Interview: Goran Matijasevic, Director, UCI Research Development
INVESTING IN A TEAM, NOT A TECHNOLOGY
Director of Research Development at UC Irvine, Goran Matijasevic:
“Bringing the Right People Together”
Dir. of Research Dev. at UCI, Goran Matijasevic, shares his insight as both a researcher and as a liaison between the University and the private sector. When I think of Goran, the title “Master of Networking” comes to mind. He is one of the connectors in Southern California. He also offers some tips for researchers, who want to see their hard work translate practically in the real world, including:
- Seek local collaboration and follow up
- Investors invest in a team, not a technology
- Personal contact is critical even in the tech realm
Goran has unique experience in academic research and connecting innovators with industry leaders in evaluating practical uses in the marketplace.
As a researcher he has four patents, written three book chapters, and more than 40 conference and journal publications.
His expertise in academic methodology has translated to a successful career in organizing and connecting innovators.
He has served as NanoWorld Conference technical chair, the Electronic Components and Technology Conference (ECTC) interconnect chair and is currently on the OCTANe (Orange County Technology Action Network) Operations Committee and also vice-chair of OC Innovation.
E-mail: goran@uci.edu
Phone: (949) 824-9830
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Transcript
CK: Today we have a very special guest with us today. This is Dr., how do you say your last name?
GM: Goran Matijasevic.
CK: Matijasevic. We have Dr. Goran Matijasevic of University of California, Irvine. He is the Director of Research Development and personally I have huge respect for this guy because you know, he is, well let me actually ask him to introduce himself a little bit so that you know, you have a better idea of why I think that he’s qualified. Goran, tell them a little about yourself.
GM: Thanks CK. So my role at UCI, at the School of Engineering actually at UCI is one of Research Development which is really sort of business development at the school level. So I work at UCI at both academic interdisciplinary collaborations as well as collaborations with industry and that includes existing companies and opportunities and and then also of starting new ventures. Because not everything that’s you know for example the technology we create at the universities necessarily has to lead to a new company. Some of it is very appropriate because it is really a product to go into an existing company that matches the products of that company. So again my role is to assist the professors in those opportunities, identify for them, connect them with the resources and with other people outside, and then its up to them to see how they can take advantage of that contact. If they then need assistance or guidance I can help them but ultimately you know, I’m not going to be the one that intercedes for that contact or something like that, they need to figure out whether that is a good match for their activities and interests.
CK: So one thing in particular I admire Goran and really want Goran to really talk about is ways to identify opportunities and ways that even for researchers that we can manage the contacts we all have. For me Goran has always been this master networker and I’d love for him to you know, dive in a little bit more on what his philosophy is in terms of networking.
GM: So actually let me step back and tell you a little bit about myself and how I came into this position, I originally you know, studied science and studied engineering and was thinking my career was going to be my whole life in that field, I was going to be doing science, I, I knew that I wanted to do science or engineering in industry and I did that, once I graduated I went off and I was involved in a start up company that was developing new electronic materials and it was an interesting experience, actually taught me a lot about how to develop technology with SBIR funding, the Small Business Innovations Research, it taught me how to work in consortia because we were in parts with other companies and so on. And then interestingly enough an opportunity further down the road came to come back to the University and work in this Research Development role, initially I was doing that with nano-systems research facility and now I had a, a perspective where I wasn’t doing the research myself but I was seeing what the researchers were doing from the eyes of a fellow, former fellow researcher but then also from the eyes of a person who was in industry, who understands that there’s a different motivation to developing something when you’re developing it for the science engineering and a published paper and when you’re developing something that you are looking for where there is a customer. Whether that customer be an immediate customer or another company that wants that product and wants to then buy it from you. Which then often actually as one of our professors Mark Madou says, “leads to you, if you’re in that position in a company, it actually leads you to limiting the amount of science and engineering you can do but you have to [???] yourself on answering the customers need.” So curiosity in some cases has to stop and product development has to engage and that’s even in an R and D environment and you have to answer the immediate need of of the product.
