A very interesting development here as Boston-based Allied Minds has filed to go public on the London Exchange. The British are more familiar with the model which transfers technologies from universities and starts new firms.
Allied Minds collaborates with universities and adds value through its process of academic entrepreneurship:
Form – Fund – Manage – Build Read more about the process here under “Our New Model”
“We form strong relationships with both the university scientists and university technology transfer offices to create an environment for developing leading-edge technology. Because we keep our research on campus and share equity with our partners, we’re able to align everyone toward the same goal: commercial success. And while Allied Minds holds universities to the high standards of efficiency, we don’t impose arbitrary fixed timelines on our partners, we give them time to prove out the technology and make it company ready. We realize this flexibility can sometimes make the difference between a good concept and a radical innovation. ”
-Allied Minds (website under “Collaboration”)
See the article from Reuters here. According to this newsource the reason for going public in the UK vs. the USA was the following:
“Mark Pritchard, founder and president of the Boston-based firm, said London was already home to two of its peers, Imperial Innovations (IVO.L) and IP Group (IPO.L), and the model of funding companies derived from research was well understood. Allied Minds recently secured a major contract with the government as well”
The USA doesn’t have as much of an appetite for publicly traded venture capital firms, with rare exceptions like Capital Southwest which was founded in 1961 as an SBIC by the late Bill Thomas, who taught the Academic Entrepreneur in a case-based venture capital course during his MBA years at the Johnson School at Cornell University. Capital Southwest currently has a net asset value of almost $800 million, according to its website.
Existing Collaborations of Allied Minds:
This model that supposedly makes university tech transfer and the starting of new firms more efficient is still developing. The Academic Entrepreneur is curious to know how many of these agreements are “first look”, informal, or exclusive. There is much more to be explored here but certainly another fascinating development in academic entrepreneur land.
The company lists collaborations with the following universities on their partner page of their website:
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East
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Central | West |
| Boston University | University of Arkansas for Medical Science | Arizona State University |
| Brown University | University of Michigan | Colorado State University |
| Columbia University | University of Missouri | University of New Mexico |
| Cornell University | University of Nebraska Lincoln | UC Berkeley |
| George Washington University | University of Nebraska Medical Center | UC Davis |
| Harvard University | Washington University in St. Louis | UC Irvine |
| NYU | Vanderbilt University | UC San Diego |
| Penn State University | Wayne State University | UC San Francisco |
| Tufts University | UCLA | |
| UMass Lowell | University of Colorado | |
| University of Florida | University of Washington | |
| Virginia Tech | ||
| Worcester Polytechnic Institute Yale |
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