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Austin Technology Incubator Graduates Two Bioscience Companies: Savara Pharmaceuticals and Terapio

Thursday, January 26th, 2012

Tonight, at a special graduation and alumni event, the Austin Technology Incubator (ATI), a not-for-profit part of the IC2 Institute of The University of Texas at Austin (UT), will graduate 21 companies.  Of those 21, two companies were part of ATI’s Bioscience portfolio: Savara Pharmaceuticals and Terapio. Both have had a tremendous impact on the growing bioscience community in Austin, hiring dozens of workers and raising millions of dollars in funding.

Over 20+ years, ATI has developed and refined industry specific capabilities, currently organized into Information Technology, Wireless, Clean Energy and Bioscience sectors. In each industry sector, ATI brings its portfolio companies deep domain expertise, market- and technology-specific networks of advisors and investors. Tonight’s graduation event showcases successes in all four sectors, including two remarkable companies in bioscience.

Founded in 2008 in partnership with the City of Austin, ATI-Bioscience works closely with other members of the Central Texas and statewide life science ecosystem, including BioAustin, Central Texas Life Science entrepreneurs, the University of Texas faculty and students and regional hospital and healthcare groups.  ATI-Bioscience recently completed a study, supported by the regional community and the Economic Development Administration, to quantitate the need of wet-laboratory space to support life sciences companies in Central Texas.  ATI-Bioscience has also partnered with UT’s College of Pharmacy to create an on-campus wet lab facility, UTech Dorm Room, which can be accessed by early-stage life sciences companies in Austin.  The ATI-Bioscience hosts symBIOsis, a quarterly educational series, co-sponsored with the Rice Alliance, to bring the entrepreneurial, commercial and academic life sciences communities together. The two Bioscience graduates are:

Savara Pharmaceuticals is developing the first inhaled antibiotic for cystic fibrosis (CF) patients targeting the highly contagious “super bug” Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). MRSA is dramatically increasing worldwide.  Savara’s Aerovanc has recently completed its first clinical with encouraging results.

Terapio is a biopharmaceutical company developing the RLIP76 protein as a medical countermeasure for radiation exposure and chemical threats to civilian, military and first responder populations. The RLIP76 protein works though the oxidative stress pathway and protects as both a prophylactic and post-exposure treatment. Terapio tapped the unique talents and network at ATI to help secure Texas ETF, federal grant and venture capital funding totaling over $7M in less than two years.

“We are extremely excited and pleased about our first bioscience graduate companies,” said Cindy WalkerPeach, PhD, Bioscience Director. “Terapio and Savara are exceptional healthcare-focused companies that will not only have a positive impact on patient care but will favorably impact regional economic growth as well.”

Contact:

Laura Beck for ATI

laurabeckcahoon@gmail.com

512-786-1098

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Startup Funding – What You Need to Know

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011

Last Thursday, October 27, 2011, ATI hosted the fifth session of the Entrepreneurs’ Workshop. Sponsored jointly with the Rice Alliance and the Central Texas Angel Network, the Workshop is a tremendous resource for aspiring entrepreneurs. During weekly meetings taught by successful investors, experienced executives, and experts on startup companies, students in the class learn the processes involved in starting a new venture. The Workshop culminates with an opportunity to deliver an elevator pitch to investors.

Previous meetings have covered the basics of writing a business plan, validating the market, building a successful team, and protecting intellectual property. This last week the Central Texas Angel Network’s founder and chairman Jamie Rhodes talked about funding options.

His key points:

  • Angel funding can be critical for startups. For every company started by VC, there are 25 started by angels.
  • Venture capital funding becomes a preferred option when a company needs to raise more than $2 million.
  • It can be tougher to find deals in the $2 million – $4 million range – Angels generally want to invest less than $2 million, while VCs (especially if they manage a large fund) can want to put more than $4 million to work.

For our sixth session, Thursday, November 3, 2011, Blair Garrou, Managing Director of DFJ Mercury, will talk about effectively communicating a funding deal.

Teel Liddell is a recent graduate of UT, where she studied English and Biology and participated in the Plan II liberal arts program. Over the summer Teel worked in the Health Inequalities Unit at the UK Department of Health in London. Now returned to Austin, she interns at ATI, helping with grant proposals, managing the ATI/Rice Alliance/CTAN Entrepreneur’s Workshop, and providing research assistance. Teel plans to attend medical school in the fall of 2012.

