New Jersey's Most Powerful Start Up Engine is Here
NJIT’s high impact science and technology flourishes in our academic community yet often does not fulfill its commercial potential. While NJIT certainly has success with traditional lab-to-market strategies – IP licensing and faculty startups. These mechanisms work well, but the challenges are many and perennial. University IP is rarely developed with market needs in mind and, as such, potential corporate partners struggle to connect their business applications with our technologies. And NJIT faculty and researchers rarely find the balance needed for a successful university spinout and a career in higher education. Recognizing these impediments, the NJII Entrepreneurship Division has created a third pathway to deploy the NJIT ecosystem of technologies, capabilities, and entrepreneurs: a Venture Studio. Unlike a venture fund or traditional venture investing – which invest in other people’s companies – the NJII Venture Studio creates its own high-growth companies as vehicles for NJIT assets.
The NJII Venture Studio is the dividend of a 10-year track record of successful new venture investment and acceleration at NJII. While the NJII team utilizes this unique ability to support our homegrown start-ups, the Entrepreneurship Division also offers new venture Acceleration Services to support the needs of our corporate, state and community partners.
Why NJII?
A fundamental challenge for all research universities is the ability to commercialize their research into products and services that have an impact on the outside world. While universities pursue technology licensing, ultimately only a small percentage of patents are licensed and a much smaller number of ideas, trade-secrets and know-how are commercialized. NJII was formed to address this challenge. While wholly owned by NJIT, NJII is a standalone corporation positioned to easily leverage the vast resources of NJIT. Our team works across four verticals (Defense, Healthcare, Entrepreneurship and Professional & Corporate Education) and has a strong track record of spurring innovation in New Jersey and beyond. Without a formal venture studio model in place, NJII has successfully started two for profit companies – Healthcare Innovation Solutions and BioCentriq. BioCentriq was recently sold for $73M! It is from this success and ability to support startup companies that NJII is moving into the business of intentionally acting as a Venture Studio.
Our Commitment
Over the next three years, we strive to build 1-2 companies per year with an industry agnostic approach where each company will have the following characteristics:
- An ability to achieve a major valuation inflection point within 18 months of founding (e.g., profitability, first customer).
- A corporate partner at inception who has committed resources (e.g., in kind, investment) and/or has committed to being a customer.
- A dedicated and experienced management team.
Our Guidelines
- Each company will be formed as a for-profit C-Corp with the NJII Venture Studio LLC owning a majority stake.
- $500K-$1M will be placed into each company and will be disbursed based upon milestones.
- The companies will execute an 18-month sprint plan that will lead to a major valuation inflection point.
- Each company will be supported (e.g., Accounting, Marketing, Finance, HR) by the NJII organization.
3 Ways to Engage with NJII Venture Studio
There are three primary ways for individuals to get involved with the NJII Venture Studio:
- Partner with us: If your company or organization wants to develop a novel business solution through creating a nimble and innovative start up, reach out to our team about potentially building a company through a joint venture.
- Join the team: We are continually on the lookout for entrepreneurs and leaders who can fill out the management teams (e.g., CTO, CEO) of the companies we create.
- Send us an idea: While we are mostly focused on NJII and NJIT ideas, we are open to partnering with other academic institutions to identify novel business opportunities which might make sense for the NJII Venture Studio.
About NJII
The New Jersey Innovation Institute (NJII) is a 501c3 organization wholly owned by the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). As an independent corporation, NJII is uniquely positioned to be agile, entrepreneurial, and opportunistic. NJII is focused on accelerating technology and fostering innovation in order to have a positive economic impact in New Jersey. To date, NJII has generated over $330M in revenue during its ten years of operation across its four divisions (Healthcare, Defense, Continued Learning, Entrepreneurship) and today has a team of 120 staff. Learn more.
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