I thought it was a good conference and have summarized some of my take-aways below.

Overview:  This conference focused on the process of starting, building and financing technology based spinouts. The event united venture capitalists, research & development scientists, tech transfer executives from university and research labs, private equity investors, corporate investors and counsel, & spinout companies for excellent dialogue on investing opportunities, term structures and deal partnerships.  This conference had both a life sciences and technology focus and included case study illustrations.

Here were my key takeaways from the conference (round 1 from my notes)

1. Utah has a pretty good handle on the technology transfer and early stage investing process - we understand the issues, but Utah needs to improve our processes and our mixing abilities
2. This is a very hands-on and personnel intensive process and all areas of the country find it hard work to create a scalable process
3. It is currently not a very scalable process nationally
4. Mixing universities technologists and technologies, with entrepreneurs, investors and businesses is essential to success, but is also challenging and requires a lot of personal effort
5. From Jeff Andrews of Atlas “People who Found Companies are a Precious Natural Resource”
6. There seems to be an expectation gap:  Universities want venture funds to “invest earlier” and venture firms see thousands of deals every year, if a deal is too hard, too difficult, too early, they just move on the to the next deal.
7.  Jeff Andrews highlights the following 3 important groups:
1. Entrepreneurially minded professors
2. Serial entrepreneurs (looking for next gig)
3. VCs (looking for next deal)

       Help these 3 groups come together

8. This is “Not an end game” – help professors recognize that this is one of many opportunities (“a portfolio”)
9. Jeff Atlas:  What a University can do
1. Give the IP Away – emphasize the larger vision, spinout friendly, don’t fret the few points of equity (note – TTO/TCO officials afterwords were very upset by this – their comments “We have to pay for the TCO”).  Another note:  there are other ways of counting the wins – including donations back by successful entrepreneurs, dissemination of knowledge etc
2. Free 2 year sabbatical to professors to help the spinout
3. Treat Founders like Rock Stars
10. Edward Jung:  Intellectual Ventures – A liquid market for IP - building a portfolio of IP – providing liquidity in the IP market and offering large packages of IP on a non-exclusive basis
11. Masstechportal.org
1.     16-17 participating institutions have their IP consolidated there
2. iBridgenetwork.com is a nonprofit university technology portal sponsored by the Kauffman foundation - interesting model and they've done a good design job.   Focusing on the Long Tail of Research
   
12. WikiPatents – wikipedia applied to patents. – do you want a social network assessment of patents and IP?  Can you create a community of interest around university technology?
13. Fred Allen discussed the 3 legged stool: IP, Money and Talent 
14. Between Market Push (Research Project) and Market Pull (business) lies the Innovation Gap or the Valley of Death

See Agenda Here

www.ibfconferences.com/ibf/control/exhibitorsimages/agenda/TT%20Agenda%20_WORKBOOK_10-15-07%20FINAL.pdf