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The Nuts and Bolts: Business Law and Intellectual Property for the Entrepreneur

Tuesday, October 25th, 2011

Last Thursday, October 20, 2011,  ATI hosted the fifth session of its weekly Entrepreneur’s Workshop, an endeavor sponsored jointly with the Rice Alliance and the Central Texas Angel Network. The Workshop is designed for a class of 30 entrepreneurs interested in starting a new venture or expanding their existing start-up. Each session is taught by experts in their respective fields, including investors, venture capitalists, CEOs, and legal, accounting, and marketing professionals. This week we received the expertise of Alex Allemann, an attorney with Winstead, P.C., and intellectual property lawyers Loren T. Smith and Temple Keller of Hulsey, P.C. Here is what we learned:

The Nit and Grit of Business Law

  • How the entrepreneur organizes and chooses an entity
  • How to split the equity among founders
  • Options for financing the new venture
  • How to seek venture capital

Protecting IP

  • What is covered under Intellectual Property
  • How and when to file a patent
  • The limits and legalities of patent protection
  • The differences between patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets

For more information, go to http://www.hulseyiplaw.com and http://www.winstead.com.

Teel Liddell is a recent graduate of UT, where she studied English and Biology and participated in the Plan II liberal arts program. Over the summer Teel worked in the Health Inequalities Unit at the UK Department of Health in London. Now returned to Austin, she interns at ATI, helping with grant proposals, managing the ATI/RiceAlliance/CTAN Entrepreneur’s Workshop, and providing research assistance. Teel plans to attend medical school in the fall of 2012.

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When Excellence Becomes a Reality: Building a Successful Team and Developing a Common Vision

Thursday, October 20th, 2011

We’ve learned how to make a business plan, seek investor funding, and market our product. So what’s next in the life cycle of a new venture? Building a Successful Team. On Thursday, October 13, ATI hosted the fourth session of the ATI/Rice Alliance/CTAN Entrepreneur’s Workshop, which featured a panel of three experienced startup professionals and their advice on forming a solid team to run a company. David Hughen offered a Human Resources perspective, while Rick Gross (Taran) and Bob Bridge (inView) spoke as CEOs.

This is what we learned:

  • Companies don’t necessarily have to solve a problem by making a hire, especially these days. Take interns! And get them to do big work. This resource comes at a modest cost and, if the interns are good, gives a view into future hires.
  • Friends and family have value as potential hires BUT… get a “pre-nup”. Manage their expectations and leave lots of room for growth above and around your early hires.
  • Talent is nice but performance is key. When hiring do not judge based on resume alone. Look at successes, intangibles, commitment, and results. Get references and then call the references’ recommendations.
  • Think about team chemistry when hiring. Deliberately hire those who complement your personal skills.
  • A world-class advisory board gains the confidence of investors and initial key hires. When recruiting advisors, try to find a CTO from a significant target customer or recently retired senior executives from significant competitors.
  • Tie compensation to specific performance objectives. Reward as soon as possible, sometimes one-on-one, and other times in a group setting. Instead of cash, give something personal and long-term like a watch. The employee and his spouse, friends, and peers see it every day.
  • Bond with the team. Be present, visible, and supportive.
  • Make it a personal priority to create a company with a reputation as a great place to work. Take time to reflect on what type of corporate culture you want for the company.

Teel Liddell is a recent graduate of UT, where she studied English and Biology and participated in the Plan II liberal arts program. Over the summer Teel worked in the Health Inequalities Unit at the UK Department of Health in London. Now returned to Austin, she interns at ATI, helping with grant proposals, managing the ATI/Rice Alliance/CTAN Entrepreneur’s Workshop, and providing research assistance. Teel plans to attend medical school in the fall of 2012.

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“10,000 Ways That Won’t Work”: Validating Your Market and Killing Your Failures Early

Tuesday, October 18th, 2011

Last Thursday evening we hosted the third meeting of our Entrepreneur’s Workshop here at ATI. A joint collaboration with the Rice Alliance and the Central Texas Angel Network, the Workshop meets weekly and offers aspiring entrepreneurs the opportunity to learn from experienced startup executives, investors, and service professionals in a classroom setting.  This has been a hugely successful resource for new entrepreneurs in the past: The founders of GameSalad, Inc. went through entrepreneurial training with the Rice Alliance team in 2009, moved into ATI, and launched their now burgeoning company in 2010.  This fall kicks off our seventh workshop.

Last Thursday’s session was delivered by Dr. Rob Adams, superstar entrepreneur, investor, author, strategy consultant, and faculty member in the McCombs School of Business.  A graduate of Babson College’s Olin School of Management, Dr. Adams is a nationally recognized speaker and author on entrepreneurship.  At Thursday’s meeting Dr. Adams discussed his recent book If You Build It Will They Come? Three Steps to Test and Validate Any Market Opportunity (Wiley, 2010).  His key points are summarized below.

Ready, Aim, Fire

Why is it that 90% of all startup businesses fail?  It’s not technology, manufacturing, accounting, or operations that determines the success of a startup.  Critical to a new business’s taking off is market sales.  Before investing all that money in product development, you should probe, test, and endorse your market opportunity with the following steps.

