6 ms·

MIT launches new venture for world-changing entrepreneurs

146 points by elsherbini 10y ago

icinnamon 10y ago
Does anyone know if something similar exists at other universities (specifically curious about Stanford)?
- eob 10y ago
  Well Harvard iLab is a University-wide incubator that has its own building. They offer advising and limited resource support (e.g., a small lab filled with hardware hacking tools), but no funding as far as I'm aware.
- hkmurakami 10y ago
  StartX seems closest to what they describe. I believe Stanford also has funds for even earlier stage / younger teams, as well as domain specific programs like the one at the tomkat center for sustainable energy.
- toufka 10y ago
  The UC system has a biotech incubator, QB3. http://qb3.org/about http://qb3.org/about
- gsjbjt 10y ago
  The difference between this and most other incubators (at Stanford, Harvard iLab, etc as mentioned below) is that it's very specifically geared towards hard-tech startups that other investors typically shy away from because of the long time to market.
  - icinnamon 10y ago
    Precisely. I'm asking if other hard-tech incubators exist at Stanford (and others)...
- devarshar 10y ago
  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has iVenture Accelerator program. They have plenty have resources and offers financial support ($2500 per fellow and $10k per startup) and co-working space in the UIUC Research Park. They don't care if its hard-tech or not. Your company has to be good enough to qualify for their program. https://business.illinois.edu/iventureaccelerator/ https://business.illinois.edu/iventureaccelerator/
- seb_lounis 10y ago
  Check out Cyclotron Road at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab - similar mission to support hard tech innovators. Applications open until midnight on Monday, October 31 cyclotronroad.org/apply
- roye 10y ago
  there's also a cornell-technion joint venture called the "Runway startup postdoc" aimed for new PhDs to transition to being founders: http://tech.cornell.edu/programs/startup-postdocs http://tech.cornell.edu/programs/startup-postdocs
Dangeranger 10y ago
A) What is the application process expected to be like for The Engine? B) It appears that the resources are spread out across Cambridge, Boston, and South Boston. Which of these locations if any is planned to be the central location for the accepted startups? C) What existing companies and organizations are planning to be part of The Engine and what will their roles be?
infocollector 10y ago
Does anyone know what MIT wants out of the funds it invests? Also, what rights does its faculty have on their inventions? Same question for entrepreneurs who work with MIT?
- devindotcom 10y ago
  I have some questions in to them, if they get back to me I'll try to remember to reply here.
- NickNaraghi 10y ago
  Faculty at most universities sign the rights to their inventions over to their host institution as part of their employment agreement. I believe MIT is the same way. Universities generally have a technology transfer office (at MIT, it's called the Technology Licensing Office) that manages all of the intellectual property created there, with the hope of commercializing some of it. From what little I can read, The Engine is a separate entity from MIT, which gives them freedom to work with entrepreneurs without the restrictions in faculty contracts. Some technologies invented at MIT(1) will be licensed by companies(2) that will leverage The Engine(3) to accelerate their development, with the expectation that the development will take place over a longer-than-usual time scale (10-20 years). Maybe I'm optimistic, but I'm guessing that this is less about the return on the money for MIT, and more about bringing impactful technologies to market that previously have not fit well in the existing funding ecosystem (and inspiring others to do the same).
  - hga 10y ago
    Faculty at most universities sign the rights to their inventions over to their host institution as part of their employment agreement. I believe MIT is the same way. Yes, MIT does this quite explicitly, which while making some professors unhappy, has helped it avoid some notorious messes seen at other universities when they got greedy, e.g. the University of Pennsylvania going from #1 in computers (ENIAC) to nothing, or CalTech losing Steve Wolfram over his first symbolic math program. Flip sides include giving professors 1 day a week to work on whatever they want that's not part of their MIT stuff. Trivia: after decades of being one of the worst in the nation, averaging about one license per year (seriously, and we know of three of them, Symbolics, LMI, and Macsyma to the former), and infamously flubbing both 3D core memory and synthetic/semi-synthetic penicillin licencing, MIT realized they had a problem and supposedly fixed it, the official statement was wonderfully understated, said something about actually licencing the technology instead of focusing on the process of licensing....
ftrflyr 10y ago
This sounds similar to The Impact Engine out of Chicago. My company was part of the first cohort back in 2012. Feel free to AMA about this space - I have learnings to unload if interested.
- mblode 10y ago
  Could you maybe just unload your learnings? I'd love to hear your findings.
- subpixel 10y ago
  I'm interested to hear more, especially about how impact is encouraged, measured, etc. in a startup environment.
neom 10y ago
Is this filling a void in the current venture space...?
- eob 10y ago
  Beyond serving hard tech with longer time-to-market requirements, there is a huge opportunity for brain-rich cities like Boston to build out a more robust startup ecosystem to compete with SF. People in Cambridge joke about the one-way plane tickets to the Bay Area. If you're anchored in Cambridge, that means huge spoils for the group that figures out the equation to keep them there.
