Common Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make ! | Paul Roben | Part One & Two | The BOSS Podcast

Gregory Shepard, an entrepreneur who's built and sold 12 businesses, a recipient of 4 private equity awards, TEDx speaker, and Forbes author. This is The Boss Podcast with Gregory Shepard. If you ask most startup entrepreneurs what school they attended, most would likely say the school of hard knocks. And I'm a proud graduate of the school of hard knocks. But in the past decade, many schools have been intentionally cultivating the next generation of entrepreneurs. One of them is UC San Diego. My guest this week is Paul Robben, the Associate Vice Chancellor for Innovation and Commercialization at UC San Diego. Paul's been tasked to drive innovation across all areas of the campus and speed up the university's innovations in markets in California, the nation, and the world. Paul, welcome to the podcast.

Oh, thank you. I very much appreciate the invitation.

Maybe we could start out with a little bit about what the Vice Chancellor over at UCSD does.

Okay, so I manage the Office for Innovation and Commercialization. And what that means basically is we do all the traditional stuff like managing the intellectual property and transfer of technologies to industry, et cetera. But we also manage a lot of the innovation and entrepreneurship resources and training across the campus. And what that really means is that we're helping to develop the innovators of the future. We're helping to train faculty and students on what it means to be an innovator and what it means to be an entrepreneur so that they can take the incredible ideas that they all have and actually convert those into impact through the creation of companies or not-for-profits or NGOs or social benefit organizations, whatever is appropriate. So we basically run a whole bunch of programs across the campus that are all delivered by practitioners from the real world who come in and tell their stories. So that could be investors or CEOs or financial guys or service providers or whatever, but they're all involved in the entrepreneurial ecosystem and they come in and they basically tell their stories. These are the things that worked out for me, these are the things that didn't, right? And, and through that mechanism, we help to train our students and our faculty in the basics of entrepreneurship. Alongside that, then we bring the community to the university because really a university is just the first step in helping to develop people. I mean, it is our primary product, right? The main thing that a university produces is students. So my job is to help to produce entrepreneurial students. One of the best ways of doing that is to bring the entrepreneurial world to the university. So we bring all of these investors and entrepreneurs and people involved in the ecosystem to the university and we mix them in with the students through mentorship, programs, through company development programs, etc. So we have a whole series of these efforts across the campus, and it's really my job to run some of them but coordinate all of them. So make sure that everything that's going on across the campus is coordinated, students have access to all of the resources and a roadmap on how to access the different things in the different schools, and accelerate the development of these budding entrepreneurs.

You guys have had an incredible story, and one of the things that I recently did is went and toured the building, the brand new building that you guys built to help out with the process of this incubation of startups in the ecosystem. And I wanted to talk a little bit about the history because you guys have one hell of a track record. Maybe you could talk a little bit about the history and, uh, that you guys have in terms of the track record, and then in addition to that, this new impressive building that you guys have built?

