Founder / Chief Executive Officer
CurrentVIC’s technology venture development business model has been optimized to overcome the limitations with traditional technology transfer approaches and take advantage of the large base of research conducted by U.S. universities and other research institutions. VIC drives strategic initiatives and activities within our companies to rapidly create value and greatly increase the probability of success. For example, when considering whether to license a new technology or not, VIC’s internal Opportunity Assessment Team engages in an initial competitive landscape and intellectual property review, conducts interviews with potential customers to better understand how the technology will address unmet market needs, conducts a market analysis to evaluate market structure, size and growth prospects, identifies barriers to entry, and outlines a general commercialization path. Only when all of these initial success criteria are favorable, do we consider licensing a technology into one of our companies, or creating a whole new company around that technology. This type of careful consideration goes into all of our business development activities, at all stages of company development. In the early stages of a technology company’s development, full-time, executive level business management may not be practical or affordable. Instead, VIC recruits industry specific experts to work closely with its executive team in an advisory capacity and VIC provides its management services on an as-needed basis so that human resources are used efficiently and cost-effectively. The cost of having a highly experienced team is spread across a number of companies ensuring that cash burn is minimized in all the companies. This model provides our young companies exceptional management teams that would otherwise be unaffordable. As a given portfolio company matures industry specific experienced permanent management is placed full-time into the given portfolio company.