Collaboration is the secret sauce…
It was a full, but fulfilling day in St Louis. I had a breakfast meeting with the Tech Transfer Offices (TTO) of Washington University (“WashU”), St Louis University (“Slu”), the University of Missouri and Southern Illinois University. It soon became clear that the issues at hand weren’t all that different here and in the Netherlands. Here too they have struggled to establish a culture change within the universities towards a more positive approach to spin out companies and economic use of research. And here too they struggled with the role of the TTO as either primarily to protect the university from bad publicity towards a central role for the TTO in the innovation ecosystem and creating as much impact as possible. Bottom line according to Nichole Mercier from Washington University’s TTO is ‘leadership’: if the President, Provost and Deans are advocates for knowlegde transfer and startups, the scientist will follow. A change in leadership, combined with the departure of some big corporates in St Louis inspired the pivot from a pure research institute towards the university as the centerpiece in the innovation ecosystem in St Louis.
Since replacing all the ‘leaders’ in the Dutch Universities nor the departure of corporates as a driver for innovation is a very attractive intervention, we either have to wait till new leaders take the stand or take little steps in the right direction. One step Nichole suggested is a Quick Start License: a simple, non-negotiable agreement between university and startup, where the university takes 2% royalty and a success fee at the end. Compared to IP negotiations that can take up to more than a year, that sounds like heaven….
Luckily the next meeting showed a variety of ‘small steps’ we can take in the Netherlands to boost academic startups. For instance the BioGenerator. A private initiative aimed at ‘derisking’ academic startups by providing them with their first capital and coaching them to become ‘investor ready’. The BioGenerator provides pre-seed and seed funding, but is also working closely together with VC’s to do bigger investments. They are a ‘one stop shop’ for startups, because they provide mentoring, public and private funding. And they bridge the gap between academics and investors, by assessing the market opportunities for academic startups, lowering the barriers for VC’s to step in. Steve Hanley from MediBeacon explained how a 50 page memo from BioGenerator on his company helped him to attract his series A and B funding. He now runs a successful company in medical imaging.
What really stood out in all the meetings was the level of collaboration. When I pitched our challenges in the Netherlands, everybody immediately started to brainstorm about possible solutions, steps we could take. But without wanting to prove a point or force their opinion. And that same cooperative ‘can do — mindset’ and collaboration might just be the secret sauce of St Louis.
And that collaborative mindset might just make St Louis a great launchpad into the American market for Dutch startups in either BioMedical or Ag-tech. The Israeli’s have already discovered that!