[05m06s]
So that’s if you’re in a company but if you’re starting a company, if you’re getting something new going obviously you need a lot of resources so the professors or whoever, the entrepreneur, needs to make sure that they have a good contact network. Whether that’s a network of people who are experts in that industry that you’re trying to start your venture in, whether its sources of capital funding that that they could engage in, or whether it’s you know, workforce for global supply chain, or other resources, because ultimately the investors will invest not in the technology, not in the product, but in the team that’s going to lead that. So you need to make sure that you put all of these kind of together, but especially to make sure that you have the right people assembled that can make this venture work. So, so again, it’s important to have, to open yourself up, to to make the contacts. Because you never know where those contacts might come from. As we were talking a little bit earlier you may be at a forum that, that is a networking forum, you may run across a person even though you are developing a biotech enterprise, you run into a software person, nothing in common necessarily but as you strike up the conversation it turns out that maybe that person has a neighbor who’s the CEO of a biotech firm. So you do want to be able to explain in plain terms what you are trying to do because even though the person on the other end is not the right person they may know of somebody that maybe be appropriate. And of course it works both ways, so you should be ready to reciprocate, not necessarily immediately think, “This person is not useful to me,” but rather, “Is there somebody in my network that I could connect this person to?” Because it is a, it is a two way street.
CK: You know you actually brought up several open, you open up several loops that you know, we could talk about, and one, so first question to really follow up is, so, is this only limiting to people who are interested in founding companies?
GM: So I think the answer to that is that you should, in all your life endeavors you should open yourself up and be open, receptive to seeing that an opportunity may come along and take advantage of that serendipity and I, I say that, there’s for example a very successful collaboration right now that is between a, two UCI researchers who met in our, we have this University Hills where the professors live and it turned out that they both have eight year old daughters and the eight year old daughters were playing and they got, they started talking about what they do, one was an engineering professor developing new micro[???], one was a stemcell researcher looking for new, new interesting uh um uh technologies coming out of stemcell uh um uh development and so the conversation led to one thing and another and it became a scientific collaboration. So if they had not been open, if they had just talked about you know, the family things, and I’m not trying to discourage them to talk about family things but open yourself up to opportunities [???] that the other person that you know in one context may have other things to bring in another context so you know ask them what do you do. See, you know where that can lead because it may lead to something totally unexpected like like in this case. Umm by the way I’ve just learned that some of the technology that they’re developing has has become of interest to a venture capitalist that was invited to a school symposium, saw a poster and even though that there may not be a company to be created there, there is an opportunity for licensing to an existing company.
[9m55s]
And so, so again, if the venture capitalist was just putting on his venture capital hat on, he would have said, “This is not of interest for me to start a company.” But he instead, he thought, “Oh, I have a portfolio company that is doing this and they may be interested in this technology.” And so he connected the two and it turns out the company is, is for now interested. So again, you need to kind of open yourself up, be aware of that, whether its an academic collaboration, whether its, whether its you know, you know, for that matter even when you are asking, when you’re making friends you are exploring what are your common interests, right? And then you find out that, oh, you have, you both have a passion about a certain hobby or something like that so its the same way I would say in business or other scientific ventures.
CK: Do you have any specific examples in terms of how companies are formed? You know from this kind of serendipitous…
GM: So yeah, there’s a, there’s a company at UCI that’s in the nanospace that came about because there was a, an entrepreneur, who through his alumni network from an east coast university connected with a professor at UCI in a different department and had a meeting with him, talked about what are some of the nano-research that are going on at UCI, that professor then introduced him to the professor that he ended up teaming with, and you know through a series of interactions, discussions and so on, this entrepreneur who has a PhD in science but then also had spent a lot of time and a lot of years in finance and has worked in industry said, “You know, this is a really good opportunity and I’m willing to put my own money in this.” And he went off and started the company, hired the graduate students, the graduate students who came from the lab and from another lab and got the company going. And then serendipity came in, we introduced him to the right VC or several VCs, the one for the initial round was the right one, and he got funding, and you know the company has since actually, he has now on his own found other funding and so on. So again, it’s a, it’s a question of multitude of contacts, one of which may rise to the, to the, to become the one that’s of interest here so. So you want to again expose yourself to the networks, by the way this is also what, what, lawyers, law firms and other service providers whether its professional executive hiring firms or whether its accounting firms, they can provide a lot of the contacts and introductions. Because ultimately, their interest is if this firm can get going, then they can be a provider for that firm, they can be the law firm for that firm, they can be the accounting firm for that firm. So if they, in their network, know the right entrepreneurs, know the right resources that they can put together, then ultimately they will benefit because for that matter I will remember that it was that accounting firm that made that introduction so I will, out of sense of loyalty and no obligation or anything, but I will make sure that the right people get connected and maybe it will lead to more. So again, it’s, it is a question of making sure, making yourself aware of all those contacts. I think we as engineers, when I, certainly when I was getting my engineering degree did not appreciate the role that these service providers can play not only in these contacts that I’m explaining because, again, a accounting firm comes in touch with all kinds of of of companies and entrepreneurs and so on. I just learned of an entrepreneur who was in a company who got connected with one of our start up opportunities through a law firm. Through connecting with his former lawyer who started talking about various things and then he connected him this way. So again, its putting your feelers out, that you’re interested in and all that. But the other thing is that they also provide is they provide a validation. Because if if it’s just you speaking about your technology, you only get so much credibility if you will from that. The other side of it is, if I can get someone else to also speak well about what I’m doing, then you know, that’s that means that there is credibility.
