Where
are you from originally?
I am
a Midwest guy. Grew up in NE Indiana
What
university did you go to?
Studied
Chemical Engineering at Purdue University, and after working a few years at Dow
Chemical, went to grad school at University of Illinois, Urbana campus where I
earned a masters and PhD in Chem E as well.
What
brought you to Austin?
The
opportunity to leverage what I learned over 25 years in research, product
development and business leadership to create a new program in Technology
Entrepreneurship at Baylor University brought me to central Texas. I
quickly became connected to IC2 Fellows at Baylor and others who introduced me to the Austin
community of tech business innovation.
What
is your group’s mission?
Enable accelerated
commercialization of things that matter. In our
view this is possible only when we focus on both the innovation and the
innovator – sustainable positive impact through tech ventures demands
development of leadership as well as technologies.
What
need does it fulfill?
As
Baylor emerges as a much more research-focused institution, the local need is
for easy-to-utilize commercialization pathways that help these research
insights to make a manifest difference in society. More broadly, we are responding to the need
for new companies and the SME segment of the commercial world to drive economic
growth and create jobs.
What
exactly does it bring to startups?
Since
we are an accelerator, our key deliverable is commercialization process coaching.
The processes we have developed have
proven to be successful in taking ventures to their next key milestone at a 75%
rate. For startups the next major
milestone is usually funding the next phase. In our system most of these startups achieve
that funding by a reformulating their plans, which happens as they gain deeper
insight into the opportunity set (often significantly altering their
prioritized path forward to reach cash positive state more quickly) and also by
doing a much better job communicating a compelling value proposition. Further, we find that teams that have been
through our highly iterative process gain such a comprehensive understanding of
how all the pieces of their plan depend on each other that when reality happens
and they need to reformulate on the fly, they can do so quickly and
knowledgably. We teach them how to
skillfully pivot.
What
type of startup would benefit from your group?
Pre-funded
startups will benefit greatly because we accelerate their path to clear,
executable strategy that delivers on proven customer needs. These teams often have a macro-level
understanding of how their technology could solve an important problem, but are
very weak on the details of that need, how various customers will find solutions
to it and thus what business model will enable a profitable solution delivery
system.
Startups
with a successful launch behind them with revenues from their initial target
customers in place will benefit by using our process to investigate, prioritize
and execute on growth in adjacent opportunities. By aligning operational, financial, product
development and strategic implications for each choice or series of targets,
these startups typically discover better rollout options than they had in mind,
and gain insight into the talent acquisition challenges they will have over
time, allowing them to solve problems proactively.
What
was the most challenging aspect of starting up the initiative?
We
ourselves are in effect a startup – The BRIC just opened its doors in January
of this year, and Baylor has never before had a tech biz accelerator in
place. On the other hand, we are drawing
on the experience of a senior coaching team and an acceleration process that
team has developed over the past 7 years.
This process created a highly experiential learning environment that
mixed venture-teams with student-analysts, so we in fact have a well-proven
product. Still,
branding and market awareness have been two of our biggest challenges.
What
advice do you have for entrepreneurs?
Commit
deeply to your purpose - your intent to
“make meaning,” as Guy Kawasaki described it.
Then, you will be better at focusing on the things that keep you on your
path, rather than on just any chance to turn a buck and survive another
day. Conversely, be much more flexible
in the details of how you will create that meaning, and work much harder than
you think you have to, so that you can truly understand what customers,
investors, and other stakeholders can teach you about the process.
What
Austin-based resource have you found to be the most helpful and why?
The
network. Every time I have needed to add
to our team or gain insight into a particular issue, it seems I end up tapping
folks who either are or have been part of the Austin venture scene.
Links:
