Osage University Partners- Funding university spinouts

Lab to Startup

Manny Stockman is a Partner at Osage University Partners. OUP exclusively invests in startups spun out of university research. We talk about the investment thesis of Osage University Partners; technology readiness challenges; lessons learned from investing in early stage technologies at universities; challenges with the current market research used to evaluate product market fit; and spend some time talking about equity splits involving non-operating faculty members that co-founded startups. Shownotes: - https://oup.vc - No better time to launch a startup in the deeptech space - Startup hubs - Fund background - Investment thesis - Thoughts about market readiness - Being better prepared while approaching Osage: help them get to yes - Preparing to building startups at universities - Advice on amount for money that needs to be raised - Knocking out risks at early stages - How to differentiate signal from noise while talking to experts about new technology - Art of questioning to get to why a technology might not work - Challenges identifying product market fit and a need for new models - Investment amounts and stages: $250k-$8M - Patience while investing - Challenges with equity splits: Evaluating past vs future contributions - Past talk about equity splits at university startups: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtCe2x12OFI - Incubator models and thoughts about diluting equity