Overview of ASU Venture Catalyst and ASU SkySong

1. SkySong Overview
• A 42-acre mixed-business-use development located
in Scottsdale, Ariz.
• A public-private partnership
• A joint venture with the university, city of
Scottsdale, ASU Foundation and Plaza Companies
• Home to a global business community
• Links technology, entrepreneurship, innovation and
education
• Positions ASU and Greater Phoenix as global leaders
of the knowledge economy
• More than 800 tech-related jobs
• 97 percent capacity
• Buildings 3 & 4 in planning stages; 400 apartments
under construction

2. • Designed to:
– Create an ecology of collaboration and innovation
– Target high-profile technology enterprises and related researchers
– Advance global business objectives of on-site enterprises
– Raise Arizona’s profile as a global center of innovation
– Create a unique regional economic and social asset
• Tenants range from large companies such as Ticketmaster to early-stage
startups – over 70 companies
• ASU SkySong, also known internally as Economic Development and Corporate
Engagement (EDCE),
– a unit of the Office of Knowledge Enterprise Development, the research wing of the university.
– Occupies two floors of SkySong Building 1
– Consists of three sub-units, including ASU Venture Catalyst
SkySong Overview

3. ASU Venture Catalyst Overview
• Announced in October 2010 – Reorganized in June 2011 –Mission comes from the ‘Value
Entrepreneurship’ design aspiration of the New American University
• Tasked with a wider role of coordinating entrepreneurship across the university since Q4 2012
• Part of the Office of Knowledge Enterprise Development (OKED) and works closely with AzTE
(ASU’s technology transfer arm )
• ‘Startup unit’ of the university
– Internal entrepreneurship activity (Edson student startups, faculty startups)
– External startups (Furnace, External startups )
– Support the external startup ecosystem (collaboration e.g. Techiepalooza event)
• Objective to accelerate high potential startups (HPSU)
• Changing name to Entrepreneurship and Innovation Group (reflects wider remit)
• Partnerships e.g. Microsoft alliance, members of Techstars Global Accelerator Network (GAN)

4. Entrepreneurship as a Permanent Revolution
• Using ASU and Arizona as a ‘petri’ dish for
Experimentation
• Develop new concepts untried elsewhere
• Aim to stimulate entrepreneurship activity
inside and outside the university
• Test and refine in Arizona
• Then propagate these ideas in other
cities, states, countries
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7. ASU Edson Student Entrepreneur Initiative (Startup Accelerator)
Edson 2.0:
• Program is funded through privately financed endowment from Edson family
• Repositioned as an accelerator (mentor-led, Lean trained) in 2011
• Startup accelerator for student-run ventures (real company creation)
• Acceleration period runs from September to June each year
• Heavily mentor-led like other accelerator programs (university takes no equity)
• Startups very diverse: social enterprises to apps to consumer products to
sustainable technologies to manufacturing
2012/13 Cohort:
• 338 team applications in last competition (April 2012)
• Led to funding of twenty new student-led startups
• These Startups received $200,000 in direct (endowed) funding (up to $20K
each)
• 2013 is the ninth year of the Edson program

8. Technology Transfer Office Partners
Funding Partners
Furnace Technology Transfer Accelerator – first in the world
Support Partners
• ASU’s Tech Transfer unit, Arizona Technology
Enterprises has spun-out over 60 startups in last 8
years; increases numbers each year but…a lot of
technologies are still protected by unused
• All research institutions have the same issue with a
lack of external entrepreneurship activity with their
patents
• Furnace is designed to stimulate even more activity:
• Take the best, unencumbered technologies from Arizona
research institutions
• Offer them to external entrepreneurs/mixed teams
• Offer acceleration and $25K in grant funding each
• Pilot in 2012 resulted in ten new startups:
• Created a successful public/private partnership
• Over 200 patents, copyrights uploaded to Furnace website
(after ‘translation’)
• Over 50 applications, 22 finalists, 10 chosen startup teams
• Total of $250,000 in startup state grant funding awarded

9. ASU (External) Startup Accelerator
• Moving from random external companies to a 6 months cohort system of 6-10
startups at a time
• Includes a full pracademic program, mentor-led, co-working space in ASU
SkySong
• These companies are early stage but high potential startups (HPSU)
• They do NOT have to have any connection to the University other than being
based in the greater Phoenix area
• Some companies are too early to engage – send to outside groups such as the
SCORE (mentor group)
• Objective – to create sustainable businesses to create jobs and wealth
particularly for Arizona
• Majority of the new startups are based in the dedicated co-working space in
ASU SkySong
• External startups working with us have raised $1.45 million in grants and
venture funding since June 2011

11. Rapid Startup School (RSuS) – Pracademic training
• Pracademic, free, evening startup program; run in SkySong and
external locations (e.g. libraries once the EUREKA spaces open)
• Originally aimed at graduate students, doctoral
students, postdoctoral researchers
• Now targeting a wider audience internally (staff) and externally
• New specialized RSuS MDV program just delivered:
Military, Defense and Veterans
• Delivering Lean Launchpad based on the Steve Blank (Silicon
Valley) lean methodology
• Currently running different Rapid School programs for 2013:
- Rapid Fund Raising School
- Using RSuS as a platform for ALL startup initiatives in ASU

13. • ‘Hub and Spoke’ model with designated
libraries
• Wide geographic reach across the state
• Identify ‘champions’ in each library
• Special entrepreneurship and innovation
trainings from ASU Venture Catalyst
• Pilot location opens in May 2013 – others to
follow
Alexandria Coworking Network:
Supporting Entrepreneurs, Innovators, Inventors and Small Business in our communities
• Create collaboration spaces in each of the libraries:
- Co-working ‘light’ – open to anyone
- Place for entrepreneurs, innovators and inventors to network with each other
- Innovation knowledge locations
- Access to pracademic teaching modules
- Access to exclusive online material
- Layout includes white board and lean canvas material
- Location for ASU mentors to be based or liaise with

14. Flexible, reconstituted space
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15. • The Applied Regional Economic Action (AREA)48 is termed a Formation Space
(pre startup/pre incubator)
• It is designed to help individuals to form new teams, ideas, products, services and
skills
• Based in Tempe on Mill Avenue with easy access to both campus and ‘Joe Public’;
supported by a grant of $145,000 from the Blackstone Foundation
• It accomplishes this by bringing together a range of underused human assets
including veterans and unemployed
• These work together with a number of academic assets including
researchers, staff and students
• Its projected outcomes are:
• New innovation and startup teams
• New products and services that reach their respective markets
• Participants with enhanced innovation and entrepreneurial capabilities and
skills
AREA48: a Formation Space –Birthing New Entrepreneurial Teams and Innovators

16. Actively Engaged – Being a major ‘node’ in the system
• Developing models that can be replicated elsewhere
(Furnace, Alexandria, AREA48)
• Partnership and joint events with key parts of the ecosystem
such as:
– Mentorship groups like SCORE group
– Co-Working spaces like Co-Hoots, Launchspot and Gangplank, SEEDSpot
– Local government organizations
– Angel groups, venture capital organizations
– Major service providers e.g. legal, marketing, IP, new product
development
– Source of mentors, pracademics, funding
– Other Universities, Colleges in the State