
  The VC, The Professor, And The Valley Of Death  - jmonegro
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/29/the-vc-the-professor-and-the-valley-of-death/
======
frossie
_University researchers don’t know how to commercialize their discoveries_

I realise I am going to be kindling for the next HN bonfire for saying this...
but...

... some of us don't _want_ to commercialize our discoveries, and in fact we
are in academia partly because we find the commercial world so unattractive.

Now please stop throwing things at me and go back to your start-ups.

~~~
sachinag
That's fine - no one has a problem with that.

The problem is that some people do, and it's impossible to get the tech out.
The vast majority of R1 universities have moronic - utterly moronic - tech
transfer offices. I can speak to this better than most as someone who did VC
and had to deal with researches fighting against moronic tech transfer
officers that insisted on onerous terms, insanely high royalty rates, and
copious paperwork to get tech out.

------
jfischer
A few years back, my advisor and I went through the process of applying for a
patent for some of our reseach, via our university's IP office. They would
only pay for the provisional patent -- we would have to come up with any
funding for a full patent (like $20k) and they would still own the patent.
That doesn't give much incentive for researchers to push for patenting and
commercialization.

We just dropped the idea, given that it would take a lot more work to develop
the idea to the stage that a VC would be interested.

What he said about funding is generally right -- at least in the CS world,
most research projects are only implemented far enough to get a paper
published. The funding (and tenure system) doesn't really reward any further
development.

The one exception that I've seen is the NSF SBIR/STTR program: they can give
you some angel-level money to get the project beyond a research prototype (and
do not take any equity!).

edit: I've also heard that the funding situation is better in Europe, but I
don't know any details.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Your story is very strange, the usual way the university patent system works
is the following.

You ask them to apply for a patent. They either apply for it (eating the $20k
themselves) or else they send you a letter declining any interest. If you get
the "decline" letter, that means they gave up any interest or ownership in
your invention.

~~~
jfischer
My experience was in the University of California system. I certainly would
have preferred that they either declined it immediately or paid for the full
application. It may be that they don't have much experience in software. Also,
software patents are less valuable than those in other areas, like biotech. We
didn't really care too much about the patent but wanted the IP ownership to be
clear.

------
mbowcock
Digging through and commercializing research in whatever field you may be
interested in is one thing. But it would seem like you would be missing out on
many more opportunities in unrelated fields. Many advancements in tech/science
in general were born from research in other fields. How do you cross pollinate
those ideas with other fields on a large scale?

------
vaksel
how much of that 48 billion worth of research is worth anything in the real
world?

A lot of that research is useless. Take biology for example, they might spend
5 million, trying to find out why a certain tree has slightly yellower leafs.
Useful for their field? Maybe. But there is really no feasible way for them to
monetize it.

~~~
jwecker
Funny you should use that example. I remember mentioning to someone years ago
that biologists had discovered that certain trees send chemical signals to
each other through the soil- especially when they're traumatized.

He scoffed and laughed and said "Can you believe the stupid stuff people
research? All this stuff with absolutely no application..."

I was frankly a little stunned. I was thinking that it could affect crop
growth, depending on how you harvest the last crop, how if there was a trauma
mechanism there might be a reverse mechanism that could cause revolutions in
biological growth, etc. etc. etc. I couldn't believe he didn't see the
potential I saw.

Which brings me to my point: saying "...no feasible way for them to monetize
it" is, in my opinion, a symptom of lack of imagination. While it's not all
monetize-able, I believe with the author that 48B of research represents a
goldmine of ideas for someone with the proper eye for opportunity and business
acumen.

