At Auburn, Entrepreneurship is a Team Sport
Auburn’s New Venture Accelerator leverages a wealth of experience, expertise, and dedicated resources to help students, faculty and local area entrepreneurs succeed.
There are many ways a technological breakthrough, scientific discovery or innovative approach to unmet needs might be turned into a viable start-up or licensed by an established company as the foundation for a new product or service.
Discerning which route offers the most promising path to success in each particular circumstance is one thing that distinguishes and elevates Auburn’s entrepreneurial ecosystem among others in the higher education-supported new business development arena. The collection of world-class resources at Auburn aligned to help students, faculty, and local business operators along their respective entrepreneurial journeys has been assembled to do just that.
But the overarching characteristic of Auburn Entrepreneurship is how the people who lead the various organizations and initiatives targeting entrepreneurship at Auburn are focused on collaboration to bring out the very best in every potential opportunity that might present itself.
Collaboration is King
Auburn is an example of how working to foster a collaborative network of experts with deep experience building, financing and helping grow new companies benefits all stakeholders in the business creation and development process.
The New Venture Accelerator sits smack dab in the middle of a wide-ranging entrepreneurial ecosystem at Auburn University that has grown exponentially in recent years. Drawing on the value delivered by Auburn educators, experienced business leaders, entrepreneurs-in-residence, as well as new business development organizations and initiatives on-campus that help guide new ventures, the opportunities for entrepreneurial success at Auburn’s NVA are limitless.
As part of my assignment to assess the NVA’s approach to entrepreneurship, I recently conducted a series of interviews with three leaders of Auburn’s expanding entrepreneurship ecosystem – Lou Bifano, Cary Chandler and Bill Dean– to find out just what makes the entrepreneurial environment at Auburn tick.
Three common threads emerged from these individual discussions:
- The germ of entrepreneurship arises from a wide variety of sources at Auburn – there is no single starting point for new business creation or new product development inspiration.
- The purpose of entrepreneurship at Auburn is to identify, appreciate and find innovative ways to support this potential new business creation – be it from students, faculty, or members of the local community.
- From a poem written by John Donne, Shakespeare once said, “No man is an island entire of himself.” This tenant epitomizes both the Auburn Creed and the NVA’s approach to leveraging resident resources in the most powerful, effective way possible on behalf of collaborative entrepreneurial pursuit.
How do these fundamental constructs manifest themselves at the NVA? I’ll let each of these individuals speak for themselves.
NVA:
First off, can you tell us what your specific role is in promoting entrepreneurship and new business development at Auburn, beginning with how you got here?
Lou Bifano is Director of Auburn’s New Venture Accelerator and teaches in the Harbert College of Business entrepreneurship program. He can be reached at loubifano@auburn.edu
Bifano:
Back in 2016, I was working in mergers and acquisitions in the technology space in Austin, Texas and our daughter was a student here at Auburn and a member of the equestrian team, so naturally we were here frequently for her competitions. During one of those trips, I had the opportunity to speak with the Dean of the Harbert College of Business and it became clear from that initial discussion that he and the entrepreneurship faculty were interested in strengthening the entrepreneurship program at Auburn.
As I looked into what was going on here and did a gap analysis, I became excited at the prospect of helping move Auburn’s entrepreneurship vision forward – there was just so much potential. So, I began commuting back and forth between Austin and Auburn to teach as an adjunct professor. Shortly following my retirement, we moved here to head up the New Venture Accelerator.
Bill Dean is Executive Director, External Engagement & Support, IP Exchange and the Auburn Research and Technology Foundation. He can be reached at billdean@auburn.edu
Dean:
I’ve been here two years going on three, coming from Wake Forest University and Baptist Medical Center, where I ran a biotech ecosystem serving the Winston-Salem, North Carolina area and helped build a biotech innovation park there – both the physical infrastructure and the learning infrastructure – including the framework around technology transfer.