[15:00m]
CK: You’re building on their credibility as well.
GM: Exactly, and so, but of course you know they’re only going to speak well of you if you, if you are a truthful person, if you are, if there is something legitimately good about what you are doing and so on. So you do want to take advantage of that.
GM: So you know, again, and the resources are multifold, there is, one aspect is to come to networking events and opportunities, identify the ones that are in your space, if you will, so uh uh, some of them are more agnostic, meaning they’re focused on new venture formation. So in Los Angeles there is Los Angeles Venture Association, in Orange County, Orange County Venture Group, Tech Coast Venture Network. These are organizations that bring entrepreneurs, investors and others together and then talk about how to get a company going, how to get it funded, how to, the valuations of companies and they encounter these topics. Then other organizations will be gathering about a certain topics that’s of interest, so just recently I attended Tech Biz Connection, a group that attracts a lot of software entrepreneurs and activities and it’s focus was on search engine market. And so it was a very, so there were quite a bit of people in the audience who may not have attended other events but who were specifically focused on how do you, how do I improve the chances of my website being noticed by a search engine. They had the person from Google [CK: And you were there.], and they had the people from Google, and they had a the the people from Experian, and other companies discussing and um but beyond just the event, this organization does a very, they have unstructured networking which is always good, but then they also have a structured networking portion where the purposely, kind of, so they divide people in, this time they divided them into five groups of about fifteen to twenty each and they go around the circle and they introduce themselves and identify specifically what are they looking for. What kind of contacts, what kind of opportunities, and this is very helpful because you, you’re putting yourself out there and letting everybody know what is it that you’re, some people were looking for employees, some people were looking for contacts, and so on. And you know, out of that group there were several that I immediately had use of or could connect them with some of them who were looking for employees to connect them with our career center, so all of these kind of opportunities are good.
So the other thing is to to to avail yourself of other resources that may [???] online. Find out, let’s say you’re not able to a conference, to a meeting, go online, find out if there’s any posted information about that conference, whether the presentations are on there, and then if there is a real person there that you really wanted to talk to and you were unable to connect with by physical presence, try to connect with that person afterwards. Say you know, “I saw you were at this conference, I really wanted to go, couldn’t make it, you know, wanted to follow up here and you know, [???] your ideas here, can I you know, connect with you at some point?” Send them an email and then try to see if you can arrange phone conversation or something like that depending on what you’re looking from that contact. Also there are resources increasingly you know, in this age of webcasts and podcasts and so on. Like The Frank Peters Show, So Frank Peters is the Chairman of Tech Coast Angels, which is an angel investor group that spans from Santa Barbara down to San Diego, and they look at opportunities in that early stage of investing. I think their sweet spot is up to a million or thereabouts of investment and they typically invest about ten new ventures per year, in some years more than that and but the other thing is that Frank has pioneered podcasting of investors as well as entrepreneurs, and so he has, I think he’s close to a hundred and fifty now, interviews that he has done-
CK: Oh, I thought you meant his age, a hundred and fifty years, that’s quite a guy.