  - neltnerb 10y ago
    The hardest part for me in starting a hard tech company in the Boston area was just getting reasonably priced access to facilities. They're working on the absolute lack of space, but I think the "reasonably priced" part is unlikely to get fixed short of backing like this from someone who can provide facilities and funding for at least the first few years without expecting returns.
    - linksnapzz 10y ago
      Lowell and Fitchburg aren't that far away, and have plenty of cheap commercial real estate, unless by "facilities" you mean a fully dressed laboratory/shop; and by "Boston area" you meant Boston, Cambridge and maybe Somerville...
      - neltnerb 10y ago
        Yes, I meant places easily accessible via public transit, so Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline, Alston, etc. And yes, I mean a place that you can use chemicals without dealing with permitting for 6+ months. I did actually try to do this, and the Fire Marshall was fantastic to work with, and I looked at both Somerville near Sullivan Square and down near BU. It wasn't hard to find industrial space for cheap enough to manage. I ended up finding a space in Beverly as the closest that was remotely okay, and that only worked because I owned a car (which isn't terribly common in the city, at least among the people I know). But even if you get as far as pursuing permitting it's enormously expensive to outfit your own lab, and impossible without VC backing. Just having access to the equipment at MIT for free/cheap would be a lifesaver. A lot of it is things like "I need a <foo> for a test." but <foo> is a $600k piece of equipment and you need to use it exactly once. You can often get user access (for instance at UMass, MIT or Harvard's user facilities) but those are also not all that quick. Really, Boston just needs something akin to Cyclotron Road.
seb_lounis 10y ago
Very exciting news from MIT. Anyone interested in this thread should also check out Cyclotron Road at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. It's a two-year fellowship and incubator specifically geared toward hard-tech innovators working on energy technologies. Applications for the next cohort are open until Oct. 31 - cyclotronroad.org/apply
100ideas 10y ago
YC now functionally resembles a world-class university: huge endowment; elite alumni; pure & applied research departments; staff scientists; education program; bi-annual semesterish schedule; all in service to the mission of improving the world by empowering the next generation of innovators. MIT ignored YC, and now is competing with YC. Next will be bargaining with YC :) Then just partnering with YC...
- bzbarsky 10y ago
  > huge endowment Really? Some endowment sizes for world-class universities: MIT: $13 billion Caltech: $2 billion Harvard: $36 billion Stanford: $22 billion Princeton: $21 billion Yale: $25 billion Cambridge: GBP ~6 billion Oxford: GBP ~4 billion Caltech is the outlier here for US universities, but it's also an outlier in size; its endowment per student is still about $1 million, which is in the same ballpark as the other US universities on the list. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universit... for probably more data than you ever wanted. ;) I'm having a hard time finding how much money YC has lying around, but I would be rather surprised if it's in the billions USD. > pure & applied research departments; staff scientists On a _tiny_ scale compared to a world-class university.
onetimepadder 10y ago
Hmm, how can an arm of the military-industrial complex help in any way, shape or form anyone really interested in changing the world? How naive one have to be .. well, ok nevermind, get your fb/g/"startup"(as in, cheap outsourced r&d labor) coffee and back to work "for the betterment of the world" folks .. nothing "to think" here
Texasian 10y ago
Huh, actually just noticed the sign for their new office space this morning on my way to work. Seems strange that they're attaching this to the Kendall Square brand when its basically in an entirely different neighborhood.
6stringmerc 10y ago
Oh, it's in Cambridge. Well that's out. Just like I was checking into a pretty cool MS program focused on Tech and Entrepreneurship...but I'm not moving to New York unfortunately even on a temporary basis. Serious question: Is there any type of "traveling workshop" program that brings high-tier guidance and supplies to various locations for a weekend? I was thinking that an up-front Submission Process, then some evaluations / meetings / feedback, and then a Weekend Workshop using 3D printer(s) and other basic tools that could fit in a box truck and about 5,000 sq ft of space (?) - would be a great way to bring brain capital to under served communities. Then follow up through the same channels used for evaluations / meetings / feedback, and continue mentorship. I mean, I'm not knocking location anchored programs, they make sense and they can help a community. >In that time, they will receive financial investments as well as guidance in business planning and access to shared services such as legal, technology licensing, and administrative assistance. Entrepreneurs will be able to take advantage of specialized equipment, services, expertise, and space through an online marketplace developed for The Engine. Doesn't most of that read like something that doesn't need to be totally anchored in the "Greater Boston" community? Especially for a tech-savvy institution with plenty of bandwidth? What I am trying to say is that based on the distribution of population in the US, if you really want to find undiscovered talent, you're going to have to meet them half-way.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

