When is the right time to look for VC funding? How do you get started? What are standard terms and processes? How do you prepare for the due diligence process? Join us on July 17th to discuss the questions you’ve been wanting to ask if you are considering raising Venture Capital funding for your startup. Facilitator Chris Quintero will walk entrepreneurs through the basics of VC funding. Please submit questions for Chris here, no later than July 10 at 5pm.
This discussion is open to all current or former members of PowerBridgeNY, the NYC Media Lab Combine program, the Columbia Biomedical Technology Accelerator (formerly Coulter) program, the Translational Therapeutics Resource (TrX) program, or the Accelerating Cancer Therapeutics (ACT) program.
Chris Quintero is a Senior Associate at Bolt, a venture capital firm designed from the ground-up to address the needs of early-stage startups at the intersection of hardware and software. He was the firm’s first hire over five years ago. Bolt now has over 55 companies in its portfolio, $120M under management, and 18 full time staff. Chris has a mechanical engineering degree from Georgia Tech and previously worked on development projects in water, sanitation, and gasification in Chile, Vietnam, and Cameroon.
With $10M in funding from NYSERDA, PowerBridgeNY’s mission is to turn cleantech innovations from the academic research labs of the six partner institutions into strong, cleantech businesses in New York State. We offer teams up to $150K to conduct 100 customer discovery interviews using the NSF I-Corps/Lean LaunchPad Methodology as well as develop a prototype or conduct in-field testing. The ultimate goal is to move the technology closer to commercialization via a startup (preferable) or license. During the program, we check-in with the teams monthly, host a series of events, subsidize the cost of necessary services, provide industry mentors, and arrange pro bono office hours with experts in law, finance, grant writing, and more.
PowerBridgeNY is two separate proof-of-concept centers (POCC), both funded by NYSERDA, collaborating as one program. One POCC is led by Columbia University and includes Brookhaven National Laboratory, Cornell Tech, and Stony Brook University. The other POCC is led by the Tandon School of Engineering at New York University and includes the City University of New York.
Columbia University has extensive experience founding and supporting successful commercialization programs to provide promising early‐stage technologies with funding, validation, and prototyping, to transition technology out of the academic lab and into the market at a faster rate. PowerBridgeNY is one of the programs supported by the Columbia Lab-to-Market Accelerator Network (Columbia L2M), which currently encompasses five technology commercialization programs across separate industries: medical technologies, clean technology & energy, digital media, and therapeutics. Many of these programs, like PowerBridgeNY, are multi-institutional and involve extensive collaboration with our peer universities and their tech transfer offices. Columbia L2M is committed to supporting the expansion of existing programs and the creation of new initiatives for the future. If you are interested in learning more about the network please contact Jack Steele (js5085@columbia.edu).