TOKYO — Nikon Corporation (Nikon) has invested USD $7.5 million in wrnch, Inc. (CEO: Dr. Paul A. Kruszewski, head office: Quebec, Canada, hereafter referred to as wrnch), a computer vision and deep learning startup.
Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), Long Beach, California — June 18, 2019 — Algolux has announced that a team of researchers from Algolux, the University of Montreal, and Princeton University has developed a new method that lets conventional color cameras — the ones in your smartphone or in a vehicle camera — see hidden objects that are occluded by walls or other scene objects.
Starting your own company out of university is a tricky business. You tend to have other things on your mind — like getting your degree. Here are some practical tips for university students who want to commercialise their technology.
Entrepreneurship isn’t about “freedom”, “lifestyle” or “being your own boss”. Entrepreneurship is about creating wealth quickly.
1. Statistics: A university degree will secure a better future for you, on the odd chance that you aren’t the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. I want to focus on entrepreneurs specifically, but all traditional benefits of university education of course apply: higher salary, faster career advancement, social recognition, etc.
The two business types use intellectual property very differently. Traditional start-ups use intellectual property to protect their business and Mark’s problem is spot on. It takes millions of dollars to fund effective patent litigation and start-ups don’t have that kind of money. University spin-offs on the other hand don’t just protect their business with patents, patents are their business.
The internet offers a lot of advice for start-ups — some good, a lot of it bad. In fact, giving advice has become a profitable industry all by itself with the inevitable impact on quantity and quality. Much of the good advice is focused on Web2.0 start-ups and often a bit inappropriate when you are a university inventor looking to spin out a venture. Rather than repeating all the general guidelines for successful entrepreneurship, I want to highlight some of these differences and introduce a university founder perspective.
Titles are always tricky, but particularly dangerous in the startup environment. It’s the much more pedestrian titles that create equal if not bigger problems (e.g. “Engineer”, “Manager”, “Director”, Vice President”, “CxO”, etc.). Their danger comes in two forms:
There have been mixed reactions to the new America Invents Act. While the bill may be far from perfect, some of the concerns U.S. universities have had over the change to a First-to-File system are overstated in my opinion. Some are claiming that the conversion from First-to-Invent to First-to-File will greatly hurt individual and academic inventors who don’t have the resources to file patents as quickly as large companies. While that’s true, I think it misses a key element of technology transfer.
Invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship are words frequently thrown around by politicians, theorists, and entrepreneurs alike to generally describe the act of bringing a product or idea into the world. While easy to confuse, each concept is distinct and requires specific skills. When it’s time to choose the right people for your startup, these distinctions are critical.