Ready

Do a fast triage of your idea to understand if more time and effort should be invested.  Consider where your product stands on the lifecycle of your market.  Investors want to invest where there is increasing demand for a product, not where the industry has been exhausted.  Find out how your competitors fix the market problem.  Asking consumers their three least favorite features of your competitor’s product may illuminate how you can improve yours.

Aim

Develop a product with unique, differentiable features compelling to your target audience.  By interviewing potential consumers, you can determine whether there is demand for your product and target a particular consumer profile.

Fire

Get a market-oriented product out.  Tackle narrow markets and have a product with minimally acceptable features.  Perfection is unimportant for now.  Introduction of your preliminary product will ensure time to fine-tune with later editions and the opportunity to kill unmarketable features early in the development process.

Market Validation is a systematic, proven approach that will make or break your business.  As Thomas Edison once observed, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Market validation prevents unsuccessful ventures by weeding out market failures and targeting a specific product that a specific audience will buy.

For more information, go to www.drrobadams.com.

Teel Liddell is a recent graduate of UT, where she studied English and Biology and participated in the Plan II liberal arts program. Over the summer Teel worked in the Health Inequalities Unit at the UK Department of Health in London. Now returned to Austin, she interns at ATI, helping with grant proposals, managing the ATI/Rice Alliance/CTAN Entrepreneur’s Workshop, and providing research assistance. Teel plans to attend medical school in the fall of 2012.

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Austin’s Premier Entrepreneur’s Workshop Upcoming

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

The Rice Alliance – Austin Chapter, Austin Technology Incubator, and the Central Texas Angel Network have assembled a team of some of Austin’s most experienced entrepreneurs to present a nine-week Entrepreneur’s Workshop that will cover the basics of starting and growing a successful business.

The Workshop is designed for entrepreneurs who are interested in starting a new venture or are currently working to expand their existing start-up. The Workshop will meet weekly over a nine-week period and will be conducted in a classroom environment. Each weekly session will be taught by experts in their respective fields, including entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, private investors, CEOs, and legal, accounting and marketing professionals. Speakers will include Rice Professor Al Napier; Rob Adams, an entrepreneur and lecturer at UT’s McCombs school; Jamie Rhodes, chairman of the Central Texas Angel Network; and Blair Garrou, a venture capitalist with DFJ Mercury Partners.

At the end of the program, participants will make a quick pitch of their business plan to an audience of potential investors, partners and mentors at the Elevator Pitch session followed by a reception. The pitches will be judged by the audience members and the presenter whose pitch scores highest will be invited to make a 5 minute presentation to the Central Texas Angel Network.

This will be our sixth workshop. Three companies formed by entrepreneurs who attended past workshops have received venture capital or angel funding.

When: March 24th-May 19th 

Where: WPR Building (formerly MCC) 3925 West Braker Lane, Austin TX 78759

Time: Thursdays 4:00PM-6:00PM

Price: $125 – includes all 9 sessions and materials

For more information visit:

http://www.alliance.rice.edu/alliance/Upcoming_Events.asp?SnID=2118172573

Registration is limited to the first 35 participants. Sign up now!  

Click here to register: 

https://ricemba.wufoo.com/forms/entrepreneurs-workshop-spring-2011/

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ATI Companies Make Strong Showing at Rice Venture Forum

Monday, December 20th, 2010

ricealliancelogoAustin Technology Incubator member company Ihiji shined at the Dec. 9 Rice Alliance IT & Web 2.0 Venture Forum in Houston, ranking among the top 10 of the 55 different companies to give a 90-second elevator pitch.

Three ATI-member companies gave a 90-second pitch and one graduate company, RF Micron, presented a full 10-minute pitch to the forum audience.

  • Ihiji – Inaugural product, invision, provides an intuitive monitoring tool to the Residential Electronics Systems Contractor (RESC) industry
  • Inxero – Offers a B2B social media marketing, sales and collaboration SaaS for every stage of the customer lifecycle.
  • Eonsil – Creating the next generation of solid state drives (SSD) for the enterprise market.
  • RF Micron – Developer of next generation RFID Micro Chips and platforms for itemized tracking applications.

Aside from the startup presentations, the Forum hosted three keynotes — Tomasz Tunguz of Redpoint Ventures, Nicholas Seet of Auditude and Doug Erwin of The Planet — who provided as many different perspectives on IT & web entrepreneurship. The wealth of insight from the keynotes stood as a testament to the Rice Alliance’s dedication to Houston’s emerging technology startup scene.

