When Gilbert Hammer, Editor ipTV, suggested checking out NJIT's Enterprise Development Center at the weekly meeting of Open Coffee*, I was curious. Located in Big Pharma's back yard, NJIT has one of the country's most active technology incubators in the country. Though it regularly spawns new medical device and pharmaceutical ventures, it is by no means limited to Life Sciences. NJIT's School of Architecture and Engineering keeps green tech design and discovery flowing though while the Capstone computer lab keeps students rolling out more apps for the insatiably social.
From the first session, the bootcamp was interactive. Unlike those offered by celebrity entrepreneurs or Ivy league corporate off-sites, NJIT's incubator goes well beyond disseminating high level contacts and workshop highs to deliver organizational behavioral change. In just four days, business owners (and 4 team members) develop, streamline and present their offering to investors for less than the cost of a room at the Plaza! The State of New Jersey through the tireless efforts of Judith Sheft, AVP, Tech Dept, funds the difference.
Presented by Dr. Aron S. Spencer, Founder, InVenture, and professor with the School of Management, the incubator bootcamp delivers Supercoach® Entrepreneurial Training (SET). Professor Spencer is, as Brian Spencer from Vurtego stated “.... part of a rare breed that can communicate effectively with the CEO types AND the CTO types. ..” (http://bit.ly/Supercoach). This trait is key since start-ups need to use CEO, CTO and CFO “speak” to get funded today.
Out of the gate, in the first exercise, Dr. Spencer directs owners to focus on talking not writing. This is harder than you'd think for practiced speakers. SET begins by directing the entrepreneur to keep to the 30 sec “spot” of broadcast communications and then tightens message to a single tweet-ready, line. This rigor paid off in clarity on the 4th day for a panel of investors.
Dr. Spencer teamed with Mary F. Howard, Principal of Design Technologies who's probing analysis across multiple industries reflected her experience in bio-tech, medical devices and design. Her own serial entrepreneurship brings seasoned mentoring to these young incubator companies.
Sustainable Competitive Advantage & Differentiation
There are a number of ways entrepreneurs can communicate opportunity to an investor, the most obvious is announcing some advantage that no one else has. Best is having something that no one else ever will ever have, the original formula. Less value, but still significant is to have a unique “method of use”. One of the incubator companies had defended a method-of-use patent. Having won when challenged, the company built credibility in the high risk high reward clinical trials marketplace.
“High-Risk High-Reward is attractive to Licensees.”
To bring income into a start-up early on, high risk intellectual property companies will often pursue licensing. In this way they enter faster, fuel growth and meet projections. Other effective strategies capitalize on synergies in the “value chain”- relationships the company has from concept to market. The best is to build value for all partners in the value chain. Building value for the whole chain builds a bigger pie to feed more sector growth.
“How are you going to make me rich?”
In watching the final presentations to the investors, the words of a friend in venture capital rang in my head, “entrepreneurs just want to do what they do best, whether its product development, real estate, science or technology, they don't want to have to worry about the numbers”. Here despite the coaching, some presenters seemed to assume that if the market opportunity is clearly stated the payday is obvious. Wrong. In one case, a company ignored the SET rigor, presented highly technical slides and left out the time-line of payouts.
Its not all about numbers, there are personal preferences too. Who doesn't like to laugh? All the judges liked the idea of a humorous dictionary. Whether it was because the development would be next to nothing, the health benefits of laughter or its universal appeal; it didn't hurt that the young presenter was natural, receptive and thoughtful in responding to questions.
Like anybody else, investors are not impressed with being talked down to. Calibrating this though can be a bit of a trick. One presenter left out a key feature he thought would be too technical. The coaches assured him the investors would know the term and to put it in. Another, couldn't resist putting in all the technical terms of his sector and the sustainable competitive advantage was lost on the panel.
NJIT Incubator participants also have access to NJIT's College of Computing lab where tech students develop new technology to support the ventures. I encourage you to look into this and the other wealth of information and services at the Enterprise Development Center. Its less than 30 minutes from Manhattan. Beyond the education and pitch opportunity, the incubator connects you with other entrepreneurs. On the surface, they may seem to have nothing to do with your business. That's the very reason you might want to cultivate them...they can point out the obvious that your supportive choir isn't hearing. Successful entrepreneurs reach far and wide to form their circle of support. The NJIT's Enterprise Development Center's Venture Acceleration Bootcamp creates an intense transformation experience to share and build trust. And today trust is paramount.
For more information about NJIT's Economic Development Center's Venture Acceleration Bootcamp and College of Computing Sciences' Capstone Program visit : http://bit.ly/njitboot or email: Judith.Sheft@NJIT.EDU
* Open Coffee NY, organized by Vidar Brekke founder of Social Intent, is an open agenda weekly meeting started in London to discuss current issues in technology, marketing and venture capital ecosystem. http://www.meetup.com/NYOpenCoffee
Venture Accelerator Participant Companies
Donnella's Closet – donnella@shopdonnella.com;
Disaster Relief Kit – (not available at posting);
International Voyager – mcquire@cruisedirector.com
Turbine – M. Ala Saadeghvaziri, PhD, PE, F.ASCE, ala@njit.edu
VidTherapyPro – Gilbert B. Hammer – gilbertbhammer@gmail.com
SetSee – Timothy Gill – Tim@setsee.us
Rinox – Ira Sanders, MD – irasanders@optonline.net
Mark Funston – mark.funston@gmail.com
Investor Panelists
Wayne Fox
John Ason
Carl Georgeson
Yaniv Sneor
Lou Wagman
Michael Erlich
Steve Royster
