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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.
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:
Thus far in this Venture Capital series, we have covered the fundamental three “P’s” of building a technology venture: people, product, and pesos. But the last often comes with a bit more paperwork than the first two. In this article, we will look at common structures for venture capital deals, the motivations of the players involved in venture funding, and some of the pitfalls that could destroy your company (or your stake in it) if you are not careful.
University researchers are probably the largest potential source of commercially valuable inventions and yet they are generally not viewed as leaders in entrepreneurial value creation. We will therefore provide some commercialization tips for faculty members as well as some suggestions for investors and entrepreneurs working with faculty members. Joining me for this article is Dr. Lorne Whitehead, a previous CEO who has spent the last 20 years combining the roles of a university professor and administrator with a high rate of patenting and spin-off company creation.
There’s been a flurry of articles and a Hacker News Poll, highlighting entrepreneurs who despite, or maybe because of their success, turn around and screw their employees, collaborators, partners. Just look at the last few big deals this year:
Any organization should be continuously on the look-out for talented people who are capable of taking on leadership roles. In this context you hear the word ‘ownership’ a lot, in reference to ‘owning’ a function, project, or deliverable. The words are often used interchangeably but, I believe, have very different roles. In essence, leadership means leveraging others, while ownership means getting stuff done. All companies need both, but startups in particular succeed or fail on the basis of leadership and ownership in the organisation.
Finding a good cofounder is a key ingredient of a successful startup. Having had the opportunity to work with a variety of co-founders over the years, and now pairing up with individual co-founders for TandemLaunch portfolio investments, I have developed a couple rules of thumb for what to look for in co-founders.
Investing in university ventures is difficult but worthwhile. The following are a few things to consider when you are negotiating investment deals with universities. All of this comes from my own experience and might not reflect the engagement with your particular university.
