While one L.A. developer is hoping to lure tech companies from California to Arizona (see story on Page 1), one of that state’s big universities is pushing firms the other way.
Arizona State University, located in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe, has an office on – appropriately – Arizona Avenue in Santa Monica that houses a branch of the school’s technology transfer organization, Arizona Technology Enterprises.
Charlie Lewis, an ASU alumnus and former tech entrepreneur, is vice president of venture development for the tech transfer entity. He sees a massive opportunity in using L.A.’s buzzing tech scene as a vehicle to bring his alma mater’s technology to the world. And tech transfer, which brings university-created technology to commercial partners, is a big part of it.
“We want to move these technologies out of faculty research labs and the minds of students and into vibrant companies that help create jobs,” he said.
Not only will successful spinoffs enable ASU to cash in on technology it’s helped develop, but they also will serve as a reminder to young entrepreneurs that tech success isn’t the exclusive purview of Stanford and Harvard grads, Lewis believes. And he wants to help them achieve that.
“Students and faculty from any university have the entrepreneurial capacity to grow successful companies,” he said. “It’s a matter of getting that support and assistance.”
Natural bridge
Arizona’s public universities have long filled their lecture halls with Southern Californians. And that’s a major reason why the university in 2013 chose to set up shop in Silicon Beach instead of Silicon Valley.
“Really, the impetus for the whole thing was that Southern California is the largest feeder of out-of-state students to ASU,” Lewis said.
More relevant to Lewis’ interests, there’s also the fact that L.A.’s tech scene is red hot. In fact, according to Seattle private equity and venture capital data firm PitchBook, the median valuation of early stage companies in Los Angeles was $22 million, the second highest in the country and only $1 million behind the sizzling Bay Area.
Lewis believes being a part of a frenzied tech environment puts ASU closer to the action.
“We view ourselves more as facilitators,” he said. “There’s a very vibrant ecosystem in Southern California.”
ASU has signed 25 licensing agreements with California entities over the last three years. Startups that have licensed the school’s intellectual property have raised more than $260 million in funding in that time, according to Lewis, most of it from California investors.
Lewis knows a thing or two about establishing a successful tech company in the Grand Canyon State. Alongside some of his college classmates, he co-founded business software company Midas Computers in 1984. They sold the company in 1993 and he went on to a career as a corporate executive, then became a general partner at two Arizona venture capital firms.
Lewis said ASU President Michael Crow, who’s won some praise – and fielded some criticism – for his business-minded approach to administering the university, was a key reason he decided to come full circle and get involved with the next generation of business founders from ASU.
“His whole model, with a lot of emphasis on entrepreneurship, was very appealing and attractive to me,” he said.
Head of class
SMALLab Learning in North Hollywood is a textbook example of the type of spinoff that Lewis wants to see more of. It’s an embodied learning company, meaning it uses virtual reality and motion-capture technology to develop educational programming. Picture a geometry lesson in which students can physically manipulate shapes inside of a video game-type atmosphere.
The company brings in more than $1 million in annual revenue and recently finished installing its systems in half of the middle schools in Huntsville, Ala., with the second half coming this summer.
Dr. David Birchfield, SMALLab’s chief executive and a former associate professor at ASU’s school of arts, media and engineering, has been developing the idea since 2005.
“This was a research project that started at ASU,” he said. “It involved at least 30 faculty and graduate researchers, from computer science and engineering to art and dance.”
Birchfield said these academic roots also produced SMALLab’s most powerful sales tool.
“One of the big things we are able to say to our customers is that we have empirical data, we have published research – work that’s happened at ASU,” he said. “That’s been a key driver of our success.”
While Tempe produced the research that’s helped promote the product, Birchfield, who’s also chief technology officer, said he had to come to Los Angeles to take his company to the next level. SMALLabs uses motion-capture technology, which is popular in the video-game and film industries.
“It’s been a boon for us to meet designers who’ve worked at Disney,” he said.
SMALLabs is pursuing more business now, but Birchfield remembers when it was still a fledgling venture that needed every bit of organizational assistance ASU and its tech transfer office could offer, including helping with basic things such as finding a good lawyer.
Lewis certainly doesn’t need the ASU gig, but he said he’s attracted to the idea that he can help turn students’ moon-shot ideas into job-creating companies. And he’s proof that the startup life can pay – even if you don’t have a Stanford sheepskin.
“Some guys I graduated with suckered me into doing a startup out of school,” he said. “It turned out to be a pretty good outcome.”
