Blogs

FirstIgnite is proud to announce our newest partnership with the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, to help support and disseminate research being developed within their Global Research Institute (GRI).“Students and faculty at the GRI are working on applied research for projects that have worldwide implications for a positive impact,” says Chase Bonhag, FirstIgnite CEO. “We’re looking forward to being a major partner in making sure that research gets in the hands of organizations interested and ready to offer support.”William & Mary joins a long list of universities partnered with FirstIgnite who are seeking increased industry engagement for their research.Connecting Industry and Academia

It’s finally here! FirstIgnite is heading south to attend the AUTM 2022 Annual Meeting in New Orleans. Along with hundreds of tech transfer professionals from around the world, our team is excited to introduce ourselves in person for the first time. We’ll be at Booth #700 and look forward to meeting you.

FirstIgnite Background

FirstIgnite is a venture-backed startup, with investors including Y-Combinator, Red Cedar Ventures, Advisors Fund, and was founded in January 2019. Our team supports universities in marketing their intellectual property, professors, and core facilities to industry. Our business model is simple; we run high-touch, active marketing campaigns on behalf of university research. Our marketing campaigns work; we average 5+ meetings with industry in the first 30 days of marketing a patent or professor.

Free Marketing Campaigns

Growth and impact for your universities research starts first and foremost with a consistent and valuable marketing approach. The key is consistent, active marketing across your portfolio to drive new industry relationships to licensing managers throughout the year. FirstIgnite will be offering a single free marketing campaign (a $5,000 value!) to all AUTM attendees (new customers) who stop by to speak with our CEO, Chase Bonhag, at Booth #700. You’re going to want to try one of these; for our 40 plus university partners last year, our marketing campaigns brought them over 600 conversations with different companies interested in collaborating on their research. Don’t miss out! Make sure to find time to speak with Chase and learn about this powerful service.

Learn About a New Way to Increase Corporate Engagement

Like Chase wrote in his blog on research revenue growth, active and consistent marketing efforts are key to being the leader in the tech transfer community. FirstIgnite uses its own proprietary software to make sure we connect your research with companies that are already highly vested in it, through patents, job listings, news articles, and more. Our marketing campaigns put you directly into the room with companies that can enact change with your research, all while ensuring you and your team have more time to close important steps in the licensing process.

It's been a long time coming, but we’re excited to finally introduce ourselves to you all this week. We’re looking forward to the beginning of many new partnerships at AUTM 2022, and they all begin with a quick stop to see us at Booth #700. See you there!

FirstIgnite is excited to announce its newest partnership with the Salk Institute for Biological Studies to support corporate engagement for their advanced biomedical technologies and research.“The Salk Institute is a world-renowned research organization whose advancements in biomedical research have had and will continue to have real-world effects on curing terrible diseases,” says Chase Bonhag, FirstIgnite CEO. “It’s an honor to continue to grow corporate engagement and support for Salk and for their research which will bring a better future for us all.”FirstIgnite supports an ever-growing number of research institutions throughout the United States and looks forward to what the future holds with the Salk Institute.Connecting Industry and Academia

Selling research is hard.This has been our number one lesson since we started FirstIgnite. However, with the right strategy, systems, and execution, your university can grow research revenue like a startup.Most universities have such a diverse research portfolio that they have expertise in almost every topic imaginable. The challenge is connecting with industry.In 2021, FirstIgnite executed 100 marketing campaigns on behalf of 37 universities and delivered 600 new industry/academia relationships across research disciplines and university brands. This was achievable by investing in sales development, which produces compounding results.If your university wants to significantly increase revenue from licensing, sponsored research, and the leasing of core facilities, this paper will provide a way of thinking that will help your university perform more like a growing company rather than a massive research organization.

Design a strategy that supports a diverse research portfolio

Universities are large and their research portfolios are even larger. Most campuses have expertise in life sciences, materials, computer engineering, agriculture, and everything in between.Without the right strategy, a diverse portfolio can lead to “choice overload.” Choice overload is a cognitive impairment in which people have a difficult time deciding when faced with many options.Choice overload can negatively affect both university employees and corporate partners.

• University employees represent a massive portfolio and don’t know where to begin.
• Corporations see that you do everything, but that doesn’t help them decide where to focus.

This is where your strategy comes into play.You must design a strategy that allows the university to market its entire portfolio throughout a 12-month period. You must engage a corporation based on specific needs and interests.Start by outlining a monthly plan on where to focus your sales and marketing efforts. This plan will provide clarity to team members, prepare key stakeholders (e.g. agricultural faculty in March), and will systematically cover your entire research portfolio.Next, let’s break down how to connect with corporations based on their specific needs. It’s not enough to say, “During March we will market ourselves to agriculture companies,” as this does not solve for their choice overload. You must get specific to get a companies attention.For example, inventory the researchers, core facilities, and technologies you have available. Then, develop a list of prospective companies for each area of focus (e.g. fermentation). With the targeted companies interested in fermentation, you can run marketing campaigns introducing your research capabilities that specifically fit the interest of those prospects.Nobody likes to be approached in a broad sense with no clear understanding as to why you should meet. If you come prepared, understanding a company’s interest, the company will be more receptive to meeting with your team and partnering with your campus.In short, rather than marketing your entire agricultural portfolio to any company in the agriculture sector, get specific on why you are reaching out and introduce things that the company is truly interested in. Additionally, you must systematically work through your entire research portfolio, assembling all stakeholders, to drive growth throughout the year.If you do these two things, you will form a strategy that sets the stage for revenue growth.

