PharmaJet, Inc. (http://www.pharmajet.com) offers jet injection technology to deliver vaccines and drugs through skin. The company offers PharmaJet, a needle-free system that delivers liquid medications at high speed creating a ‘liquid jet’ that penetrates the skin and delivers the medicine through the skin in less than 1/3 of a second. It serves individual patients, as well as public health needs internationally. The company is based in Golden, Colorado with operations in

With approximately 23 employees currently,  PharmaJet was founded in 2007 and is currently headquartered in Golden, Colorado with other offices in San Francisco and  Baltimore.

As a privately held medical device design company, PharmaJet has developed an FDA 510 (k) cleared needle free jet injection technology.  It can be used to inject any liquid medicine into the body (human and animal), for fixed dosages ranging from 0.1cc to 0.5cc, into intra-dermal, subcutaneous, and intra-muscular tissue depths.  It is most appropriate for vaccine delivery, which is a standard 0.5 cc dose for nearly all human vaccines.  Since starting its first scientific collaboration 22 months ago, active pre-clinical and clinical testing of PharmaJet’s device is underway in 9 countries, with 18 partners for more than 25 vaccines and therapeutic medicines.

Market Opportunity

History & Genesis

PharmaJet’s technology was developed to address a need for safe and clean delivery of liquid vaccines, without a needle, in view of the massive infection rates caused from within the healthcare system of hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and HIV (and an additional 17 other blood borne diseases) due to syringe needle reuse and needle stick injury during vaccination (estimated at 22 million injuries per year world-wide).   With the World Health Organization’s (WHO) guidelines in mind, the Founders created a needle-free injection technology that is simple, robust, and inexpensive.  Besides getting rid of needles, however, there are a host of other sustainable competitive advantages and attractive features making it a value added device that can improve the lives of people, reduce the cost of healthcare, all the while generating profitability for PharmaJet and its partners.

Product  Potential

PharmaJet’s features help address the developing world problem of re-use (as much as 40-70% in some countries) which contributes to growth in disease and epidemic.  Further, the intra-dermal application (0.1 – 0.2cc volume) may contribute to stretching vaccine supply (reduced dosage, but similar immune response to standard 0.5cc dosage) where there is shortage so that the health net can be spread among a larger population, ultimately benefiting their group welfare and economy.  At the same time, it is perfectly appropriate for the sophisticated healthcare market, and eliminates needle-stick injury which is prevalent everywhere.  As a technology platform, there are a variety of additional product extensions that allow it to be useful in other injection segments, user groups, and processes.

Initial Markets

• Human vaccine market: >1.75 billion needle-syringes being used annually for injection of vaccines, for children and adult populations.
• Animal vaccine market: Even larger by volume than the human vaccine market, PharmaJet’s device has been used successfully in a range of species (mice, rabbits, guinea pigs, dogs, cats, goats, sheep, horses, cattle), making it suitable for:
  • For pre-clinical research and antibody production
  • To keep companion animals from spreading disease to their owners (i.e. rabies), and;
  • To keep animals productive, so that populations do not starve (developing world), industries are not financially devastated (i.e. culling for foot & mouth disease), and producers maintain efficiency (i.e. dairy).

The Position

As PharmaJet, Inc. seeks to substantially expand it’s product user base, exposure and revenues in 2010, the PharmaJet Regional Business Development position plays a vital role in product introduction, demonstration and sales within several key market segments.  Leveraging their industry experience, this sales and business development leader will systematically identify and develop key new market opportunities and represent product sales to all public and private healthcare providers currently utilizing needle injection delivery of vaccines and select drugs to patients and the general public. Based upon a pre-defined region, such product introduction will use a team approach for product adoption and use support, in conjunction with PharmaJet Certified Trainers and Technical Support. This position will thus serve as the overall regional business manager of these services.  The role will be focused on integrating PharmaJet’s product capabilities into all relevant regional public health networks, private clinics, and hospitals, thereby participating in all key mass vaccination events at the city, county and regional levels.  Such efforts shall include attendance and representation at all relevant user’s groups and regional conferences of professional healthcare providers

Financial Backing

PharmaJet has raised a Series A and B equity financing from angels and strategic investors, and is well capitalized to enter their next phase of commercialization.

Compensation

Compensation is competitive with the position’s requirements.  In a performance-based environment, this will include base salary, incentive bonus structure based on both quantitative revenue goals and qualitative MBOs, and a potential stakeholder position in the company.

Second Wind’s (http://www.secondwind.com/) mission is to advance the use of wind data to make wind energy profitable for the businesses and investors who create wind energy plants, painless for the operators who work with wind energy equipment and practical for the businesses, consumers and utilities that benefit from wind energy as a low-cost and environmentally desirable source of power.

Second Wind prides itself on technology innovation with its in-house hardware development and software engineering talent. The company continues to develop ground breaking products related to wind data.

Thirty four employees staff Second Wind’s headquarters and manufacturing facility.  The company has an industry-wide reputation for innovative, reliable technology and excellent customer support. Inc. magazine recently ranked Second Wind on its first-ever Inc. 5,000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in the country. The company’s ranking was based on its 27% revenue growth from 2003-2006 and was the only business-to-business wind organization in the energy industry category. In December 2007, Second Wind secured $4 million in second round financing from Good Energies, a leading global investor in the renewable energy and energy efficiency industry.