Sure. Yeah. So the university, I mean, UC San Diego as a campus has always been a relatively strong powerhouse in this area of entrepreneurship, right? You know, if you go back to the traditional kind of measures in terms of new technologies that are developed and licensed to industry and new companies and so on, we've always been up there at the top of the rankings. But about 5 years ago or so, the Chancellor wanted to ramp the whole thing up. So he created this new Office of Innovation and Commercialization with the goal of making sure that all of the resources, as I said, actually were coordinated, were talking to each other, that we identified any of the gaps in the system and that we tried to fill those gaps and that we removed any of the barriers so that if there were legal barriers or agreement barriers or resource gaps that were proving to be a barrier, for example, that we remove all those. And in that way, that we accelerate all of this entrepreneurial activity. And over the past 5 years or so, we've effectively doubled all of this activity. So we've almost doubled the number of companies that are coming off the campus every year. The last year for which there are nationwide numbers on this, the campus is number 3 in the country in terms of just the number of companies that are spun off, you know. And as we follow these companies, we're It's not just the numbers; it's the sustainability and the durability of these companies. They're raising more money. The five-year survival rate, etc., is all increasing. The quality of these companies is increasing. So, you know, we've put a lot of effort into this, and I think it's it's really paying off. And we're a national leader at this point. The latest initiative in this whole area is the Design and Innovation Building that you referred to. It's a portal, basically. It's it's a portal for the community to access all of this entrepreneurial talent. and ideas that are coming off the campus. And it's also a portal for all of the entrepreneurial students and faculty to access the resources that they need to bring their ideas down the commercial pipe, if you like. So in this building, we've put all of the resources needed in this innovation pipeline, everything from teaching students the basics of entrepreneurship. We have a whole floor dedicated to rapid prototyping and assembly. We've put the design lab in there to talk about human-centered design and customer acquisition. And then we have a whole commercial floor where we have dedicated space to the entrepreneurial community themselves. So if you are an entrepreneur on campus, you come to this building, you get everything you need to go from idea to company launch. You have all of the resources, you have all of the education, and you have the future management, the investors. the service providers, everything you need in one place to launch your company and get the impact that you're looking for. So it's really creating a microcosm of the innovation ecosystem that we have here in San Diego, which is pretty unique, actually. I mean, a lot of universities have put a lot of these elements together in different ways. But to bring all of this together, it's really the first time that I've seen it.

It's the first time I've seen it too. I've never seen anything done so well. I said that on a on one of my social media posts after I toured it. I was, I was like, I've never seen anything so well done. It's like an entire ecosystem in a building. It's, it's really remarkable.

That's, that's really it, you know. And we hope that this is the place that you can't afford not to be in if you're, you know, anywhere in San Diego trying to do any of this entrepreneurial stuff.

Or anywhere in the country, I mean, for that matter. You know, we work with a lot of universities. I haven't seen, you know, at Boss Startup Science, and I haven't seen a single university with a structure like yours anywhere, even to the likes of, you know, the Stanfords and the Harvards and the MITs and stuff like that. Nobody has put it together so well. And the way that the building is designed, where basically each floor is like an elevation in the life cycle of a startup, it's just so well done. It's just really beautiful. And anybody that is looking for a university, this is— I— this is the first place I would go. If I was an entrepreneur.

Well, thank you for that. So the building is at the front door of the campus, and that's making a statement. There's a new light rail system which has just come to campus, and the stop for that light rail is right at the front door of this building. The new transit hub, which brings all of the students and faculty on buses, right there at the back door of this building. So we're making this statement that, you know, the way that we beneficially impact the community is through design, innovation, entertainment, creativity. And the Chancellor really is accentuating this statement by putting this facility right at the front door of the campus, where if you were just, you know, Joe Public coming to visit the campus, this is the very first thing you're going to see.

Yeah, I think it's amazing. I was just blown away by it because I had never seen anybody do it so well. I did a lot of tours of different universities, specifically their entrepreneurial area, and I'd never seen anything like it. I was just— I'm still blown away by it, and I think it's a privilege To be able to go in there and source deals as an investor as well. I wanted to ask you another question. This may be a loaded— well, it's definitely a loaded question. How do universities like UCSD prepare entrepreneurs for tomorrow today?

Yes, very good question. So I think there's many ways to answer that, right? First of all, you have to create an environment that encourages them to dream of a better future. And I know that sounds a little bit kind of corny, but, you know, you really need to surround them in people that encourage them to think out of the box, that encourage them to dream of something that has yet to exist. And that's really why the Design Lab actually is in the building that we just talked about as well. So you have to create that environment to allow them to understand that taking risk is a good thing. Failure is not a bad thing so long as you learn from it, right?

Mm-hmm.

And really get out of yourselves and think of something different and new and disruptive and impactful. You also have to give them the tools to be able to get there. So, you know, we're a university, right? A lot of what the faculty do in their research, for example, are things that we're only going to see as the general public 10 years and 20 years from now. So there is a rich resource across the campus of tools that can be used to encourage this type of, you know, futuristic thinking, if you like, as well. So we can access that. And you just really need to bring people from the community into the— into this whole environment.