And this is not my first time here in Alabama. I worked in Huntsville a few decades ago when I first learned about the business of research parks (Cummings Research Park) and the importance of small businesses to the whole new business ecosystem. That was before incubators had become popular.
My focus has always been on the potential of technology development and commercialization that build ecosystems within communities. Taking that focus in the intellectual property arena – how to help students and faculty commercialize the innovations they’ve created or leverage the science they’ve discovered into practical applications that change people’s lives. That support can come in a number of ways, but one thing that drew me here was the undeniable potential for success. I know untapped potential when I see it – it’s what I do.
Cary Chandler is Senior Director, Business Development and Startups at Auburn’s IP Exchange and the Auburn Research and Technology Foundation and leads Auburn’s LAUNCH faculty innovation competition. He can be reached at carychandler@auburn.edu
Chandler:
I was hired originally as the director of startups for Auburn after being a principal in five startups over 35 years and launching products and operations in 55 countries around the world. That was in 2016, about the time Lou came into the College of Business and was doing his gap analysis on the entrepreneurship program. I was focused on creating more startup opportunities from Auburn University intellectual property, and Lou was coming at it from how the College of Business could promote entrepreneurship among students.
But the opportunity was clear – there was so much potential here simply waiting to be supported in a proactive, robust manner that would take into account all the ways innovation can become the foundation for business success.
I now lead the LAUNCH Innovation Grants Program, which is a competition for Auburn faculty who have created technology or other innovations that are near commercialization. The other hat I wear at the Research Park is to help make sure the New Venture Accelerator has what it needs to succeed and is surrounded by an ecosystem that has innovative people and the capital to progress new business efforts forward
NVA:
Can you tell us a bit more about how each of your individual roles are integrated into the overall entrepreneurship effort at Auburn?
Bifano:
Rather than who does what, what’s most important about all of the people involved in entrepreneurship and innovation today at Auburn is that we work together as a team – we help each other out.
At Harbert and at the NVA, we have a student focus, while campus-wide, the Research and Technology Foundation concentrates on commercializing research and the intellectual property they generate. But we all get involved in coaching, mentoring, and running workshops that have both faculty and students in attendance. It’s not a situation where we stick to tightly defined swim lanes. We take advantage of the experience and skills of all the people and organizations on campus supporting the entrepreneurial aspirations of both students and faculty.
Dean:
Historically, technology transfer in higher education focused more on protecting intellectual property developed at a university rather than how these discoveries could be turned into commercial value. What we are building here at Auburn is an innovation framework that helps simplify the business model for value creation.
Whether it’s mentorship, workspace, market studies, research, seed capital, venture capital – even technological insight or help in building management teams – all that can migrate into the New Venture Accelerator, we help maximize the potential of Auburn-based innovations and discoveries and work to find the money needed to support the value-creation process applicable to each.
What we’re doing is breaking down traditional barriers by bringing in a “teams’ approach” with expertise from within our colleges and outside professional organizations where we can help develop the partnerships and relationships necessary to steward AU research and innovation into commercialization or a new startup opportunity.
Chandler:
Let me begin by separating two things. If a student comes up with an idea that they didn’t use university resources to create, that’s their own intellectual property. We support them with our resources to foster innovation at Auburn and create more success stories.
On the faculty side, they may come in and say, “I think I’ve invented something that needs to be patent protected.” We want them to disclose this to our Intellectual Property Exchange office before they disclose it to the public, because once you’ve written it in a paper or spoken about it in a public setting – it’s over as far as protection of IP.
After disclosure, we file a provisional patent and begin the process of determining if they have claims that are defensible and if the underlying technology or science is marketable – if it solves a problem worth solving from a financial perspective. We have a commercialization team with three PhD-level scientists and a staff of interns who research the proposed patent and marketability of the invention. If there is a market for it and if it’s defensible, we’ll file a non-provisional patent.