GM: No no, Frank is a former um um uh, entrepreneur and now an angel investor, can see this both of these perspectives. So he has been interviewing investors for what are they interested in funding, what are their life paths, how did it get to be an investor, but then also you know, what are their other interests, which is by the way useful if you are trying to meet a VC and then you say, “Oh you know I heard your interview, I see you like golf or you like tennis, or you know some other passion [???] like photography.” So some passion that they might have that you may in common with them. So that might be a useful thing as an icebreaker, if you meet them at a function and then you want to follow up with them. Or you can listen to the entrepreneur interviews that he has done, and that’s useful from the perspective to see you know, how did that entrepreneur come to be an entrepreneur. How did they identify the opportunity, if they have raised funding how did they succeed in doing that. And then he also has a few interviews with some of the bigger CEOs and so on, and its also always interesting to see their life path as well as the interests of that larger company in terms of funding, collaborating with smaller companies.
GM: So just the, there are a number of these resources that are available online, its amazing, there’s a, by the way an entity, a couple of entities that I recently became aware of last year I went first time to the National Center for Entrepreneurial Tech Transfer, its a, its an organization and a conference that centers around new venture formation from the universities, so it has participation from a lot of the universities. This last one they had presentations from MIT, from Harvard, from Columbia and then at the same time it also brings in venture capital folks in there, so its amazing to see how many of these universities are going beyond tech transfer, how they are developing and putting in place people who are specifically working on enterprise creation and industry relations not in the classic sense with existing companies, but industry creation opportunities. So that’s one, I would say the reason I point this out is that they also have these webinars and investors can go online and during the webinars hear some early stage opportunities that the universities have and you know the companies get up there and give you know a ten minute overview with a few minutes for-
CK: Ten minutes?
GM: Ten minutes.
CK: That’s pretty long, for an overview.
GM: Well they give an overview of the company and then have a Q and A session. So and then its, you can also see what other universities are doing in terms of entrepreneurial tech transfer. On the other side I also became aware of a professional organization that’s nine years old now is the Association of Strategic Alliance Partners, Professionals, and this organization is looking to see how this kind of alliance building can benefit, and this for both people in companies but I think is also useful for anyone. Whether you’re starting out and you’re creating, in a way when you are forming, when you’re getting your first investment from a venture fund, whether its a venture funder or an angel investor, you’re forming an alliance. You shouldn’t be just trying to get the funding for the funding’s sake, you should be looking to see how the person that’s providing funding for your venture can bring in connections, can help you in your work. Not they want to and shouldn’t interfere in your daily activities but they should be helping you make this business a success.
CK: Any more resources that you want to talk about? Because I actually wanted to talk to you about a couple things, because it sounded like I really need to be an extrovert, going out there, to get access to these people and professional organizations but I don’t know about, I wasn’t always the extrovert so was there any event that happened your life that actually shifted your perspective from being introverted to being more extroverted?
GM: So you’re hitting right on it. I was very much an introvert and when I was a kid I was probably one of the quietest kids in my class and uh-
CK: You, quiet? [laughs]
GM: I was, I was the example quiet kid sitting in the corner while all the other kids were rowdy and so on, uh uh, and I definitely was not, I was very much an introvert, had, you know once I met somebody I could you know, strike up a conversation and so on, but otherwise had a, was not one that would readily make contact with people. And and I’m still to some degree fighting that in an everyday situation but I think one thing to realize is that, that in these networking opportunities and so on, everybody is in that situation. In fact when you go to some of these meetings you’ll see some people mingling and then you’ll see some people that know each other that kind of congregate together and then somebody who’s new and doesn’t know anybody is standing by themselves and then you see somebody else that’s new and they’re standing off by themselves, so you just have to kind of bring yourself to come up to that person and say, “Hi I’m so-and-so and I am you know with, I am with this entity and I am here to do this.” And they will reciprocate and pretty soon you will, and then you’ll ask well what is all that about that you’re working on, and they’ll ask what you’re working on and you’ll have a conversation going. So I think in fact, you can take that to almost any situation but especially at these networking sessions. There, everybody there is for networking, so go to these networking design sessions and you’ll pretty soon open yourself up to be more open about networking outside of those situations because once you realize its not scary, its OK. The worst thing that people can do is turn around and not be interested in talking to you, then you’ll just go on and talk to the next person. So I, you know, I think its just a question of bringing yourself to that, and I think my realization came in fact, when I was working at this company and then basically went to one of these, it was a San Diego venture group, and realized you know, I didn’t know anybody there, totally new to me but let me just start up conversations.
