such as Crunchbase, LinkedIn, and Google. Learn who is investing at your stage and in your industry. “Then figure out who’s in your network,” Clavier advises. “Who can introduce you to the desired investor?” Learn who knows the VCs you’re targeting, reach out to that middle man, then craft an introduction email for that contact to send the VC. “If you look at our history, having seen 10,000 opportunities — based on how many meetings I take — of the 114 deals I’ve closed, exactly zero reached out to me in a cold e-mail,” Clavier says.

Prepare for the face-to-face meeting. Once you’re in front of a VC, you’ve already achieved the top 15% to 20% of opportunities, according to Clavier. Now, you need to show why you’re so passionate about your idea that you’re prepared to spend five to 10 years of your life trying to build a company. “Some people will walk through walls,” Clavier says. “Absolute persistent determination is something we want to try to feel.”

Plan your slideshow. Expect a one-hour meeting, Clavier says. Your slideshow should include a demo of the application or the service. “We expect people to build the initial prototype and have initial users,” he adds, suggesting 20 or 50 users. Start-ups also can validate their ideas doing simple advertising — for example, using Facebook ads using a budget of just $500 to $1,000.

Be different. “Something that is radical is something that will rank highly for us,” Clavier says. “We are in the business of taking risk. So we are looking [for something] that’s bold and different.” The goal of the first meeting is to get to the second meeting, he adds, noting that he calls references after the first meeting and decides in 10 days to two weeks whether the opportunity is interesting enough to pursue. “We get 20 business plans a day, so 2,000 a year,” he says. “We meet with 15 percent who send us e-mails. We work on 10 companies a month. We dig deep into five of them, and we do two deals. We say no 99.5% of the time.”

Source:  Business Insider

Posted January 25th, 2012 under Tech Transfer. [ Comments: 1 ]

One of the most controversial and worrisome provisions of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act is its introduction of a new post-grant review process. The new process, based on experience with a similar review process in Europe, is expected to result in an explosion in the number of challenges, particularly from large companies attempting to delay or derail start-ups and innovations from smaller organizations, including universities. The additional risks may affect licensing efforts, as well as the willingness of investors to commit to patented technologies until the post-grant review period has expired, or any PGRs initiated are settled.

Tech transfer professionals and IP practitioners need to quickly get up to speed on the details of this potentially damaging provision. That’s why our Distance Learning Division has teamed up with attorney experts Michael T. Siekman and Ed Walsh from the Wolf Greenfield IP Law Firm to present this hour-long educational webinar: Life Under AIA: Anticipating and Surviving Post Grant Challenges. Join us this Thursday, January 26, 2012, when Mr. Siekman and Mr. Walsh will provide a detailed review of the post-grant review provisions, their likely impact, remaining uncertainties as the USPTO deals with implementation, and strategies to begin planning now for both patent drafting and responding effectively to post-grant actions. For complete program details and to register, CLICK HERE.

COMING IN FEBRUARY:

• Wednesday, February 15: Licensee Red Flags: 12 Critical Signs that Should Trigger an Audit
• Wednesday, February 15: SBIR/STTR Grant Funding: Innovation Research and Technology Transfer
• Tuesday, February 28: How to Outsource and Offshore TTO Activities for Huge Savings and Efficiency Gains

Posted January 25th, 2012 under Audioconferences, Tech Transfer. [ Comments: none ]

Attorney Donald Zuhn writes on Patent Docs that the European Patent Office received 243,000 applications in 2011, which constituted a 3% increase from the 237,500 applications the EPO received in 2010. The Office granted 62,115 patents, which was 7% more than the number of patent grants in 2010. Of those, filings from China rose from 5% of all filings to 7%, filings from Japan rose from 18% of all filings to 19%, and filings from the U.S. fell from 26% of all filings to 24%. 

The Top 10 countries of origin for European filings were:

A more complete list of filings by country of origin can be found here. According to IFI Claims Patent Services, a company that produces global patent databases, 224,505 utility patents were issued in the U.S. last year, an increase of 2% over the 219,614 patents that were issued in 2010, Zuhn adds. IFI also released a list of the Top 50 companies receiving U.S. patents last year, including these Top 10:

The only life sciences company making the list was E I Du Pont de Nemours & Co. Asian firms accounted for 25 of the top 50 U.S. patent recipients, with U.S. firms capturing 17 slots. Last month, Reuters reported that China surpassed the U.S. in terms of application filings in 2010, Zuhn adds, with figures for 2011 not yet available. Citing a Thomson Reuters research report, Reuters said that published applications in China had risen by an average of 16.7% annually, from 171,000 in 2006 to 314,000 in 2010. Published applications are expected to top 500,000 in 2015, with filings in the U.S. and Japan amounting to 400,000 and 300,000, respectively.

Source:  Patent Docs

Posted January 25th, 2012 under Tech Transfer. [ Comments: none ]

Five universities in the United Arab Emirates have formed the University Leadership Council to lobby for more support for research and development and to encourage cooperation with industry. The council’s executive committee is drawn from Khalifa University, Zayed University, the American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates University, and the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology.

The council aims to generate creative ideas and foster common interests in innovation and tech transfer by working with industry and government and securing a clearer understanding of the goals and missions of research universities. One of its first acts will be to use a symposium entitled “Government, Industry and Academic Partnership to Promote Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi,” scheduled in Abu Dhabi next month, to press for more financial support from industry, government, and individuals.

Maryam Amir Khan, director of the institutional effectiveness and planning support unit at UAE University, says the council would provide a platform for universities from which joint projects, geared to tackle the development imperatives of the nation and the region, could be launched. The council wants to help industry and government to promote a culture of research and innovation and to aid universities in meeting the needs of industry and the economy. It will encourage complementary and cooperative research and academic activities and provide a means for students and staff to work with the public and private sectors.