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Gaming-industry legend Richard Garriott to head Austin panel, “The New World of Gaming”

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

No longer from a time or land far, far away, the brave new world of gaming is emerging now – and right here, in Austin. With games that are more casual, more mobile, more accessible, and much cheaper to develop and launch than previous-generation console games, gaming has attracted new interest from entrepreneurs, marketers, and investors across the nation. Does Austin have the right combination of creative genius, technical talent, entrepreneurial know-how, and access to smart capital to be the epicenter of an explosion of new ventures bringing entertainment and connection to the computer, smart-phone, and iPad enabled community? How will these new ventures change gaming, Austin and the world?

These questions and others will be addressed by legendary game innovator, Richard Garriott, now of Portalarium, local entrepreneur Rodney Gibbs, CEO of Ricochet Labs and creator of the internationally popular Qrank trivia game, and other distinguished panelists.

This event will likely sell out, so register today to secure your seat. Game on!

When:
November 9, 2010
Time:
 6:00 – 6:45 PM: Networking and Refreshments
6:45 – 7:00 PM: Announcement of winners
7:00 – 8:00 PM: Panel Discussion and Q&A

Location:

AT&T Conference Center

1900 University Avenue at MLK/19th

Austin, TX 78705

Directions:
http://meetattexas-px.trvlclick.com/driving-directions.html

Fees:
 Pre-registration: $20 (Deadline to pre-register: November 5th at 5:00 PM)
Walk-Up registration: $25 (space permitting)
Student pre-registration: $5 (with a valid student ID)
Student walk-up registration: $10 (with a valid student ID)

Register: http://bit.ly/cpqg0j

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Perfecting the pitch is vital

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

ABJ Entrepreneur Column by ATI Director Isaac Barchas, originally published here Thursday, May 27, 2010, 11:00pm

My team and I probably saw, heard or read more than 200 business pitches last year. And after about 75 percent of them, we didn’t understand the businesses.

I’m convinced that this is a primary cause of entrepreneurial failure. Every entrepreneur needs to be able to clearly and succinctly communicate the essence of his or her business to an intelligent stranger.

There are lots of places where entrepreneurs can go to learn more about how to communicate their business ideas more effectively. The Web is a great resource for templates and suggestions. (I especially like Guy Kawasaki’s takes on communicating a business idea.) Locally, entrepreneurs and pre-entrepreneurs can take advantage of courses and symposiums put on by the Austin Technology Council, TiE, Tech Ranch Austin, the Rice Alliance, Austin Entrepreneur Network and others.

Beyond learning and deploying the formal how-tos that you can learn from those resources, here are three behaviors that too few entrepreneurs engage in, but that would improve almost everyone’s pitches:

Write it down — in words

PowerPoint has a unique ability to mask sloppy thinking and enable people to lie to themselves. Using verbs instead of objects from .ppt galleries to describe what a business does forces the entrepreneur to think hard and precisely describe key elements of the business — such as the product’s value to customers, which I’m left scratching my head about after most presentations.

…read the full column at www.abjentrepreneur.com

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Notes From Entrepreneur’s Workshop: Market Validation

Friday, April 16th, 2010

The following blog post was written by Iva Paleckova and Justin Bowes, ATI marketing and law interns.

The Rice Alliance – Austin Chapter, Austin Technology Incubator, and the Central Texas Angel Network have assembled a team of some of Austin’s most experienced entrepreneurs to present a nine-week Entrepreneur’s Workshop that will cover the basics of starting and growing a successful business.

The Workshop is designed for entrepreneurs who are interested in starting a new venture or are currently working to expand their existing start-up. The Workshop will meet weekly over a nine-week period and will be conducted in a classroom environment. Each weekly session is taught by experts in their fields, including entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, private investors, CEOs, and legal, accounting and marketing professionals.Last week’s session on Market Validation was delivered by Dr. Rob Adams, one of the best lecturers at the McCombs School of Business.

Here is what we learned about Market Validation:

90% of all start-up businesses fail. The most common reason is not inferior technology, bad manufacturing, accounting or operations, but rather the failure of entrepreneurs to analyze and understand their markets and base product offerings on market requirements.

How do you define and size the market?
•       Who are your potential customers?
•       Segment the customers in your market – what are the different customer profiles?
•       How many customers are there in each segment? How much will they buy?
•       How quickly are the different segments growing?
•       Begin with secondary resources to find out more about the market: libraries, the internet, and business periodicals are all great places to start
•       Next consult primary resources.  Dr. Adams recommends that every entrepreneur should devote 5% of R&D resources to market validation of her product, and a lot of that should go to primary research. Entrepreneurs must survey their customers by phone or email, or create a web-based survey (www.surveymonkey.com is an example).

Every entrepreneur – before she decides to launch the product and often even before she creates the demo – should pick up the phone and talk to 100 of her potential customers first. After doing that, she will know a lot more about the industry, its buzzwords, potential customers and their needs.  This knowledge translates into better products and a more successful business.

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