CK: You know that’s actually a really good point because um I don’t know was there any particular event that actually happened to me but you know, I was also that kid in the corner, it may be hard for my interns to believe but I was also the kid in the corner who didn’t want to speak to anyone but still at some, a lot of the scenarios actually I’m still fighting that urge to [???], but one particular thing that I thought was really helpful is you know, there is a lot of conferences that you can go to and there is the designated networking time but what I’ve found was really helpful personally is actually go early to the power breakfast so that you can really talk to the people because they are not expecting you to “network”.
GM: There is definitely that aspect when you are going to these networking forums, that you know, that fear of rejection, a fear of what is this person going to think about me and I think that in fact the only really way to overcome that is to keep doing it basically, so its just like practice makes perfect in everything. Right so, its also the same thing in contacts, you learn to take cues for people, you also learn when somebody is interested in the conversation and you continue it and if they’re not interested you move on to the next person. And frankly at these networking sessions sometimes you’re not even able to complete a full contact with somebody at the moment that you’re talking to them because somebody will interject and want to talk to either you or the other person and will kind of move the conversation in another direction and you won’t be able to finish it. So the other thing that’s key is when you go to these, come prepared, and that means come with business cards. You know for our academic community often that’s not something that comes natural so you know, the industry person is there on campus, they want to connect with the professor, the professor doesn’t have the industry, I mean the business card with them and that’s key because that is a way to know how you, how am I going to follow up with you, if I start a conversation, we get distracted by something, I want to continue that conversation afterwards so let’s exchange business cards right there at the front. So I urge everybody, and then for those of you who are students and entrepreneurs and so on, or don’t have a current business or something, make your business cards. These days you can you know feed it into a printer, you can go to Kinkos, all these things for less than twenty bucks you can have some really nice business cards.
CK: Really quick thing for those who actually don’t know the service, VistaPrint actually can print your business cards for free and all you need to pay is shipping.
GM: Even better! I wasn’t aware of that one, that’s a good one. Um the other one as we were just talking about is the, is, you go to these networking events, the other part of prepared, go and know who the, who are the keynotes, who’s going to be speaking at this event, who are the panelists, what are their backgrounds, maybe do a little background on them and know something that has happened recently. So if you have a chance to strike up a conversation with them you’ll have an edge on that. Now after they present there’s usually a long line of people that’s trying to talk to them. Two things, one is be patient, wait for the line, listen in, its a public so listen to what their advice they’re giving other people because you may learn something else that you weren’t going to bring up with that person but you may learn, for that matter you may learn that somebody else in line is of interest to you. You are trying to get to the speaker, but somebody else in line is talking about they have venture in some field and you say, “I want to talk to you.” So you know, before you get to the speaker you may end up exchanging cards with somebody else that’s in that line. The other side of it is, come early. The speakers generally will be there early, especially if they have a presentation they have to bring and prepare, and so come early, and some of the speakers actually choose to come super early. They want to be prepared, they want to be ready, so come super early for two reasons. Because now you are at an advantage, I mean before the designated time when registration begins. You now are going to be seeing people as they come in, you can go after and meet those people, you can choose to strike up a conversation with a speaker at that very early stage before they’ve actually gotten you know. Sometimes they are busy and getting ready for their presentation so you don’t want to over do it either. The other one is that when you come early, generally the badges for the attendees are splayed out on the table there, so now you can look through the badges and identify, who do I know already, or who do I want to know, “Oh look there’s somebody that’s affiliated with that company, I really would like to meet them.” And so you kind of, maybe keep an eye out, you maybe ask the registration person, do they know this person, can they alert them to you, can they point them out to you because you’d really like to meet them so, or somebody who was from the organizing group. So you know those are good tips and obviously sometimes its, you know, you’re stuck in traffic and you can’t make it and so on, but as much as possible if you want to maximize the opportunities at a particular event, come early, stay late.
