I met with Paul Cataford today ... he's the President and CEO of University Technologies International (UTI).
Although sharing building space with CTI (Calgary Technologies Inc.) at the Alistair Ross Technology Centre, and having the similarities of a 3 letter acronymed name, UTI and CTI have very distinct and different missions.
While CTI is a publicly funded venture focused on economic expansion, UTI is a private organization (owned by both the University of Calgary and private investors) focused on incubating deep science technologies to turn them into viable companies: "Mission: To be recognized as the premier technology transfer, commercialization and incubation centre in Canada by bringing innovation to life."
I spent almost an hour with Paul, and he's the type of leader that quickly turns you into an evangelist for what he's doing. After spending 15 years in Silicon Valley as a venture capitalist, he's laser focused on his "deep science incubation strategy because it's a sustainable competitive advantage."
Especially in a place like Calgary, which, as he states "lacks the DNA required for 'time to market' ventures." In other words, if companies are participating in a high-tech play where's there's chances that 8 or 9 other companies elsewhere are also running for the finish line, the Calgary company will probably lose (although as he mentions, there are exceptions to that rule, thankfully!). In Silicon Valley, "time to market companies became well funded quickly, and could ramp up 250 developers in 12 months." In Calgary, funding typically can't ramp up that quickly (or to that size), nor is the talent pool big enough to get that many developers on board in that period of time.
Having been in a successful vertical high-tech company myself in Calgary (and having immersed myself back into high-tech for that last 4 months here), I'm not sure I completely agree with his perception. Which is irrelevant, of course. Great leaders need to have the conviction of well articulated, focused strategies and the team that can execute. UTI has both.
There have been a number of success stories from UTI since it's inception in 1989, most of which are in the biotech or oil and gas industries. They currently are incubating 12 firms, 1/2 of which are from technology from the University, the other 1/2 from outside the University.
In 2007, UTI formed their "IGNITE" division, which includes Executives In Residence that can build and scale technology based companies with project management and market / business analysts. Combined with the existing UTI resources of accounting, administration, licensing, and Intellectual Property protection, IGNITE is forming companies to develop products, strategic plans and teams around intellectual property and proprietary technology.
UTI announced today: University Technologies International celebrates IGNITE’s one-year anniversary with over $6 million in financing for two companies Profero Energy Inc. received $5M over 2.5 years ... their technology is designed to recover additional energy assets from existing heavy oil wells that are no longer economically viable. The other company, Circle Cardiovascular Imaging has received $1.3M to move their cmr(42) software into beta sites. cmr(42) is image processing software that facilitates efficient quantitative evaluation of cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) studies.
And, in the announcement, you can see that UTI's strategy is on target: combining deep science with experienced and qualified teams.
Paul rushed off to his next high-energy, intense meeting ... and I, of course, paused for a cup of steaming hot joe.
Hey Stephen -- thanks for taking the meeting and hearing the UTI/IGNITE pitch. Just a couple of follow-up things .... UTI Limited Partnership has no private investors. Also -- all of my VC expererince was when I was in Toronto - the firm I was with (BCE Capital) did about of half of our investing in the Si Valley at the time. Lastly, I did mention that "time-to-market" opportunities are just not where we will be dedicating our limited time, energy and resources. We are finding that scaling up at the pace of what's required to be an issue, further - we are finding significant dealflow in our core are of focus - that being early-stage innovation with the potential for a very strong intellectual property position.
Thank you for all of your kind words and for listening to our story - let's hope it gets better.
All the best -- Paul (cataford@uti.ca)
Thanks for the follow-up, Paul ... geez, only a couple details wrong this time! :) Nonetheless, I like the notion of technology transfer of deep science ... and completely agree with your notion that it brings a sustainable competitive advantage, especially with patents in place for the Intellectual Property! Best of luck!
Paul and Stephen, I like the conversation, yes we have challenges here but if we dig deep and work hard, there's plenty of potential to succeed. I don't know if either of you made it to TechRev's event last night, but Jessica Livingston's comments about the tenacity required of founders to succeed is a message you both can understand very well. I was wondering what you both think of the concept of Y Combinator's investment model: invest very early, in quite small amounts, and provide the coaching, mentoring and guidance the early stage companies need. Would this work here?
Hi Paul ... yes, I was at Techrev last night ... am writing the blog right now! Short answer to your question "Would this work here" is yes, with the caveat that the investor pool would need to have tremendous patience. The thing I liked about Jessica's message is that they provide the legal agreement work, setting up the partnerships, setting up the corporate shell, setting up the accounting, and helping to develop the early stage business model ... in addition to funding (which she said was about $20K) in exchange for 6% of the small company. Besides the money, the nasty bits of setting up a company is what bogs down most entrepreneurs, who frankly, just want to develop the product (which is what they should be doing). The business plan helps set the company up to raise more capital when things are further down the road.
This model is not unlike UTI's ... who provides an "ecosystem" of business services while they help incubate.
Seems to me that CTI, or even Material Insight are in a great position to follow this model, as they already have a business service infrastructure set up (to a certain extent). Material Insight is related to Adventure Capital (Brian Craig's investment fund) and so this is already happening at a larger funding level, with businesses already at the "scale-up" stage. What's missing is the "junior" approach.
Anyway, I heard Jessica talking to a Vancouver fund manager who is eager to follow in Y-Combinator's footsteps.
[...] UTI announces $6M in financing for two “deep science” Calgary companies I met with Paul Cataford today … he’s the President and CEO of University Technologies International (UTI). Although sharing building space with CTI (Calgary Technologies Inc.) at the Alistair Ross Technology Centre, and having the similarities of a 3 letter acronymed name, UTI and CTI have very distinct and different missions. While CTI is a publicly funded venture focused on economic expansion, UTI is a private organization (owned by both the University of Calgary and private investors) focused on incubating deep science technologies to turn them into viable companies: “Mission: To be recognized as the premier technology transfer, commercialization and incubation centre in Canada by bringing innovation to life.” I spent almost an hour with Paul, and he’s the type of leader that quickly turns you into an evangelist for what he’s doing. After spending 15 years in Silicon Valley as a venture capitalist, he’s laser focused on his “deep science incubation strategy because it’s a sustainable competitive advantage.” Especially in a place like Calgary, which, as he states “lacks the DNA required for ‘time to market’ ventures.” In other words, if companies are participating in a high-tech play where’s there’s chances that 8 or 9 other companies elsewhere are also running for the finish line, the Calgary company will probably lose (although as he mentions, there are exceptions to that rule, thankfully!). In Silicon Valley, “time to market companies became well funded quickly, and could ramp up 250 developers in 12 months.” In Calgary, funding typically can’t ramp up that quickly (or to that size), nor is the talent pool big enough to get that many developers on board in that period of time. (more…) [...]
