Business Incubator Series: Interview With Julia Rosen, Associate Vice-President For Innovation And Entrepreneurship, Arizona State University, Venture Catalyst At ASU — Scottsdale, Arizona (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Julia: Many times, our early-stage entrepreneurs don’t have the resources to pay professional service providers. They’re much more interested in working with a group of bright graduate students. So, we connect entrepreneurs with students who might be able to perform certain services for them.

Many of our entrepreneurs are interested in hiring technical and business assistants. Many of them are interested in connecting with faculty who are either technical domain experts or business experts in the relevant areas.

We have 33 specialized labs. Many entrepreneurs don’t need to spend a lot of money buying a piece of equipment if they can have access to that piece of equipment at ASU.

Then, of course, there is our entire research portfolio. Like all universities, we have a variety of faculty members doing interesting research. Many entrepreneurs are interested in linking with faculty members either to validate their products or to partner with them to seek external funding.

Finally, we have a robust technology transfer office and a number of technologies in the pipeline. Many entrepreneurs are interested in licensing technologies from the pipeline.

In addition, we provide a broad variety of connections to investors. Arizona does not have a large number of indigenous venture capital funds. What ASU has built, over time, is a broad network of investors in California, New York, Washington, and all over the country. We bring them to Arizona for specific events and for individual visits. We’re constantly working with the investors in our network to understand what kind of deals they’re interested in and introducing entrepreneurs to those investors, either in group formats or in one-on-one sessions, to accelerate their success in accessing capital.

I would also like to mention the mentor platform that we’re building. We have 80 mentors in our network. For high-potential startups, we introduce them individually to mentors who we think have the right domain experience to help.

Irina: What sets your program apart from other accelerators?

Julia: I think we have a number of differentiators. First of all, our services are customized. While some accelerators will have kind of a lock-step program, that is not our strategy.

Understanding that we have entrepreneurs from different areas, it doesn’t make sense to have a one-size-fits-all program. We meet with each entrepreneur and develop a customized road map for them.

Sometimes the road map involves heavy engagement with ASU. Sometimes it involves recommendations to connect with other community resources. Sometimes it involves connecting with certain professional service providers. We have a customized approach to our accelerator program.

I would also say that while we do favor certain industries in terms of the acceleration, we are open to working with entrepreneurs from all disciplines. Part of the philosophy is that entrepreneurship is not a program; it’s really a value. We are lucky enough to see students from nursing, education, the arts, film, who have fantastic new ideas for ventures. We’re very happy to work with them.

This entire notion of connection to the university – we are focused on that and scaling that. We call it our business concierge service. We have hundreds of staff members throughout the university whom we call on when an entrepreneur has a need.

[We don’t just give] entrepreneurs Web resources or [tell them to] talk to these people; we make the initial phone calls ourselves and make these warm introductions for entrepreneurs. We think that level of service, which we call the business concierge, is not something that is often found in incubators.

As we’re talking about our technology transfer entities, which I’ve mentioned, many of our entrepreneurs are interested in licensing technologies or doing new deals with the university. Our focus is not on short-term revenues but on long-term revenues. We are measured by how quickly we do deals.

We are focused on long-term upside for the university, so as the entrepreneur would make money, the university would make money. That kind of shared risk and shared reward philosophy is something that entrepreneurs find very attractive.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Business Incubator Series: Interview With Julia Rosen, Associate Vice-President For Innovation And Entrepreneurship, Arizona State University, Venture Catalyst At ASU — Scottsdale, Arizona
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