CK: This is fantastic, I’m actually getting a lot of pointers myself. You know on that note too, one particular advantage to come early is you get to pick where you want to sit. For me personally, I always go early so I can sit in the first row, because the type of people usually sit in the first row are like the sponsors, somebody related to the speaker and then you can actually follow [???]. And for me personally, I don’t actually try to get into line for the speakers unless I really really want to meet them but I usually go during lunch time because after the, everyone has talked to them the speakers are just like everyone else. They need to get their lunch, they need to go places whatever, and then you can have actually a normal conversation not one of those thirty second version, who I am, you know [???]
GM: And sometimes that also works when you’re in that line and lets say the speaker is, that’s just before the lunch time, so now the speaker is exhausted, you’re the last person they are talking to, it’s time to go to lunch so you’re going with them. I have on occasion been invited to sit at the reserved speakers table because I’m walking with the speaker and then the organizer recognizes me and there is a spot available, you know sometimes its a reserve table with designated who’s going to be there but other times you actually end up kind of getting into a place where [???]. But speaking of lunch, you’re actually bringing up another point that’s very important. At all of these conferences its amazing how many times that people in that comfort level of here I am, if you’re coming with somebody else that you know together to that conference, or you see somebody you know and you see them at the conference, they end up sitting together in in, you know when they’re listening to the speaker, they end up sitting together when they look for a table to sit down which is you know if you’re and people, I’m amazed, even people who are supposed to be making contacts, you know people who are in publicity business or something like that. They should be separated, they should be like, “One should go to this table, one should go to that table.” Because you want to maximize the number of contacts that you make. So a long time ago actually when I was even at a company I would always, when I was with other people from my company I would say, “We’re not going to sit together you know, lets make sure we spread out so we can you know, maximize the number of connections we can make.” Otherwise if you end up, especially if there’s more than two, if there’s like three or four people from the same company, I don’t even understand the concept of reserved tables for that particular company because that means that that company is going to learn nothing about what anybody else is doing because they’re just going to network. They can do that at their own office anytime that they want.
GM: So then after you’ve made a contact the question is one of follow up and frankly that is something I also struggle with is how do you find the time to follow up when in this busy world you go back to your regular work. So the best thing is actually if you can do it immediately, you know, and I am guilty of sometimes not being able to do that. But if you are able to do that immediately, then that means that that person will remember you, will, maybe you can even in fact follow up at the moment. Maybe you can pull up your your identifying potential contact for this person, maybe you can immediately tell them who that person is, provide the contact information and basically hand that off right away so that you’re not having to then worry about when am I going to get the chance to follow up. So you do want to do it as much as possible, right on site or right afterwards. It is a struggle in this interconnected world, now there are tools out there and frankly I am just starting to avail myself of some of them, you know like your LinkedIn, Plaxo and you know where-
CK: There’s Facebook as well.
GM: Facebook yes, for in terms of the college environment, I think it started off as a mostly students connecting but in fact a lot of professors also realizing that a lot of students are there are also organizing their research groups and other things around the Facebook. But for professional people I would say LinkedIn is a very good one because you can see somebody’s background, you can see you know some of their connections and things like that, so and its interesting because it seems to also identify that you may be connected with somebody that you’re, through a third party that you’re not even realizing. So those are useful things, but again that’s useful and the question how do you determine when is the right time to engage that contact as opposed to just bothering them for anything. The other thing I would say is, is then to try to follow up if there’s somebody you believe will be useful long term kind of long term with you, try to set up a meeting for either, I mean if its by phone or whether you want to meet in person for coffee, whether its a longer conversation and you meet for lunch, you want to get together and try to find out what are some common grounds and in that discussion again, good things may come out and other opportunities may come and if you are making sure that you’re keeping your mind open as to what the opportunities are and what your contacts can bring to that person they will really appreciate it.
CK: I think one of the key things really to, one of the key things to remember about networking is it’s reciprocal, it’s not about what I can get out of this person really, for me personally its always about you know what can I actually help other people using my relationships.
GM: Correct, correct, and I think for the industry people that differentiates the person that gets it and the person who doesn’t. In other words, don’t just tell me what you’re doing, that’s fine you want to do that, but then if you realize that the other person is not into that what you’re doing then listen to what they’re doing and try to identify, do you have a contact, do you have something that is preferable, maybe you know somebody who can really be beneficial to what they’re doing, then you know bring it up like that.
CK: Thanks Goran