And, you know, it has to be a permissive environment which allows our entrepreneurs I think that one of the unique things is like, you know, when you started in 2015, so what, about 6 years ago, you were asked to create a dynamic innovation ecosystem that turns ideas into products that solve big problems and small problems. And it seems to me that that whole timeframe has led up to this innovation building where you've essentially done that innovation ecosystem that's referred to in here in one building. So when we talk about— because this word innovation, right? When we talk about innovation, how do you and UCSD define innovation? Is it based on a certain sector or vertical or a problem they're solving, or how do you guys define innovation? Because it's used all over the place.

It's actually overused, right? You know, in some ways I just want to get away from the world altogether. How do you define innovation? I mean, you know, very— if you ask 10 people on the campus how they define innovation, you're going to get 10 different answers. But very simply, for me, it's idea to impact, right? Having an idea that has an impact, that, you know, that can be developed into something that has an impact. I mean, there's, there's plenty of ideas on campus and everywhere, but they actually have to Yeah, for them to go through a process to have some sort of an impact in our community, that's the real sort of innovative piece of this.

Mm-hmm.

And the other piece of this is diversity. And this is something that the building does very well. I think one way that we have accelerated the development of the innovators of the future, if you like, as you just asked me about, is you've got to bring different people to the table. You've got to bring different students to the table and different faculty and different community people to the table. You know, if you put 4 engineers around a table, you're going to get a very different result than if you put 4, you know, 2 engineers and a dancer and an economist, right?

Mm-hmm.

Looking at the same problem. And I think true innovation is where you get this diversity of perspective. And it's one of the sort of foundational cornerstones of this building. We're not in any school, we're not in any department. We're not constrained, I guess, by the structures that those, those things confer on something. And so we can bring people together in very, very flexible ways. So that to me is really what innovation is about. It's bringing together these different perspectives around ideas that can be developed into something that has real benefit and real impact on you and I in the community.

It's the first time I've seen a scenario in a university where they have allowed that department or division or whatever you call it the freedom to run the way entrepreneurship actually runs. Because what I found a lot of times is that they have the same confinements, but they call it entrepreneurship. They don't work together, right? The place that's incubating entrepreneurs needs to be just as free-flowing as the entrepreneurs themselves. And you guys have done a really good job with that.

You have to have a license to fail. That has to come from the university as well, you know. And it is actually a bit of a, you know, It's an anathema to some extent of you know to the academic system, right? I mean, students are kind of told if you don't get an A in everything, you're no good. Whereas we teach the opposite almost, you know, in in entrepreneurship. If you don't fail, you're not risking, you know, and if you're not risking, you're not you're not really getting out there kind of stuff. So you really have to sort of break the mindset almost in some ways and provide them this kind of protective environment to allow. Allow them to go off and do things that they are not taught in the academic system.

Yeah, I love this because, you know, you look at people like Richard Branson and Elon Musk and Steve Jobs and all the folks that just kind of left, you know, Bill Gates has kind of left universities because they wouldn't allow them to do what they needed to do independently. And what you guys have done is turn this thing on its head and said, well, if that's the nature, the organic nature of entrepreneurship, let's just provide Yeah, and put it alongside the academic system, right?

There is big value in the academic system, you know, don't get rid of that. Obviously, I mean, I work in a university, that'd be silly, right? But tap into it as well, you know, really leverage it through the research portfolio that we have to develop these tools of the future. But put something alongside of that that complements it, and that really is how you accelerate the innovators of the future.

Yeah, I think that's a great point. Yeah, I agree. I think that there is, you know, the creativity is one line and then the academic curriculum, if you will, is a separate line, right? So if you don't have the background of the academics, how are you supposed to optimize and operationalize the creative side? So you guys do a really good, really good job balancing that out. I've never seen anything like it. It's why I wanted to have you on the show, because I was just like, this is— the building symbolizes the way that you think about entrepreneurship, which I haven't seen anywhere.

