To continue the conversation from an earlier webinar, Founding a Startup as Graduate Students, Shelley Force Aldred sat with us to answer some questions that were submitted during the webinar that we were unable to get to due to time.
As part of our Ask a VC blog series, we wanted to provide additional insight from the OUP investment team on how to staff your startup company. We spoke with Tech Partner Manny Stockman and Life Science Partner Anurag Agarwal to learn their perspectives on the first strategic business hire, how to incentivize and compensate employees at an early-stage startup, and where to find the right candidate for these roles. While some of their insights were similar, as with all individuals in the venture capital space, they did have differing opinions. The interviewees’ statements below have been edited for clarity and length by Jaimie Testai.
We spoke with Tech Managing Partner Marc Singer and our Life Science Principal Mitra Miri for their perspectives on diligencing VCs, having multiple investors in a round, and red flags to look for in a potential VC partner. While some of their insights were similar, as with all individuals in the venture capital space, they did have differing opinions.
We spoke with our Tech Associate, Ajay Rayasam, and our Life Science Associate, Margalit Haber, for their perspectives on how best to initially interact with VCs. While some of their insights were similar, as with all individuals in the venture capital space, they did have differing opinions.
Startup compensation is often an opaque and awkward topic for first-time academic founders. How much equity do I receive? My CEO? The PI(s)? Other co-founders? How will my choices affect future compensation?
In early 2022, OUP hosted a webinar on EIR/MIR Programs at Universities. Due to the overwhelming interest in the topic, we wanted to highlight two additional programs to offer perspectives from other universities. We spoke with Case Cortese, Director for Innovation, New Ventures & Entrepreneurship, to discuss Caltech’s entrepreneur-in-residence (EIR) program, and Mark VanderZyl, Associate…
POC funds are typically grants that help “de-risk” a technology — helping a technology meet milestones that will increase its potential to be licensed to an existing company or enable the formation of a startup.
We interviewed 7 universities and academic programs about their interactions in engaging alumni for research commercialization.
Access to affordable drugs is a real problem. We need to make drugs more affordable. But, using march-In rights to control drug prices is the wrong solution and would be catastrophic public policy. NIST’s[1] Proposed Rule Change (Clarification) In early January 2021, while most of us were still dealing with the pandemic, trying to…
As a VC firm partnered with over 100 universities, we get the question from Tech Transfer Offices (TTOs) all the time — how can we best communicate with VCs? While investors have directed more attention to universities for deal flow in recent years (see bar graph below), most VCs don’t have a singular focus on…