146 points by elsherbini 10y ago

icinnamon 10y ago

Does anyone know if something similar exists at other universities (specifically curious about Stanford)?

eob 10y ago
Well Harvard iLab is a University-wide incubator that has its own building. They offer advising and limited resource support (e.g., a small lab filled with hardware hacking tools), but no funding as far as I'm aware.
hkmurakami 10y ago
StartX seems closest to what they describe. I believe Stanford also has funds for even earlier stage / younger teams, as well as domain specific programs like the one at the tomkat center for sustainable energy.
toufka 10y ago
The UC system has a biotech incubator, QB3. http://qb3.org/about http://qb3.org/about
gsjbjt 10y ago
The difference between this and most other incubators (at Stanford, Harvard iLab, etc as mentioned below) is that it's very specifically geared towards hard-tech startups that other investors typically shy away from because of the long time to market.
- icinnamon 10y ago
  Precisely. I'm asking if other hard-tech incubators exist at Stanford (and others)...
devarshar 10y ago
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has iVenture Accelerator program. They have plenty have resources and offers financial support ($2500 per fellow and $10k per startup) and co-working space in the UIUC Research Park. They don't care if its hard-tech or not. Your company has to be good enough to qualify for their program. https://business.illinois.edu/iventureaccelerator/ https://business.illinois.edu/iventureaccelerator/
seb_lounis 10y ago
Check out Cyclotron Road at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab - similar mission to support hard tech innovators. Applications open until midnight on Monday, October 31 cyclotronroad.org/apply
roye 10y ago
there's also a cornell-technion joint venture called the "Runway startup postdoc" aimed for new PhDs to transition to being founders: http://tech.cornell.edu/programs/startup-postdocs http://tech.cornell.edu/programs/startup-postdocs

Dangeranger 10y ago

A) What is the application process expected to be like for The Engine? B) It appears that the resources are spread out across Cambridge, Boston, and South Boston. Which of these locations if any is planned to be the central location for the accepted startups? C) What existing companies and organizations are planning to be part of The Engine and what will their roles be?

infocollector 10y ago

Does anyone know what MIT wants out of the funds it invests? Also, what rights does its faculty have on their inventions? Same question for entrepreneurs who work with MIT?

devindotcom 10y ago
I have some questions in to them, if they get back to me I'll try to remember to reply here.
NickNaraghi 10y ago
Faculty at most universities sign the rights to their inventions over to their host institution as part of their employment agreement. I believe MIT is the same way. Universities generally have a technology transfer office (at MIT, it's called the Technology Licensing Office) that manages all of the intellectual property created there, with the hope of commercializing some of it. From what little I can read, The Engine is a separate entity from MIT, which gives them freedom to work with entrepreneurs without the restrictions in faculty contracts. Some technologies invented at MIT(1) will be licensed by companies(2) that will leverage The Engine(3) to accelerate their development, with the expectation that the development will take place over a longer-than-usual time scale (10-20 years). Maybe I'm optimistic, but I'm guessing that this is less about the return on the money for MIT, and more about bringing impactful technologies to market that previously have not fit well in the existing funding ecosystem (and inspiring others to do the same).
- hga 10y ago
  Faculty at most universities sign the rights to their inventions over to their host institution as part of their employment agreement. I believe MIT is the same way. Yes, MIT does this quite explicitly, which while making some professors unhappy, has helped it avoid some notorious messes seen at other universities when they got greedy, e.g. the University of Pennsylvania going from #1 in computers (ENIAC) to nothing, or CalTech losing Steve Wolfram over his first symbolic math program. Flip sides include giving professors 1 day a week to work on whatever they want that's not part of their MIT stuff. Trivia: after decades of being one of the worst in the nation, averaging about one license per year (seriously, and we know of three of them, Symbolics, LMI, and Macsyma to the former), and infamously flubbing both 3D core memory and synthetic/semi-synthetic penicillin licencing, MIT realized they had a problem and supposedly fixed it, the official statement was wonderfully understated, said something about actually licencing the technology instead of focusing on the process of licensing....

ftrflyr 10y ago

This sounds similar to The Impact Engine out of Chicago. My company was part of the first cohort back in 2012. Feel free to AMA about this space - I have learnings to unload if interested.

mblode 10y ago
Could you maybe just unload your learnings? I'd love to hear your findings.
subpixel 10y ago
I'm interested to hear more, especially about how impact is encouraged, measured, etc. in a startup environment.

neom 10y ago

Is this filling a void in the current venture space...?