Cool. That's very gratifying to hear.

When you look at UCSD and you think about the university sectors, right? So we're in San Diego, and San Diego is, you know, a lot of health and medical and pharma and that sort of thing. But you guys seem to have a broader range of businesses coming out of UC San Diego. Is there any specific type of businesses, vertical or sectors, that you guys seem to have more than others?

You know, one answer to that is if it exists, we probably cover it, right? I mean, we have, we have 2,000 faculty, you know, we have $1.5 billion research portfolio, we have schools in just about everything kind of thing. So it is actually true to some extent to say that, you know, we cover just about everything. But of course, there are things that we are stronger in. And I think where the magic and the innovation side occurs is if you match the strengths of the universities, to the strengths of the community. You mentioned biotech. Absolutely. Of course, we are incredibly strong in the life sciences and the health sciences and oncology, neurology, all of those things. To be honest about it, the biotech industry wouldn't be what it is if it wasn't for the university being here for the past 60 years as well. But there's other sectors. I mean, oceanography, right? The whole thing was started with Scripps Institution for Oceanography. And it is one of the world's leaders in ocean sciences, climate sciences, etc. So that's another huge strength which crosses so many different sectors right now. And then, you know, you look at the tech side, we have data, AI, ML, robotics, healthcare delivery systems, etc., which we are massively strong in as well. And a lot of those, I think, are going to be even more important in the future for the simple reason that San Diego is a military town. You know, a quarter of the economy here is military, driven primarily by the Navy. But they are more and more looking to the academic world in order to stay current on their technologies as well, especially in areas like UAVs, AI and logistics and other things. And so there's a huge opportunity to work, you know, with the military in developing those technologies as well. And in fact, you know, if you look back historically, I mean, the university was formed By a partnership with military contractors, the camps that were here in the city, all getting together and saying, we need to give this land over to the development of a university. So it's a very nice sort of circular thing.

Benefit, right? It's totally reciprocal. So let's talk about that a little bit. So do they engage in helping out with these, you know, these deals, these entrepreneurs that come out with ideas? And do you guys have connections with some of the local government and private sectors to help these entrepreneurs out? How do you help these entrepreneurs from the point that, you know, they have an idea and it's validated and they've raised a little money? Outside of that, I know that there are certain programs that help introduce these businesses to government.

Yeah, so we— I mean, it depends on the company, depends on the government agency, etc., right? But for the most part, we have very good relationships across the board, and most companies are very open to helping us in any types of programs that are about workforce development. So, you know, as soon as we go to them and kind of say, we want you to help us better prepare students so that they can, you know, perform efficiently in your sector, it's always an open door. So we're always able to engage them in those types of programs. The same is true for government. With government, they have a little bit more difficulty maybe in figuring out how to do it. But they're certainly very willing to do it. And the same is actually true for the military. I mean, we have, you know, large programs with the Naval Information Warfare Center, for example, and we're developing much bigger programs now with the Navy as well across the whole workforce development piece. So we have, you know, a lot of relationships there. We're developing all sorts of new programming now where we're getting more entrepreneurial, if you like, in these workforce development programs. So we kind of go out to companies and say, hey, you guys are huge and inflexible to some extent, right? And I know there's a whole bunch of problems you have out there, but just because of the sort of structures that you have, you find difficult to dedicate the resources to solving them. Why don't you tell us what they are and we'll put groups of students around them to solve your problems? And in that way, we're training the students on the culture of your operations so they're better prepared when they get to you. So it is a workforce development thing, but we're also training the students in entrepreneurship because it's all about team building and leadership and all those other critical elements of entrepreneurship. So there's a lot of different ways that we're working with companies and the government. And, and, you know, beyond that, we're working with the zoo and the port and the airport and all these people in similar programs. So it's a very close-knit community in San Diego.