Khan said the council also would provide a base from which other universities would be able to benefit from the expertise available at UAE University, which has strong research partnerships with research institutes, industry, and universities around the world. “UAE University is a key player in the nation and the region when it comes to higher education and research,” Khan says. “We have renowned faculty from all over the world and well-established research groups in diverse fields. We are sure that these existing partnerships would be of tremendous benefit to other members of the council.”

Source: University World News

Posted January 25th, 2012 under Tech Transfer. [ Comments: none ]

A key part of a medical patient’s physical examination is performed through touch, but a doctor can only glean so much information from what he feels. That’s why Temple University researchers have created a prototype device that will not only emulate human tactile sensation, but quantify it as well. The tactile imaging sensor was developed by Chang-Hee Won, PhD, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Temple.

“The human hands have this amazing ability to touch something and tell if it’s soft or hard, if it’s wet, or even its temperature,” says Won, who is also director of the Control, Sensor, Network, and Perception Laboratory in Temple’s College of Engineering. “We’re trying to emulate this tactile sensation with a device that will actually quantify this by giving us the mechanical properties of what we are feeling.” The tactile imaging sensor could aid doctors when they feel lesions, lumps, or tumors while conducting physical exams by detecting the size and shape of the lesion or tumor, as well as its elasticity and mobility.

The portable tactile imaging sensor can be attached to any desktop or laptop computer that has a Firewire cable port. Equipped with four LED lights and a camera, the 4.5-inch device has a flexible transparent elastomer cube on the end, into which light is injected. When the doctor feels an irregularity while giving a patient a physical exam, he or she can place the sensor against the skin where the irregularity was felt. The sensor uses the total internal reflection principle, which keeps the injected light within the elastomer cube unless an intrusion from a lesion or tumor changes the contour of the elastomer’s surface, in which case the light will reflect out of the cube. The sensor’s camera then captures the lesion or tumor images caused by the reflected light and they are processed with a novel algorithm developed by the CSNAP Lab to calculate the lesion’s mechanical properties. In addition to being portable and noninvasive, the devise also is inexpensive, with the prototype costing approximately $500.

Source:  Science Daily

Posted January 25th, 2012 under Tech Transfer. [ Comments: none ]

Yellowstone’s hot springs are a haven for researchers interested in the prevalence of life in some of the world’s harshest environments. Outside of their near-boiling hearts, those springs are surrounded by rings of different temperatures and colors, explains Mark Kozubal, PhD, a researcher at Montana State University who studies organisms that live off the iron and sulfur in the springs’ high temperatures and acidic conditions.

The first ring is typically 70 degrees and yellow from sulfur. The next, red from iron, measures 50 degrees to 70 degrees. Finally, there are rings of algae and fungi, he says. It’s an acid-tolerant fungus from one of those outer rings that has Kozubal and colleagues at MSU excited. While working with a 10th-grade science class, Kozubal scooped a bit of algae from the outer ring to see if the class could grow algae for biofuels. While trying to grow the algae, this fungus kept taking over.

Kozubal was amazed that a fungus from an extreme zone in Yellowstone could eat algae. When he took it back to his lab to test its acidity while feeding on glucose, he found the fungus could survive in an acidic habitat with a pH of 6 — an acidity level similar to cow’s milk. When he took it out of the glucose solution and dried, it however, “it just oozed oil,” Kozubal says. “It was taking that glucose and converting it into pretty high percentage lipids. That’s when we really got excited.”

The oil it produced contained a ratio of oleic and steric acids that’s nearly ideal for biofuels. Kozubal and colleagues are working with MSU’s TTO to secure a commercial license and funding for future research into the fungus’ capabilities and applications. Already, companies such as Cargill and BP are showing interest in the fungus, according to Kozubal.

Source: Bozeman Daily Chronicle

Posted January 25th, 2012 under Tech Transfer. [ Comments: none ]

Last year was likely the best ever for Cleveland Clinic Innovations in more than a decade of existence. The Innovations group, which is charged with commercializing medical inventions by Clinic health providers, enjoyed its largest-ever exit, pulled in its biggest-ever donation, signed what was touted as a first-of-its-kind deal to provide commercialization services to another health system, and made several new hires.

What’s on tap for an encore in 2012? First on Innovations’ Chief Chris Coburn’s wish list is likely another exit like last year’s sale of Intelect Medical for $78 million to Boston Scientific. The Clinic’s take from the deal was $28 million. The most obvious exit candidate this year is biomarker company Cleveland HeartLab, which could have exited last year but turned down an offer from an unidentified Massachusetts company. Innovations has plenty of other promising spinoffs, including regenerative medicine firm Juventas Therapeutics, neurostimulation company Autonomic Technologies, and health IT startup Explorys, but 2013 or 2014 seem more likely exit years for those companies.

Another key 2011 accomplishment was a commercialization deal between the Clinic and Maryland health system MedStar Health that calls for the Innovations group to do for MedStar what it already does in Cleveland: help doctors turn ideas for medical advancements into products that bring money back to the hospital. Last April, Innovations hired Tom Thornton, former CEO of the Kansas Bioscience Authority, to strike alliances with other health care institutions to develop medical technologies.

No glance at Cleveland Clinic Innovations would be complete without mentioning Coburn’s baby — the annual Medical Innovations Summit in the fall. The 1,000-attendee summit brings a cadre of business and medical technology A-listers to Cleveland like no other event. Last year’s summit on cardiovascular technology featured speeches from the CEOs of Pfizer, Medtronic, St. Jude Medical, and General Electric. This year, the summit’s focus is orthopedics.

Source:  MedCity News

Posted January 25th, 2012 under Tech Transfer. [ Comments: none ]

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