Academic Day... part II.

As I already wrote, after Harvard I was to go to MIT - yes, the legendary school for tech entrepreneurs and appearantly the best university in the world when it comed to science and technology... So I started off in MIT's COOP store and bought a cap for Max, just in case he wanted to do an Internet startup... :-)

My meeting was with professor Ed Roberts, Chair of MIT's Entrepreneurship Center, very dynamic and energetic person... He started off with a clear statement that any technology transfer to practise costs many millions of dollars and several years, in despite of what the professors think - because there is such huge gap between having something in an academic lab and being actually able to deliver a product to costumers... Immediately I was professor's fan - and it was just the beginning...

Because I come from Europe, professor Roberts started a discussion on cleantech and how huge interest it is now getting from VCs... Although nobody yet discovered anything that would be cheaper and more efficient than the traditional "dirty energy"... Currently more than 170 out of 1000 academic staff at MIT is somehow involved in "something cleantech", but it is just hyped out - similarly to the 70s when there were first solar and other alternative technologies were pushed... Professor Roberts was involved in the very first solar panel startup in MA, which was sold after the hype burst (and after 1 year of operations) and "he made litterally $30 on it"...

Last part of our conversation was about my fundraising activities towards a startup fund for Central Europe, because as it turned out professor Roberts founded and managed as the General Partner his own VC firm called Zero Stage Capital - where he raised 4 funds for seed and startup stages (first one with $ 4.8m), to leave just after the firm raised its 5th, 100-million fund which was extremely successful during the dot-com bubble, to fall down and disappear after the bubble burst...

Professor Roberts was also the first person who was unhappy about president Obama - well, he's a republican... He fears that the change Obama is bringing will pull America towards a socialistic mindset ("that Europe has had for years already"), and it will cause a significant weakening of the U.S. market, its companies and generally will have a huge impact on American entrepreneurship and also competitiveness... I hope he's wrong... But I worry he could be right... It won't take too long to judge - maybe a year, maybe two...