Implement systems to track and manage all sales and marketing activities

Organizations are only as effective as the systems and procedures they have in place. If you’re attempting to bring in new customers but don’t have any sales and marketing tools, you are limiting your effectiveness. You must implement systems that support your sales strategy.Do you have someone who is well connected on your team? The type of person who has relationships with industry? If you don’t invest in systems to manage those relationships, the relationship dies if your employee leaves. This can be prevented with the right systems in place.When I worked for Illinois Ventures at the University of Illinois, we managed relationships with hundreds of startups. We realized that if we didn’t put in systems to track these relationships, they would be lost if anyone on our team moved on.Our team made a rule: relationships are owned by the organization not the individuals on the team. This is a very important rule and often the most difficult task to implement.To carry out this rule we had to implement customer relationship management (CRM) software. Some examples include Salesforce, Nutshell, HubSpot, etc. These are databases that allow you to track your communication with a relationship over time, schedule automated follow-ups, and ensure continuity in the event a team member leaves.With a customer relationship management tool in place, you can track and manage all of the new relationships you will be developing with your new sales strategy. You can then provide current and future team members an inside look into your network.Implementing software can improve the results of all sales and marketing activities.

Execute sales and marketing strategy to drive research revenue growth

Success and growth come from your execution, not your strategy. Outperforming your competition is how you grow while others stand still. With strong strategy and systems in place, you can now focus on your execution. Your execution will allow you to grow no matter the market conditions.The salespeople at your university are tasked with an overwhelming responsibility: Run the entire sales function for an enormous research portfolio including identifying companies, prospecting leads, running marketing campaigns, building relationships, and closing business.To accomplish the mission of growing research revenue, it’s important that you understand how to properly delegate tasks based on your team’s capabilities to improve execution.Corporate relations officers and licensing managers have many responsibilities. The one that is easiest to augment is the sales development of new business opportunities. Sales development sits between sales and marketing and is in charge of the front-end of the sales cycle: identifying, connecting with, and qualifying leads.To simplify, sales development is tasked with setting up qualified meetings between a salesperson and a potential buyer that has a higher probability of purchasing.Before you start thinking that sales development only applies to startups or for-profit organizations, consider your corporate relations officers, licensing managers, and the directors of your core facilities; all of these people are your university’s salespeople. For them to execute on their job, they need consistent new business leads and appointments.Automating the appointment setting, or sales development function means your team will spend more time building relationships and closing business rather than figuring out who to target.If you want to execute better than your peers, you will need to leverage services that can help you outperform your competition. Find partners that can help bring consistent new business opportunities to your campus, from anywhere in your portfolio, throughout the year.

The future is bright for industry/academia partnerships

Industry is taking up the lion’s share of research and development funding. It’s time for your campus to capitalize on this trend and ensure your strategy, systems, and execution are ready.FirstIgnite is a leader in university research marketing. We support universities in prospecting and sales development so that university administration can focus on closing new business.

FirstIgnite is proud to announce its continued collaboration with the University of Chicago and their Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering in order to foster the growth of corporate engagement for their work in immunoengineering. FirstIgnite had previously successfully supported the university’s efforts to create corporate partnerships for their research in artificial intelligence and machine learning in materials design.“To be able to continue to support the University of Chicago’s efforts in engaging with companies is a great honor and a testament to our ability to create partnerships no matter the scientific discipline,” says Chase Bonhag, FirstIgnite CEO. “From AI learning to immunoengineering, we have the ability to develop new corporate relationships for our university partners wherever their specialties lie.”FirstIgnite looks forward to supporting more research at the University of Chicago throughout 2022. Connecting Industry and Academia

Traverse City, MI, January 19, 2022 – FirstIgnite is excited to announce a new partnership with Stanford University’s AI Laboratory (SAIL) to advance the science of artificial intelligence in a variety of fields.“We’re proud to be able to partner with a world-renowned university like Stanford,” says FirstIgnite CEO, Chase Bonhag. “Their team understands the importance of corporate engagement and by providing FirstIgnite the opportunity to recruit company partnerships for multiple research teams within SAIL, they have allowed themselves to connect with many new industry insights and objectives.”FirstIgnite continues to support universities around the world in their corporate engagement efforts and is proud to sustain that tradition with Stanford.Connecting Industry and Academia

FirstIgnite is supporting the commercialization of Mississippi State University’s mobile markerless motion capture technology. This technology utilizes drones and synchronized cameras to gather biomechanical data, capturing the movement of humans or animals. By enabling markerless motion capture through mobile capabilities, it expands data collection to a larger scale and removes the limitations of fixed locations or laboratory settings.

This technology is applicable to performance measurement in various industries and ergonomic risk assessment. The global test and measurement equipment market size is worth $34.3 billion as of 2023 and is expected to increase to $42.9 billion by 2028.

Mississippi State University’s mobile markerless motion capture technology is ready for collaboration (licensing, partnerships, industry feedback, etc.). Is your company the right fit? If you’d be available for a conversation with the Mississippi State University team, you can schedule a time directly on their team’s calendar here.