New York University plans to create a USD20m venture fund to spur the commercialisation of select technologies developed at NYU and to provide seed funding for start-up companies based on those technologies.
The fund – which will be almost entirely funded from external sources – is expected to make its first set of investments in 2011.
The university has named Frank Rimalovski, who has extensive experience in the venture capital sector, as the fund’s managing director. He will have primary responsibility for building entrepreneurial leadership teams and structuring the efforts to form companies around promising technologies within NYU, and for negotiating investments and crafting partnerships with other early stage investors.
Over the past four years, NYU has ranked first among US universities in income from technology licensing. More than 50 start-ups have been formed around NYU discoveries and ideas over the last 20 years including Sugen (acquired by Pharmacia/Pfizer), Smart Therapeutics (acquired by Boston Scientific), Anaderm (acquired by Pfizer), TouchCo, Perceptive Pixel, and Spin Transfer Technologies.
NYU president John Sexton (pictured) says: “It is not sufficient for great ideas to find homes only in lecture halls and laboratories; there is a world full of large and pressing challenges calling out to be solved by talented innovators who are eager to apply their ideas to alleviate suffering and improve human life. Like the city it calls home, NYU sees entrepreneurship as part of its essential character; I hope and believe that this fund will be an additional spur to transforming scholarly passion into needed solutions to important problems.”
The fund will be an “evergreen” fund, realised gains from the successful exit or sale of ventures will be reinvested in other projects, and has been initially capitalised with USD2m, with the balance to come from contributions by donors. Investments made by the fund will generally range from USD100,000 to USD1m, and will typically be accompanied by investments from other external early stage investors.
The fund will be governed by an independent advisory board and two investment review boards which will review all investments made by the fund; membership of the investment review boards – which will include NYU faculty, as well as local investors and entrepreneurs – will be completed over the coming months.
Rimalovski comes to NYU from New Venture Partners, a venture capital firm dedicated to funding early-stage technology spinouts with over USD700m under management, where he was a partner since co-founding the firm in 2001.
