Name: 1Million Cups | Venture Search Funds w/Ian McClure of UK's OTC
Start: 2018-06-20T08:00:00+00:00
End: 2018-06-20T09:00:00+00:00

Steve Case said it best during his recent Rise of the Rest tour stop in Louisville: "When it comes to venture capital, it does matter where you live, and we have to finda way to change that." So....let's change it!! Driving more innovative research from the lab to the market is one of the biggest commercialization challenges a university faces. Join us at 8:00 a.m. on Wednesday, June 20th at LouieLab to learn how Ian McClure, Director of the Office of Technology Commericalization at the University of Kentucky, and his UofL partners are taking this challenge head-on with a venture search fund model (think Stanford) and a digital matchmaking platform that connects experienced entrepreneurs with startups. The Case for Change Louisville and Lexington are the central cities in a 250-mile radius innovation network connecting five major cities and 9 major research universities--all within a three-hour drive. There is no other city outside New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and San Francisco that can match the following annual numbers from the same-sized network (250-mile radius or three-hour drive): $4.5B in university research expenditures per year, 450+ university patents/year, 1,800+ university inventions, and 80+ university startups launched/year (AUTM 2016 survey data). We have an opportunity to use these resources by connecting them and filling the gaps with innovative approaches benchmarked against cutting-edge practices elsewhere. While disadvantaged by proximity to the coasts, we are advantaged by proximity to each other. With management being cited by Forbes as the #1 reason startups fail, and with an increased focus by university tech transfers on startup creation, a focus must be placed on filling the talent pipeline first. - Ian McClure