microISV Research Alliance (Update)
Yesterday, Dr. Umphress and I met with Susan of Auburn University’s Office of Technology Transfer (OTT). The meeting produced excellent results. I’ve learned that the OTT does its best work when you meet with them early, like we did. Susan pointed out several important considerations that we’ll keep in mind as we go forward.
First, the Alliance does not need to be an independent legal entity; It can simply exist as a “persona” of one of the member universities. Since, at the moment, Auburn is the only member, then Auburn will in essence be the Alliance. Once I move on to another university, I’ll move Alliance operations there. In fact, having the Alliance as an operation under a university gives us several benefits, including having many administration functions at our disposal.
Second, we don’t have to worry about intellectual property rights being restricted. Since Dr. Umphress is acting on behalf of Auburn University, they are co-owners of any intellectual property we generate. On the other hand, since I am not being paid by the university or using significant university resources, I fall outside the intellectual property restrictions and am, therefore, a co-owner. In other words, from a legal standpoint, Dr. Umphress, Auburn University, and I all have right to do whatever we like with the generated intellectual property. Of course, from an ethical and professional standpoint, we will act as collaborators and agree on the uses of the intellectual property, so as to eliminate surprises.
Lastly, we talked a great deal about money. The discussion brought into focus several vague ideas I’d had about research funding. Let me break them down.
Option 1 – Corporate Grants – A private business may choose to “invest” money in our research in exchange for things like licensing rights, steering committee membership, early looks at data or report, etc. This is very common throughout the university system and is the easiest to formalize. The difficult part is negotiating with the business on what they’ll get for their money. The other challenge is deciding exactly how to divide up the money among member labs.
Option 2 - Membership Dues – Individuals in the microISV community might be encourage to “join the Alliance” for a small membership fee. This would be something akin to a micro-corporate grant. They would get access to certain benefits like data access, free publications, conferences, etc. I both like and dislike this idea, since I’d like the Alliance to be as inclusive as possible. Besides, microISVers have precious little money to start with.
Options 3 – Angel Investors – This would be the simplest, since we would be getting a grant with few or no strings attached.
Option 4 – Venture Capitalist Grants – When I spoke with Bob Walsh, he indicated there are more than a few VCs looking for the next Twitter or Facebook. I believe the biggest challenge VCs face is locating a high potential microISV before it had that explosive growth, because, once it explodes everyone wants in. If we build a strong community of microISVers, VCs may want access to that community and may be willing to provide grants for that access. Of course, this is all speculation at this point, since I haven’t actually spoken to any venture capitalists about it.
So that’s a quick summary of our meeting. As it stands, the only remaining hurdle to a full launch of the Alliance is getting IRB approval of the Pain Point survey. Once that’s done, we’re full steam ahead!