Venture Lab gives UC community opportunities, support

In front of a room packed with faculty, staff and members of Cincinnati’s startup community, the freshly minted entrepreneurs unveiled their plans for turning their inventions and creations into viable businesses. The ideas ranged broadly from sensor-fed artificial intelligence software that can predict when manufacturing equipment will need to be serviced to software that helps students overcome the barrier of dyslexia while helping them learn to read.

“The whole point of the graduation day is not to pitch for funding, like at a traditional demo day,” said Grant Hoffman, 1819’s director of startups and leader of the Venture Lab program. “It’s about trying to get people excited about what you’re working on so that they’ll come help you get that technology out of the university setting.”

By that standard, Tuesday was a massive success. Of the nine companies that presented at the Venture Lab graduation, the program’s pool of entrepreneurs in residence expressed interest in providing guidance to eight of them, Hoffman said.

But that’s not to say funding isn’t a possibility. Two Venture Lab startups have already secured financial support. The first, Amplify Sciences, has also attracted outside leadership from CincyTech, a Cincinnati venture capital group with plans to locate to 1819. The company, founded by UC grads Andrew Jajack ‘18 and Eliot Gomez ‘18, is using technologies they developed in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences’ Novel Device Lab to bring to market a more accurate flu test that’s also easier to use than anything currently available. And a company from this group — See Word, maker of the aforementioned literacy software developed by founder and DAAP professor Renee Seward — is ready to launch.

“Our program is all about being authentic,” said Hoffman. “We don’t want to be about the theater of entrepreneurship here. We want to tell the real stories, and the real story should be that they don’t all make it.”

But for those that are ready to move forward, UC’s Office of Innovation has simplified the process of getting tech developed at UC into the market. “Our goal is to see as many successful startups as we can,” says Geoffrey Pinski, the Office of Innovation’s director of tech transfer, “so we’ve come up with an express license — a set of terms that are straightforward and easy to comprehend.” The express license eliminates the back-and-forth negotiations that came with the old way of doing things. It spells out the cost to license UC-owned technologies, and it’s not restrictive in the eyes of investors, Pinski said. “UC still gets its return if the company is highly successful, and the company is in a position to raise capital and move forward as quickly as possible.”

All of these changes promise to be attractive to faculty and students, some who may have been hesitant to come forward with technologies developed at UC. With more trust, more support from an advisory standpoint and more opportunities for funding, the new model is a “win-win-win” for innovators, the institution and the broader community, says Heikenfeld.

“We can seamlessly match up with entrepreneurs, and no one has to do anything extraordinary,” he says. “We want people to come here because we create value.”