
MIT launches new venture for world-changing entrepreneurs - elsherbini
http://news.mit.edu/2016/mit-announces-the-engine-for-entrepreneurs-1026
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Dangeranger
A) What is the application process expected to be like for The Engine?

B) It appears that the resources are spread out across Cambridge, Boston, and
South Boston. Which of these locations if any is planned to be the central
location for the accepted startups?

C) What existing companies and organizations are planning to be part of The
Engine and what will their roles be?

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6stringmerc
Oh, it's in Cambridge. Well that's out. Just like I was checking into a pretty
cool MS program focused on Tech and Entrepreneurship...but I'm not moving to
New York unfortunately even on a temporary basis.

Serious question:

Is there any type of "traveling workshop" program that brings high-tier
guidance and supplies to various locations for a weekend? I was thinking that
an up-front Submission Process, then some evaluations / meetings / feedback,
and then a Weekend Workshop using 3D printer(s) and other basic tools that
could fit in a box truck and about 5,000 sq ft of space (?) - would be a great
way to bring brain capital to under served communities. Then follow up through
the same channels used for evaluations / meetings / feedback, and continue
mentorship.

I mean, I'm not knocking location anchored programs, they make sense and they
can help a community.

> _In that time, they will receive financial investments as well as guidance
> in business planning and access to shared services such as legal, technology
> licensing, and administrative assistance. Entrepreneurs will be able to take
> advantage of specialized equipment, services, expertise, and space through
> an online marketplace developed for The Engine._

Doesn't most of that read like something that doesn't need to be totally
anchored in the "Greater Boston" community? Especially for a tech-savvy
institution with plenty of bandwidth?

What I am trying to say is that based on the distribution of population in the
US, if you really want to find undiscovered talent, you're going to have to
meet them half-way.

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ftrflyr
This sounds similar to The Impact Engine out of Chicago. My company was part
of the first cohort back in 2012. Feel free to AMA about this space - I have
learnings to unload if interested.

~~~
mblode
Could you maybe just unload your learnings? I'd love to hear your findings.

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seb_lounis
Very exciting news from MIT. Anyone interested in this thread should also
check out Cyclotron Road at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. It's a two-year
fellowship and incubator specifically geared toward hard-tech innovators
working on energy technologies. Applications for the next cohort are open
until Oct. 31 - cyclotronroad.org/apply

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Texasian
Huh, actually just noticed the sign for their new office space this morning on
my way to work. Seems strange that they're attaching this to the Kendall
Square brand when its basically in an entirely different neighborhood.

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infocollector
Does anyone know what MIT wants out of the funds it invests? Also, what rights
does its faculty have on their inventions? Same question for entrepreneurs who
work with MIT?

~~~
NickNaraghi
Faculty at most universities sign the rights to their inventions over to their
host institution as part of their employment agreement. I believe MIT is the
same way. Universities generally have a technology transfer office (at MIT,
it's called the Technology Licensing Office) that manages all of the
intellectual property created there, with the hope of commercializing some of
it.

From what little I can read, The Engine is a separate entity from MIT, which
gives them freedom to work with entrepreneurs without the restrictions in
faculty contracts.

Some technologies invented at MIT(1) will be licensed by companies(2) that
will leverage The Engine(3) to accelerate their development, with the
expectation that the development will take place over a longer-than-usual time
scale (10-20 years).

