BPEP Workshops
Workshop 2
Topic: Stories from the Trenches
Speakers: Muzzafar Khan, Space Energy AG
Date: Thursday, Feb. 23 5:45-7:45 pm
Location: 106 Stanley Hall, UC Berkeley
The next BPEP workshop will cover some real-world descriptions of what it’s like to start a business. On the panel we have 4 PhDs who went off to do an entrepreneurial venture. They will start by giving a 2-minute elevator pitch to present their original idea. During the panel discussion you have a chance to find out how it played out and what roadblocks they encountered along the way.
Schedule
5:45 Sandwiches and Refreshments
6:15 Announcements
6:20 Guest: Muzzafar Khan.
6:30 Elevator pitches from panelists
6:45 Panel discussion + Q&A
7:45 Beer Networking Hour
Guest
Muzzafar Khan is Principal and Board Member of Space Energy AG, a company that seeks to develop space-based solar power satellites that generate and transmit electricity to receivers on the Earth’s surface.
Khan has an extensive background working in hedge funds and leading investment banks and was a strategist for Moore Capital. In 2009 he co-authored a book called “Racing towards Excellence” with his mentee Jan Sramek. Racing Towards Excellence funds the non-profit website Oxbridge Admissions Info, which provides advice to students looking to apply to Oxford and Cambridge Universities. He is also managing director and majority shareholder of Alchemy Ventures Ltd, a social enterprise whose mission is to increase social mobility and reduce aspirational poverty in the world’s youth.
Speakers / panelists
Sonny Hsiao, is co-founder and chief scientist of Adheren, Inc.
Adheren is a company focussed on innovative DNA-based live cell adhesion technology. They utilize this technology to manufacture kits for attaching cells to any desired analysis platform, such as microarrays. Hsiao received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from UC Berkeley, where he did his graduate work in the labs of Carolyn Bertozzi and Matt Francis. He is an expert in cell adhesion and live cell surface modification.
Shyam Patel is co-founder and chief scientific officer of Nanonerve, a company using nanofibers to develop synthetic scaffolds for growing nerve cells.Patel received his Ph.D. in Bioengineering from UC Berkeley in 2007. NanoNerve’s core technology was spunout from Patel’s dissertation research on nanofiber scaffolds. Patel’s work has been recognized as one of the Top 25 Micro/Nano Technologies of 2007 by R&D Magazine. The nanofiber graft placed third in the national Biomedical Engineering Innovation, Design, and Entrepreneurship Award (BMEidea) competition in 2007.
Jason Holt is co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of NanOasis, which develops a fundamentally new approach to lowering the cost and energy requirements for desalination and other water purification applications utilizing carbon nanotubes to make reverse osmosis membranes. Holt earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology. Previously, he was a Staff Scientist and principal investigator at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. Holt was a first author of the seminal 2006 paper “Fast Mass Transport through Sub–2-Nanometer Carbon Nanotubes”, published in the journal Science. He is an expert in nanofluidics, nanocomposite synthesis and the development of platforms for the study of flow at nanometer length scales.
Kenneth Fong is CEO of System Biosciences. Fong received his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology & Microbiology from Indiana University in 1977. He founded Clontech Laboratories, Inc. in 1984 as a pioneer in the commercialization of innovative genetic tools to facilitate gene cloning and analysis. After Clontech was acquired by Becton-Dickinson in 1999, Fong started the Venture firm, Kenson Ventures, LLC to invest and assist the development as well as the growth of more than 20 biotech companies, such as System Biosciences. He is a leading entrepreneur-Venture investor in the biotechnology industry, community leader (Member of the Committee of 100 and Trustee of the California State University System) and philanthropist.
Peter S. Fiske is President and CEO of PAX Mixer, Inc., a new company created to commercialize high-efficiency mixing technologies developed by parent company, PAX Scientific. Prior to joining PAX Mixer, Inc., Fiske was co-founder and VP for Business Development and Sales of RAPT Industries, in Fremont, CA. RAPT Industries developed a new process for rapidly shaping and polishing optical and semiconductor materials and is using this process to manufacture a new class of lightweight optical mirrors out of silicon carbide. Fiske identified the technology while at LLNL and, as a second-year evening M.B.A. student at Haas, developed the business plan for RAPT which won first place in the third annual U.C. Berkeley Business Plan Competition in 2001.
Fiske and his partners subsequently closed a series A round of investment and since then have raised over $12M in government funding from the DOD, NIST and NASA.
Parking
Paid Hourly Visitor Parking is available at the nearby Upper Hearst Parking Structure:
http://en.parkopedia.com/parking/garage/upper_hearst_structure/berkeley/
Free street parking is also available.
Workshop 1
Topic: Lean Startups
Speakers: Doug Crawford, QB3; Andre Marquis, Lester Center
Date: Wednesday, Jan. 18 5:45-7:30 pm
Location: Wells Fargo room, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley
The Lean Startup is a management science for entrepreneurs of all kinds.
It enables rapid customer-centric iteration. It helps startups test their vision before it’s too late. It is a tool for people who want to change the world.
The Lean Startup movement is taking hold in companies both new and established to help entrepreneurs and managers do one important thing:
make better, faster business decisions. Vastly better, faster business decisions. Bringing principles from lean manufacturing and agile development to the process of innovation, the Lean Startup helps companies succeed in a business landscape riddled with risk.
Two Speakers, Dr. Douglas Crawford, Director of Industry Alliances and Associate Executive Director of QB3, and Andre Marquis, Executive Director of the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation will be speaking at the event.
Doug will talk about the concept of “Lean Startup”, that worked successfully in the software industry as well as in biotech (Genentech), where a company starts with minimal personnel and capital, and evolves through early product release and an agile response to frequent customer feedback.
Andre Marquis, a huge fan of lean in pharma where appropriate will share his experiences on lean startups. Andre co-founded Chorus at Eli Lilly — www.choruspharma.com — which, with a strong focus on correctly building credibility inside a large company, is just Silicon Valley scalable startup philosophy applied to human clinical proof-of-concept which, luck would have it, represents about 45% of probability of technical success in pharma development.