Welcome to the Academic Venture Exchange, version 2.0! In this newsletter, we will tell you about your teams we are currently hosting, provide some updates on our evolving service, and give you some news and events from around the network.
With our updated interface, you can see all ventures here: AVX Feed
We have updated the interface to highlight ventures that have: 1) Homepages, 2) Executive Summaries, 3) Presentation Decks, and 4) Videos. This is a frequently cited ask by our community and we are beginning to institute a standard framework for venture presentations.
Conversation Statistics: We are up to 5264 total connections and conversations on the AVX network - 255 more over the last month. We are currently tracking 10 potential match negotiations and another 77 with multi-month long discussions heading toward possible matches.
EVENTS
Columbia-Deep Tech Startups Pitch Night (Mar 12, East Palo Alto): Steve Blank and Orin Herskowitz will illustrate and underscore the importance of university-based innovation programs and how deep-tech startups are driving solutions that define our future. They will also discuss the challenges commonly faced by early-stage deep-tech startups, and some of the strategies emerging across the country to address these issues. After the talk, CEOs from Columbia-founded deep-tech startups will pitch to a panel of active Bay Area angels and VCs.
Yale Innovation Summit (May 13, New Haven): Yale’s premier tech and biotech event, with over 1000 attendees, 100 investment opportunities, 160 investors, and dozens of leading corporations. Hear from Katie Rae, CEO and Managing Partner The Engine, and Susan Hockfield, President Emerita of MIT, as well as a number of emerging start-ups from Yale! Yale is excited to offer a discount to AVX members: the promo code Wiesler25 will get you 25% off admission! I'll see you there!
Los Angeles Bioscience Ecosystem Summit 2020 (May 21, Los Angeles): the premier showcase for bioscience innovation in Los Angeles County. The event is hosted by UCLA Technology Development Group, the tech transfer office for the University, with participation by UCLA, Caltech, Cedars-Sinai and City of Hope institutions. LA BEST’s mission is to promote Los Angeles as a center of excellence for biotech innovation and to foster partnerships between academic institutions, the investment community and the biopharma industry.
Equalize 2020 (June 24-25, St. Louis): Equalize 2020 is a pitch competition and symposium designed to take national action around the disparity of women academic inventors forming university startups.
Future AVX Roadmap
We will be deploying the following features over the next few months.
Favourites: Registered users will be able to mark ventures that they like/do not like for private bookmarking and filtering.
Private Ventures: Partners will be able to upload private ventures that can only be found by direct outreach to a subset of AVX members.
Insights & Reports: AVX will begin to provide a series of reports on the state of the community, helping highlight how the talent pool is evolving and where investors and projects are heading.
So long for now! – Hamdi