Funding Faculty Entrepreneurs

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By Curt Newton

September 2003

Sustaining Support

In its first year, the Deshpande Center has built a strikingly diverse portfolio. Some projects target immediate and specific applications, while others are more fundamental and suggest farther-reaching consequences. Some recipients are already successful entrepreneurs, while others anticipate their first commercial forays. In light of such diversity, the center offers an array of support services to enhance its grants.

Commercial insight is a particularly precious resource. Take the challenge of determining a technology's core market or application: for teams full of technical vision but short on business experience, an experienced investor's early advice can provide sharper focus at the most opportune time. According to Stan Reiss, a partner at Waltham, MA-based venture capital firm Matrix Partners who works with the center, "A project might come in with 28 possible applications. We'll help them focus on the top few and suggest ways to evaluate the final candidates." Through their association with the center, venture capitalists gain earlier access to promising technologies without assuming the risks of funding research.

Mentoring by veteran faculty entrepreneurs is another center resource that helps those just starting out. Grantee Bill Freeman, PhD '92, describes his Ignition Grant project as "trying to get computers to see the way people see," by recognizing objects in digital images. Freeman, who joined the MIT faculty after 15 years in industry, says he appreciates how the center's mentoring seminars "help you find balance, developing as a functioning professor and as an entrepreneur."

Beyond MIT, the Deshpande Center generates buzz for its grant recipients through press releases and marketing programs. After Frdo Durand received his Ignition Grant, several companies called to express their interest in his technology, which could banish washed-out backgrounds and blacked-out silhouettes from digital photos and videos. "Affiliation with MIT has always meant that the research was good," says Durand. "The Deshpande Center award means it's not only good, it's practical."

The center also encourages teams to tap MIT's other resources for entrepreneurs. For example, the center has helped Hart's project become a Sloan School case study, a presentation to the MIT Enterprise Forum, and a runner-up in MIT's renowned $50K Competition.