eob 10y ago
Beyond serving hard tech with longer time-to-market requirements, there is a huge opportunity for brain-rich cities like Boston to build out a more robust startup ecosystem to compete with SF. People in Cambridge joke about the one-way plane tickets to the Bay Area. If you're anchored in Cambridge, that means huge spoils for the group that figures out the equation to keep them there.
- neltnerb 10y ago
  The hardest part for me in starting a hard tech company in the Boston area was just getting reasonably priced access to facilities. They're working on the absolute lack of space, but I think the "reasonably priced" part is unlikely to get fixed short of backing like this from someone who can provide facilities and funding for at least the first few years without expecting returns.
  - linksnapzz 10y ago
    Lowell and Fitchburg aren't that far away, and have plenty of cheap commercial real estate, unless by "facilities" you mean a fully dressed laboratory/shop; and by "Boston area" you meant Boston, Cambridge and maybe Somerville...
    - neltnerb 10y ago
      Yes, I meant places easily accessible via public transit, so Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline, Alston, etc. And yes, I mean a place that you can use chemicals without dealing with permitting for 6+ months. I did actually try to do this, and the Fire Marshall was fantastic to work with, and I looked at both Somerville near Sullivan Square and down near BU. It wasn't hard to find industrial space for cheap enough to manage. I ended up finding a space in Beverly as the closest that was remotely okay, and that only worked because I owned a car (which isn't terribly common in the city, at least among the people I know). But even if you get as far as pursuing permitting it's enormously expensive to outfit your own lab, and impossible without VC backing. Just having access to the equipment at MIT for free/cheap would be a lifesaver. A lot of it is things like "I need a <foo> for a test." but <foo> is a $600k piece of equipment and you need to use it exactly once. You can often get user access (for instance at UMass, MIT or Harvard's user facilities) but those are also not all that quick. Really, Boston just needs something akin to Cyclotron Road.

seb_lounis 10y ago

Very exciting news from MIT. Anyone interested in this thread should also check out Cyclotron Road at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. It's a two-year fellowship and incubator specifically geared toward hard-tech innovators working on energy technologies. Applications for the next cohort are open until Oct. 31 - cyclotronroad.org/apply

100ideas 10y ago

YC now functionally resembles a world-class university: huge endowment; elite alumni; pure & applied research departments; staff scientists; education program; bi-annual semesterish schedule; all in service to the mission of improving the world by empowering the next generation of innovators. MIT ignored YC, and now is competing with YC. Next will be bargaining with YC :) Then just partnering with YC...

bzbarsky 10y ago
> huge endowment Really? Some endowment sizes for world-class universities: MIT: $13 billion Caltech: $2 billion Harvard: $36 billion Stanford: $22 billion Princeton: $21 billion Yale: $25 billion Cambridge: GBP ~6 billion Oxford: GBP ~4 billion Caltech is the outlier here for US universities, but it's also an outlier in size; its endowment per student is still about $1 million, which is in the same ballpark as the other US universities on the list. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universit... for probably more data than you ever wanted. ;) I'm having a hard time finding how much money YC has lying around, but I would be rather surprised if it's in the billions USD. > pure & applied research departments; staff scientists On a _tiny_ scale compared to a world-class university.

onetimepadder 10y ago

Hmm, how can an arm of the military-industrial complex help in any way, shape or form anyone really interested in changing the world? How naive one have to be .. well, ok nevermind, get your fb/g/"startup"(as in, cheap outsourced r&d labor) coffee and back to work "for the betterment of the world" folks .. nothing "to think" here

Texasian 10y ago

Huh, actually just noticed the sign for their new office space this morning on my way to work. Seems strange that they're attaching this to the Kendall Square brand when its basically in an entirely different neighborhood.

6stringmerc 10y ago

Oh, it's in Cambridge. Well that's out. Just like I was checking into a pretty cool MS program focused on Tech and Entrepreneurship...but I'm not moving to New York unfortunately even on a temporary basis. Serious question: Is there any type of "traveling workshop" program that brings high-tier guidance and supplies to various locations for a weekend? I was thinking that an up-front Submission Process, then some evaluations / meetings / feedback, and then a Weekend Workshop using 3D printer(s) and other basic tools that could fit in a box truck and about 5,000 sq ft of space (?) - would be a great way to bring brain capital to under served communities. Then follow up through the same channels used for evaluations / meetings / feedback, and continue mentorship. I mean, I'm not knocking location anchored programs, they make sense and they can help a community. >In that time, they will receive financial investments as well as guidance in business planning and access to shared services such as legal, technology licensing, and administrative assistance. Entrepreneurs will be able to take advantage of specialized equipment, services, expertise, and space through an online marketplace developed for The Engine. Doesn't most of that read like something that doesn't need to be totally anchored in the "Greater Boston" community? Especially for a tech-savvy institution with plenty of bandwidth? What I am trying to say is that based on the distribution of population in the US, if you really want to find undiscovered talent, you're going to have to meet them half-way.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]