Maybe I'm optimistic, but I'm guessing that this is less about the return on
the money for MIT, and more about bringing impactful technologies to market
that previously have not fit well in the existing funding ecosystem (and
inspiring others to do the same).

~~~
hga
_Faculty at most universities sign the rights to their inventions over to
their host institution as part of their employment agreement. I believe MIT is
the same way._

Yes, MIT does this quite explicitly, which while making some professors
unhappy, has helped it avoid some notorious messes seen at other universities
when they got greedy, e.g. the University of Pennsylvania going from #1 in
computers (ENIAC) to _nothing_ , or CalTech losing Steve Wolfram over his
first symbolic math program.

Flip sides include giving professors 1 day a week to work on whatever they
want that's not part of their MIT stuff.

Trivia: after decades of being one of the worst in the nation, averaging about
one license per year (seriously, and we know of three of them, Symbolics, LMI,
and Macsyma to the former), and infamously flubbing both 3D core memory and
synthetic/semi-synthetic penicillin licencing, MIT realized they had a problem
and supposedly fixed it, the official statement was wonderfully understated,
said something about actually licencing the technology instead of focusing on
the process of licensing....

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onetimepadder
Hmm, how can an arm of the military-industrial complex help in any way, shape
or form anyone really interested in changing the world? How naive one have to
be .. well, ok nevermind, get your fb/g/"startup"(as in, cheap outsourced r&d
labor) coffee and back to work "for the betterment of the world" folks ..
nothing "to think" here

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100ideas
YC now functionally resembles a world-class university: huge endowment; elite
alumni; pure & applied research departments; staff scientists; education
program; bi-annual semesterish schedule; all in service to the mission of
improving the world by empowering the next generation of innovators.

MIT ignored YC, and now is competing with YC.

Next will be bargaining with YC :)

Then just partnering with YC...

~~~
bzbarsky
> huge endowment

Really? Some endowment sizes for world-class universities:

MIT: $13 billion

Caltech: $2 billion

Harvard: $36 billion

Stanford: $22 billion

Princeton: $21 billion

Yale: $25 billion

Cambridge: GBP ~6 billion

Oxford: GBP ~4 billion

Caltech is the outlier here for US universities, but it's also an outlier in
size; its endowment per student is still about $1 million, which is in the
same ballpark as the other US universities on the list. See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment)
for probably more data than you ever wanted. ;)

I'm having a hard time finding how much money YC has lying around, but I would
be rather surprised if it's in the billions USD.

> pure & applied research departments; staff scientists

On a _tiny_ scale compared to a world-class university.

------
icinnamon
Does anyone know if something similar exists at other universities
(specifically curious about Stanford)?

~~~
gsjbjt
The difference between this and most other incubators (at Stanford, Harvard
iLab, etc as mentioned below) is that it's very specifically geared towards
hard-tech startups that other investors typically shy away from because of the
long time to market.

~~~
icinnamon
Precisely. I'm asking if other hard-tech incubators exist at Stanford (and
others)...

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neom
Is this filling a void in the current venture space...?

~~~
eob
Beyond serving hard tech with longer time-to-market requirements, there is a
huge opportunity for brain-rich cities like Boston to build out a more robust
startup ecosystem to compete with SF. People in Cambridge joke about the one-
way plane tickets to the Bay Area. If you're anchored in Cambridge, that means
huge spoils for the group that figures out the equation to keep them there.

~~~
neltnerb
The hardest part for me in starting a hard tech company in the Boston area was
just getting reasonably priced access to facilities.

They're working on the absolute lack of space, but I think the "reasonably
priced" part is unlikely to get fixed short of backing like this from someone
who can provide facilities and funding for at least the first few years
without expecting returns.

~~~
linksnapzz
Lowell and Fitchburg aren't that far away, and have plenty of cheap commercial
real estate, unless by "facilities" you mean a fully dressed laboratory/shop;
and by "Boston area" you meant Boston, Cambridge and maybe Somerville...

~~~
neltnerb
Yes, I meant places easily accessible via public transit, so Boston,
Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline, Alston, etc.

And yes, I mean a place that you can use chemicals without dealing with
permitting for 6+ months. I did actually try to do this, and the Fire Marshall
was fantastic to work with, and I looked at both Somerville near Sullivan
Square and down near BU. It wasn't hard to find industrial space for cheap
enough to manage. I ended up finding a space in Beverly as the closest that
was remotely okay, and that only worked because I owned a car (which isn't
terribly common in the city, at least among the people I know).

But even if you get as far as pursuing permitting it's enormously expensive to
outfit your own lab, and impossible without VC backing. Just having access to
the equipment at MIT for free/cheap would be a lifesaver. A lot of it is
things like "I need a <foo> for a test." but <foo> is a $600k piece of
equipment and you need to use it exactly once.

You can often get user access (for instance at UMass, MIT or Harvard's user
facilities) but those are also not all that quick.

Really, Boston just needs something akin to Cyclotron Road.