Yeah, it's very— it's all twined together, right? But it all kind of weaves through the university that puts you in a unique place.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Well, on that note, let's stop right here. But coming up in the second part of my conversation with Paul Robben, the Associate Vice Chancellor for Innovation and Commercialization at UC San Diego, Paul talks about the importance of community outreach.

I think something that a lot of people don't do is they don't go out to the community enough. And kind of say, you know, what would you like to see the university doing that would deliver people to you that are going to be more successful? So we did a lot of that. You know, we went out and we talked to the innovation community and the venture guys and everybody else kind of stuff, and it's kind of based off that that we delivered a lot of programming.

Learn more about the BOSS Business Operating Support System at bossstartupscience.com. Or you can reach Gregory Shepard at GregoryShepard.com. This has been a production of Forbes Books. Gregory Shepard, an entrepreneur who's built and sold 12 businesses, a recipient of 4 private equity awards, TEDx speaker, and Forbes author. This is The Boss Podcast with Gregory Shepard. Thanks for joining me again for my conversation with Paul Roben, the Associate Vice Chancellor for Innovation and Commercialization at UC San Diego. Paul, you've touched upon failure in part 1 and how you encourage students not to be afraid of failure. And this is one of the things that I really focus on. I studied why entrepreneurs fail for about 5 years with 5 people because I was trying to solve this problem. I was trying to make it so that the 90% failure rate over a 5-year period drops down by, let's say, 10%. And when you look at the entrepreneur ecosystem, even in the early stages of the lifecycle that you guys were involved in, what are the common mistakes that you see entrepreneurs making?

Well, I guess, you know, the most common mistake is I, the entrepreneur, know everything. Nobody can tell me anything, right?

That's awesome.

But that's what we're here to do, right, is to provide an environment, a sort of a safe environment to make sure that in some ways that they do fail, you know, and that they understand that they need other people, they need to build this team of expertise in order to move things along. But that's, Certainly, you know, particularly among students, it's, it's this inexperience and in a nice way, a kind of an arrogance, right? In that they believe that they can bring the whole thing forward. That's probably the biggest mistake that we see. But as they do go through cycles of this, you see them coming back the second time and the third time. You know, by the time they've done this a couple of times, that's gone. Then you start seeing the venture guys coming after them because they recognize it in them that these are people that, you know, can deliver results for them kind of stuff. So that's what we're here to do is to bring them through those early sort of experiences and, you know, get them over it in a safe environment.

It's sort of like most universities' athletics department, right? They push them into failure. Right. And by pushing them to failure, they push them towards a higher level of success. And so you guys do that with these entrepreneurs.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

I think that that's just— I think that that's just brilliant because in my personal scenario, I haven't failed building a business or investing in a business, but I failed a lot of times in between. You know, when all of those little failures are marked as like rungs on a ladder that eventually you can stand on those failures as something secure and then climb the ladder. And I haven't seen a lot of universities think that way. What caused you guys to have a shift? I mean, that's a mindset shift in, you know, going from, okay, you have to succeed to be successful, to you have to fail to get to successful.

Well, you know, part of it's my own personal experience of raising funding for my own companies, right? This is back in the '90s, but the first question that a lot of venture guys would say, okay, tell me about your last failure. You know, and if you went in there and said, oh, I've never failed, that was it. You were out the door straight away kind of thing. You know, and that was a lesson I had to learn. I mean, I was one of those arrogant, you know, inexperienced entrepreneurs way back when as well kind of thing. So, you know, personal experience to some extent, but also it's go out to the community. You know, I think something that a lot of people don't do is they don't go out to the community enough and kind of say, you know, what would you like to see the university doing that would deliver people to you that are going to be more successful? So we did a lot of that, you know, we went out and we talked to the innovation community and the venture guys and everybody else kind of stuff. And it's kind of based off that, that we delivered a lot of programming. Plus we have some really, really good people on our team, you know, like people like Greg Horowitz and those whose life it has been.

