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Martin Zeller
Manager, Knowledge Resources
ETTC
What do California Governor Gray Davis, Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, the Los Angeles Regional Technology Alliance, the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation and USC's School of Engineering Technology Transfer Center (USC ETTC) have in common? They all share a common desire to promote the economic well being of the Southern California region by stimulating the growth of entrepreneurial, high technology businesses. This commitment to economic growth and technological excellence was on display April 22, 1999 at the fifth annual Southern California Technology Venture Forum, held in Los Angeles and co-sponsored by the USC ETTC's NASA Far West Regional Technology Transfer Center (NASA Far West RTTC).
The Forum provided an opportunity for twenty-one high tech businesses to meet a variety of investors and resource providers from throughout the region, to network with them and to make their pitches to a panel of investors. The companies represented several of the industries in which Southern California high tech firms are preeminent: Internet, new media and entertainment technologies, biomedicine, enterprise software, telecommunications, information technology, environmental technology and manufacturing.
Members of the Venture Capital Panel reviewed the business plans of all companies wishing to participate in the Forum. After the review process was complete, the Venture Capital Panel recommended those companies that would be invited to participate. Each company was then counseled by a group of mentors for several weeks prior to making its presentation at the Forum. The payoff for the companies that participate in the Forum is evidenced by the fact that in the past four years, presenting companies have raised more than $60 million in venture capital. USC ETTC's NASA Far West RTTC sponsored this year's luncheon and keynote speaker, Michael Robertson, CEO of MP3.com, developer of an innovative electronic music distribution system on the Internet.
USC ETTC has done similar work in the past for NASA. At NASA's invitation, USC ETTC participated in two rounds of workshops known as NASA Technology Commercialization Reviews. These were held in New York in June 1998 and in Boston in November 1998. For these reviews, USC ETTC screened potential small business candidates interested in presenting to review panels of industry, government and investment experts their commercialization plans for technologies developed under NASA's SBIR program. USC ETTC then recommended to NASA the names of several small businesses to be invited to participate. Finally, USC ETTC provided mentoring services and assistance to the small businesses it had recommended. The mentoring helped the representatives of the small firms to prepare concise, hard-hitting presentations that they then gave to the review panels.
USC ETTC is the developer of a proprietary, web-based technology commercialization assessment tool that can be found at http://monica.usc.edu.
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