On the Auburn University-owned IP front, we’re talking about over $300 million in research being conducted at Auburn each year. From this investment, we hope to see somewhere between 60 and 90 innovations or disclosures, as we call them.
The commercialization team meets with Bill and me on a weekly basis, and we talk about all the new innovations that have come in and where we are in the process of determining their marketability. We’ll walk through the most promising potential applications to decide whether they have more value for an outside company like Intel or J&J or if forming a start-up makes more sense. We like to place bets on startups because the return to the university can be so much greater than just licensing out raw technology or pure science to a large company.
NVA:
Looking ahead, what are the ultimate determinants of success for Auburn’s NVA?
Bifano:
One factor of success is when our students win or place highly in business plan pitch competitions outside of our own Tiger Cage event, such as the SEC Pitch Competition, Alabama Upstarts, Alabama Launchpad and the Rice Business Plan Pitch Competition, which is the platinum standard. I am proud to say that over the past few years, startups from the NVA have placed first in all of these.
Another important factor is the success our NVA start-ups are achieving in terms of funding. Take Yellow Card for example, which recently secured $39 million in Series B financing from a group of prominent investors based in San Francisco. And they’re not alone. The level of external recognition our NVA-resident teams are achieving as a result of these financings is clear evidence of our success to date and our prospects as a team going forward.
Dean:
I think it is really, really critical that we are developing the partnerships and relationships to steward Auburn research towards IP commercialization and new startup opportunities. Being an entrepreneur is not an easy job. It involves a lot of risk and difficult decision-making. That’s where our network of alumni comes in.
Many of Auburn’s alums have done this before, and it’s exciting to have an alumni group like ours that wants to help Auburn students and faculty become successful entrepreneurs. Their engagement and support play a key role in the research, innovation, and disciplined application of discovered value created here at Auburn being recognized for the extraordinary impact we have on the lives of our students, faculty, and the world at large.
Chandler:
One measure of our success is how many NVA-based start-ups are still going strong after coming aboard. Take XO Armor Technologies, for example. Created in 2019, XO Armor is leveraging Auburn’s Samuel Ginn College of Engineering’s industry-leading 3D printing – or additive manufacturing – technology to design and manufacture customized protective gear for athletes.
Another start-up in the pipeline at the NVA coming out of Auburn’s additive manufacturing research is NanoPrintek, which is developing the world’s first dry multi-material printer that enables the creation of functional materials and devices for electronics, energy, healthcare, agriculture, transportation, and defense applications.
And then there’s Nanoxort, an NVA company that is using nanotechnology engineering to create safe, multifunctional contrast agents that will enhance the diagnostic accuracy of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and improve the health and well-being of patients.
From all measurements, the future appears to be very bright at Auburn’s NVA.
- Over the past six years, the NVA has invested in developing a state-of-the-art incubation and business operations facility supported by eight entrepreneurs-in-residence with over 300 years of combined experience in starting and growing new businesses.
- NVA-supported teams have raised a combined $85 million in Series A and Series B funding.
- The LAUNCH Innovation Faculty Grants program has awarded nearly $1 million in eight years to fund innovations near to commercialization.
- The NVA’s local pitch competitions have awarded more than $400,000 in seed funding to promising student- and faculty-led new businesses.
- And the NVA’s mission was recently bolstered by the award of a 3-year, $1.3 million grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration to develop programs and workshops that support startup businesses in the local Auburn-Opelika community. The grant is part of the Build to Scale Program, which aims to accelerate entrepreneurship by increasing inclusive access to business support and startup capital.
The NVA has come a long way in a very short period of time, but make no mistake about it, they’re just getting started!
If you are an early- or later-stage investor interested in tapping into a robust pipeline of world-class technology, science, and new business innovation, I would encourage you to reach out to Bill, Cary, or Lou to start exploring how your interests and needs might align with those of the NVA, the talented students and faculty at Auburn and the extraordinary value being created here.
I am confident you’ll be glad you did.