Scott Tate.

Scott Tate, you know, this is what they do. They build these ecosystems. I kind of surrounded myself with good people, you know, listen to the community and build the programs off that. And, you know, also from my own kind of personal experience of what's Let's talk a little bit about deal flow.

The podcast has entrepreneurs and investors listening. So we've talked a lot about the side of it that the entrepreneurs are paying attention to. So let's give some attention to the investors. For the investor side, explain how the university engages with investors with regards to deal flow.

Yeah, that's a very good question as well. And this is something that we're in the middle of revamping, if you like. You know, if you go back 10 years, investors found it really difficult to engage with the university the size of us, right, and to really figure out what was coming out of it. And this is part of the reason why a lot of deals had been left on the table way back then. It was just this kind of communication and access issue. So we've been working very closely with a lot of the seed investors, you know, that do actually support many of the startups that come off the campus, to kind of say to them, you know, how should we be presenting opportunities as they come along so that you can recognize them, right? You know, what information should we be presenting to you and in what format so that it's of value to you? And in doing that, we've developed this kind of 5-stage system, if you like, you know, where the earliest one is a student or a faculty member who has an idea, period, you know, and the latest getting all the way up to where these ideas actually have a company that's fundable kind of thing. So we developed that whole ranking system with our seed investors, and then we put them into a database which very soon is going to be accessible to the public and searchable by all of our investors, which hopefully will kind of accelerate the ability of all of these investors, ones we've met and ones we haven't met, basically to very quickly get to the opportunities on campus that they're actually interested in. So that's, that's one side of it is, you know, what data and how do you present it, which we've been working very hard on. The other side of it is you just have to have better deals, right? If you have investors that keep coming to the university again and again and they keep seeing the quality of the deals that are coming off the campus and they're just not where they need them to be, eventually and probably fairly quickly in some cases, they're going to say, oh, well, it's just not worth going there anymore. So you have to ensure that the quality of these opportunities are increasing over time as well. And that's about— that's a lot of the programming that we do. So our Entrepreneur-in-Residence program brings serial entrepreneurs onto the campus to look at these opportunities and help to guide them down the commercial path. We put funding into these projects to develop commercial milestones that have been described by investors to us, not by the inventors themselves. Right. There's a whole bunch of these types of programs. We have pitch prep programs where we take these teams of people on campus and we teach them how to develop a pitch deck that's, you know, of relevance to the venture community. So it's the whole combination of these programs to improve the quality of the opportunities, and then it's the management of the data to be able to actually deliver it to our investors. I think in the next few months You know, we'll be able to launch that as well. And hopefully, you know, I'm hoping that we'll see a lot more funded deals coming off the campus as a result of all of that.

So when you think about the journey, right? So if you think about an entrepreneur that has an idea and then they go through ideation and vision and then they move down the funnel, one of the routes if they're going through a university is to go to the university incubator and then the universities will either have their own systems or they send them off to an accelerator. What is the difference between what you guys offer and what the accelerators offer, or is there even a difference?

I think it's more resources on a continuum. We tend to offer resources that are going to be applicable to teams that are far earlier on the continuum than what a lot of the community incubators and accelerators can offer. To get into many of those incubators, you have to You have to have some level of maturity, you know, of the company that you've created. I mean, we'll take, you know, 4 students and a suitcase kind of stuff, right? That just have a complete— just have some sort of— even sometimes they don't even have an idea because what we're developing is the entrepreneur. So we'll go earlier kind of stuff. Having said that, I think the reason why it works in our case and, you know, in other university cases but particularly with us is we bring that community onto campus really early, even if they're not going to engage. So a lot of our seed stage investors, you know, tell us, please show us even the earliest stuff. You know that we're not going to invest in it, but we can offer advice or we can just keep an eye on it.

Right. Yeah.

