The Third Frontier In The Midwest: An Interview With John Glazer, Director, TechGROWTH Ohio (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

John: One of the things about the kinds of companies that we uncover and work with is that they are in need of a great deal of help.

Rather than a large, urban, metropolitan area where a company that is very early stage may come with a sophisticated management [team] that knows the world of technology commercialization, the world of equity capital, and how to put an execution team behind an idea, we bump into the raw ideas.

We need to wrap around them the human talent needed to accelerate them. We work with companies a long time. One of our early investments from our fund we worked with for about two years before they actually won their first investment. >>>

An Interview With Ankur Jain, Founder And President, Kairos Society (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Ankur: Today, in this interconnected world, you can have a Chinese entrepreneur start a company with an American entrepreneur. You can take the best of both countries to create a single company that’s inherently multinational and multicultural.

This product can be, from day one, sold in two completely different markets without having to replicate all your resources because it’s not an American company trying to enter a foreign market and having to re-do everything from scratch, or vice versa. >>>

The Third Frontier In The Midwest: An Interview With John Glazer, Director, TechGROWTH Ohio (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

John: Another example might be developing a prototype or, in the case of a really early stage company, protecting the intellectual property through obtaining patent assistance. So, all of those are things that are needed to take risk out of an opportunity. They require resources that often a pre-revenue, early stage innovator does not have. >>>

The Third Frontier In The Midwest: An Interview With John Glazer, Director, TechGROWTH Ohio (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

In this interview I am talking to John Glazer, director of TechGROWTH Ohio. This Athens-based, state-supported program has offered resources and funding to early stage, technologically innovative companies in the state of Ohio since 2007. >>>

An Interview With Ankur Jain, Founder And President, Kairos Society (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Today I am talking to Ankur Jain, a 20-year-old student at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, and founder and president of the Kairos Society. (Kairos, in Greek, means “the right moment.”)

Ankur’s vision is to shift students’ perception about the business world – to not depend on others for employment but to shape their destiny and the destiny of others through sustainable entrepreneurship.

Kairos Society members are students from all disciplines who are creating entrepreneurial and sustainable solutions to the world’s most pressing problems in healthcare, education, nutrition, and energy. >>>

An Interview With Joe Migliaccio, Manager Of Innovative Programs, Maine Technology Institute (Part 6)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Joe: A lot of our population in Maine is pretty concentrated. The benefit of that is you can really power networking within the state, access capital sources, which we help folks with. We’ll make introductions. We’ll do mentoring. We’ll support mentor programs. In the state of Maine, you can also, if you need to, access policy makers. In Maine, you can get to who you need to get to pretty easily. >>>

An Interview With Joe Migliaccio, Manager Of Innovative Programs, Maine Technology Institute (Part 5)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: What are the fees for the peer technical reviews?

Joe: There is no application fee to apply to MTI. We will pay the thousands of dollars to go out and get those peer reviews done out of our budget. The internal state folks from industries and universities in Maine, those are volunteers. They’ll dedicate significant amounts of time each year to review each proposal.

There’s some paid review that has to happen, and the rest are volunteers – you know, business leaders, venture capital folks, financiers, and scientists. We try to have a broad spectrum of folks who help with internal review, but that’s all [on a] volunteer [basis]. >>>

An Interview With Joe Migliaccio, Manager Of Innovative Programs, Maine Technology Institute (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Joe: Many times when investors are approached by companies that just have too high a risk profile for them, but there may be opportunity for them to work further on their technology or grow their businesses, we’ll get leads from private sector individuals who say, “As a venture opportunity, you’re too high risk for us, but the state of Maine has a great resource in the Maine Technology Institute. Why don’t you go work with them to try to get funding to take this a little further along the product development or business cycle?” >>>