By guest authors Irina Patterson and Praveen Karoshi Irina: Are there any financial firms that specialize in software escrow? Tim: Very few. It’s a good business to get into. It is emerging, because software code is an asset. It is a transferable asset, unlike making something in a factory. If this code has proven commercial
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: How many inquiries do you receive a month? Jerry: I get two or three a week. Irina: Out of those, how many do you usually accept? Jerry: That’s a very good question. It’s a cyclical thing. Typically, 50% of them are people who will say, “I
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Praveen Karoshi Irina: How many of your entrepreneurs work on software businesses? And what kind of software? Tim: It would be probably about 50% of our companies, either half or just under half. A lot of people want to hook on to enterprise software programs. Many are interested in
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Jerry: When we hire students at the incubator, the university pays the students weekly, and then I bill the company and they reimburse the university for the students’ services. Irina: How are the faculty compensated? Jerry: It’s up to them. It could be free. It could be
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Praveen Karoshi Tim: We had other ways of doing our Japanese program. We could have gone there. There are other ways of doing that, but that is the way they wanted to do it. They really wanted to see the environment here, which was great, but it wound up
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: How many companies have been incubated since 1988? Jerry: I wouldn’t know. I presently have 95 companies in my center. We are the largest technology center in the country, to the best of my knowledge.
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Praveen Karoshi Irina: What are your metrics for success? What do you measure? Tim: One of the things we measure is graduation. We try to track our companies, we can’t do it. It is very hard and very expensive. But we have had Northwestern faculty track companies in the
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold I am talking to Jerry Creighton, executive director of the Enterprise Development Center at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). Based in Newark, New Jersey, the center is home to nearly 86 high-tech and life sciences companies. The center’s entrepreneurs have access to the institute’s facilities and