The accelerators say the same thing. Please show us the stuff that's not ready for us. We just want to keep an eye on this stuff. And sometimes we can help to, you know, throw some sort of resource at it kind of stuff. So it's making sure that the 2 systems are completely inter-engaged kind of stuff that I think makes it successful. It's, you know, if it's a kind of a— it was too linear before, you know, the university said, right, I'm going to do A, B, and C, and once C is done, then I'm going to go to the community and look around for D.

Hmm.

Well, that doesn't work, you know, it creates all these gaps in the whole system. You need to bring the system in at A so that by the time it gets to wanting D, they already know that and they pull it rather than us pushing it.

Right. Yeah. It's one of the things I wanted to ask you about is that when I look at the ecosystem, everybody knows that right now the startup ecosystem is the fastest and largest growing sector of the GDP pretty much in every country in the world. And we've had record-breaking valuations, record-breaking rounds of funding, exits, and liquidity events all over the place, and everything's just going gangbusters.

Yeah.

And what I've noticed is that in the scenario of investors is that the venture capital community has started to move in earlier into the territory of accelerators, and corporates have done the same thing. So, the corporates are moving into the accelerators And that's sort of squeezing out some of the accelerators that don't have as much experience or smaller or newer or whatever. And I'm wondering, you know, if you've seen the same thing from an ecosystem perspective, is that everybody's trying to get earlier in on the deal. And part of that has to do with what you were just talking about, which is just keeping your eye on it.

Mm-hmm.

Because for me, I like to look at deals as early as possible because I'm not just watching the progression of the business, you know, the horse. I'm watching the projection of the jockey, you know, the entrepreneur, to see how they're performing. Is this trend something that you've seen as well?

Well, the point that you just said there is a very, very good one. I think that's mostly why, at least the traditional venture guys that I deal with, that's mostly why they want to keep an eye on these early deals. It's for the people. It's for the jockey. And so, even if the current horse stumbles, they know the good jockey is out there and they'll see about the next horse. This kind of stuff. So I think that's a lot of it. Yeah, I think I have seen it to some extent. I think the venture guys are much more willing to look at earlier stuff. Whether or not they're investing earlier, I'm not entirely sure. I haven't seen any massive shift in that. On the other hand, we're able to bring things to them that are of higher quality and more investable. So we are getting, you know, a little bit more investment because of that. So yeah, they're looking earlier. I don't think that their investment thesis has changed hugely, at least from my perspective, sitting where I do at UC San Diego. The corporate guys are different. The constructs we're seeing the corporate guys come with are entirely different. You know, they're hooking up with contract research people and coming up with new sort of broad deals across the university. that are linking sponsored research together with company creation at a later time. There's, there's all sorts of interesting new constructs that we're seeing that are actually accelerating the development of these companies, particularly in the health side of things and therapeutics in particular, not as much in the tech. But I think we're going to see more and more really, really interesting constructs like that over the next while.

Do you think that the reason why the health is what you're seeing more than anything is because of the you know, geographically where UCSD is located, or do you think that that's something that is a trend across all different sectors?

This is just my personal opinion on this. I don't think it's a geographical thing. I think it's a maturity of sector thing. The pharma guys, for example, they've gone through this whole, you know, 10 years ago or 15 years ago to, if I didn't invent it, it can't be worth anything, right? So, you know, that's, that's where that sector was a long time ago. Then it went through the, oh, well, let's, let's throw lots of money at the academic sector and they'll develop new therapeutics for us. And now they've kind of gotten to the point of we do need to engage with the academic sector, but we need this interim step in order to de-risk this stuff for us. And that generally is a startup company. So what we need to do is be involved in the different stages of this, which is leading to these sort of broader agreements. that help us to sort of move the research to startup company stage that they may then invest in or not, but set it up then for acquisition at a later point if the whole thing works out. So it's a fairly sophisticated model. A lot of the other sectors I haven't seen that kind of shift in. So I think it's more of a kind of a sort of the stage at which that particular sector is at.

Yeah, because it's always the opportunities or the sectors that are left And when they come full circle and they realize that they need to change the way they see deal flow and how early they need to see it and how they need to engage with it, then usually those opportunities pop up. So, that makes a lot of sense.

Yeah.

In the tech sector, this has been going on for ages. And everybody knows that there's a big company in Silicon Valley that'll buy them if they have something that'll You know, that's promising to their customers.

Right.

That's fascinating. Have you seen an increase in overall corporate accelerators over what you saw before?

Yeah, yeah, I think that's definitely true. Yeah, I mean, there's much more enthusiasm to sort of create this triumvirate of the, you know, the academic research with the startup, with the large companies. So yeah, definitely.

Yeah, what we've noticed is that, you know, because we sell the platforms they use, and what we've seen is this huge increase in this connection between the university and the corporates, and that connection being sort of filled in with these accelerators, which allows them to connect the dots. Is that what you're seeing too, or—

No, that's exactly it. That's exactly it. I mean, you know, we can only take things and should only take things to a certain point. When you pair us with the formation of a new startup company, that's gold for these large companies, right? Because then you give the right people in these companies, you know, the asset to work with and bring it to de-risk it to whatever point the large company needs to be able to acquire it kind of thing. So we're even, you know, having those conversations with the Department of Defense. So even the defense side of the house is looking at this as a model. Which I think will be interesting in coming years. Yeah.

I mean, one of the deals that Scott Tate brought to us out of the university we're making an investment into, which is a defense side company, which is, you know, which is— I was like, I didn't realize at the time that UCSD was so dynamic and diverse. I always thought, oh, okay, it's going to be pharma or biotech or something San Diego, but it has changed a lot. You guys have put so much energy into sort of into not painting San Diego into a corner. It's more dynamic than what I think people think. And you can see it in the numbers in terms of the numbers of deals that come out by sector as compared to, you know, the benchmark of obviously the Valley. I think that largely that comes from what you have done since 2015 out there at UCSD. Personally, because I live down here, you know, I cut my teeth in the Valley and came down here, and I was worried that I was going to miss out on something. What I found is a, a renaissance of, you know, diversity that I never thought possible down here. And I think largely— I think a lot of it has to do with you, and for that I'm personally grateful.

Well, thank you. I appreciate that. But I think it's true what you say about San Diego, though. It's very diverse and It isn't a one-trick pony by any means. And I think that's exciting because it's out of that kind of collision of different current sectors that the new sectors emerge, right? So I think, you know, you're going to get a lot of these data-driven sectors are going to emerge from San Diego and a lot of climate-related sectors are going to emerge from San Diego.

Yeah, all the stuff we need to see. I really appreciate you coming on the podcast. You're somebody that I really look up to personally. I don't know if you know that I've seen you in the office and stuff, and I always look at you and go, man, this guy has really changed things. I know more about what you have done in the last 6 years than you may think, and it's remarkable, and you deserve a standing ovation for that. And I just want to thank you again for being on the podcast. I appreciate it.

Well, it's my pleasure, and I'm not sure I deserve all those accolades, but thank you very much. Working together, you and I are going to make this new Design Innovation Building as I'm very excited.

I'm very excited. And we have a few other things to talk about now that I've done this podcast.

So— Excellent.

Yeah. Thank you so much.

You're very welcome. Thank you.

To find out more about Paul and the Office of Innovation and Commercialization at UC San Diego, go to innovation.ucsd.edu. And that wraps up this episode of The Boss Podcast. If you enjoy the show, please take a second to subscribe so you automatically get my new shows when they drop. Also, if you have a minute, I'd love it if you left a review so more folks like you can discover the show. I'll see you next time. Namaste, my friends. Learn more about the Boss Business Operating Support System at bossstartupsience.com, or you can reach Gregory Shepard at GregoryShepard.com. This has been a production of Forbes Books.