Second Wind has been growing steadily, with annual sales of about $7M in 2008. Their clients include the largest developers and operators in an industry with a 30% annual growth rate.

History

Second Wind was founded in 1980 by Walter Sass and Kenneth Cohn.  Engineers who have been friends since grade school, they decided the emerging field of wind energy provided an opportunity to leverage their engineering skills to benefit the environment. They recognized that, to succeed, the industry needed more than wind turbines. Wind developers also needed software and hardware to measure wind accurately at prospective sites and to monitor turbine performance at established wind farms. The company’s first headquarters was the spare bedroom in Sass’s home.

Second Wind established a presence in wind resource assessment in 1981 by introducing the first data logger designed specifically for wind energy prospecting.  In 1985, the company introduced their first wind farm monitoring system. In 2007, Second Wind launched the Triton^TM sonic wind profiler, designed to re-invent sodar for wind profiling.

Market Opportunity

Wind energy is growing at 20-30% annually.  The market is global, with 17 countries having attained over 1,000 MW via wind.  Of the $37B invested in wind energy in 2007, 2% was for wind resource assessment instrumentation and services, or $735MM. 8,000 met towers were installed for prospecting, power performance and operations.  Target markets for wind assessment include large, medium and small developers as well as services firms.

The pressing need for viable alternative energy sources that do more than just supplement coal fired power-stations is driving advances in the development of wind energy. A major hurdle in establishing successful wind farms is the difficulty of attaining accurate site evaluation data.  The Triton Sonic Wind Profiler addresses this challenge. Designed to measure wind-speed at heights of up to 200m without the need for erecting costly and less effective masts, the wind profiler utilizes a technique known as Sodar (sound detection and ranging) that measures sound wave echoes in the atmosphere. The technique is not dissimilar to Sonar detection used by submarines underwater.

In evaluating a suitable site to establish a wind farm, measurements need to be taken over a period of at least a year. This has been achieved, until now,  by using a meteorological mast or met mast – a tower equipped with anemometers and other weather instruments. These masts are limited to a height restriction of 60m; any taller tower requires aircraft warning lights, which complicates assessment of a site for a turbine 75-80m high.  Another complicating issue is the masts’ high visibility, which can raise public concerns before the site has been properly evaluated.

Relying on precise measurements of frequency and time delay from sound pulses that are bounced back to the transmission unit by wind turbulence, Sodar technology provides a virtually invisible tool which measures wind speed and direction at heights up to 200 meters. The Triton system also overcomes some of the problems associated with existing Sodar technology by remaining effective even in poor weather and delivering easy to interpret wind data without an on-site presence.

Triton also boasts innovations such as a hexagonal transducer array and a tri-lobed acoustic enclosure that increase accuracy by improving signal-to-noise ratios and beam focus, rugged construction making the unit effective in all weather conditions and able to correct measurements when used on uneven ground.

The Products and Customers

Triton^TM Sonic Wind Profiler re-invents sodar technology for wind assessment. It captures accurate wind data from any height, in any weather, at any location, without being attended. Readings look like anemometry results, with no expert analysis required.

SODAR (SOnic Detection And Ranging  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodar ), or sodar, is a meteorological instrument which measures the scattering of sound waves by atmospheric turbulence. SODAR systems are used to measure wind speed at various heights above the ground, and the thermodynamic structure of the lower layer of the atmosphere.

Sodar systems are like radar (radio detection and ranging) systems except that sound waves rather than radio waves are used for detection.

Sodar sends an audible “chirp” up through the air, and wind turbulence sends a portion of the sound back toward the ground. By precisely measuring the frequency and time delay of the chirp’s echo, the sodar device measures the wind speed and direction at various heights.

Sodar technology is commonly used for “site profiling” at the end of the prospecting process for potential wind farm locations. It measures above the 60-meter height of most meteorological masts, assessing wind at actual turbine heights. In addition, sodar is more portable than masts and can be moved to determine ideal turbine placement.

Current sodar products have multiple limitations for wind profiling. They require on-site support to

operate, and deliver wind data in formats that require expert interpretation. Readings must be carefully analyzed to filter out “side lobes,” or sound artifacts from nearby trees and buildings that can produce inaccurate results. Most current sodar products also must be covered in rain or snow to avoid damage to the sensitive microphones and speakers.

Benefits of the Triton Sonic Wind Profiler

Numerous Triton innovations address the shortcomings of existing sodar products for wind profi

• • More accurate data. A hexagonal speaker array (patent applied for) focuses sound beams more

effectively than previous designs, which improves signal-to-noise ratio accuracy and decreases

disruption. The array is housed in a tri-lobed acoustic enclosure, which reduces the chance of

sound artifacts disrupting data.

• • Unattended use in any location. A solar array and battery can provide adequate power for the

Triton unit to operate for prolonged periods of time, depending on available sunlight and amount

of use.  Bundled with new Skyserve satellite wind data service, the Triton profiler delivers

accurate wind data to any computer from any location in North America.

• • Ready-to-read data. Unlike other sodar products, the Second Wind sodar delivers easy-to-read

data that is similar to data read outs from conventional meteorological towers.

• • Works in any weather. The unit is made of rugged plastic with stainless steel components and

sound absorbing material that functions when wet, unlike foam. Internal temperature sensors and

a propane heater also allow Triton to operate in icy conditions.

• • More portable and less obtrusive. At six feet tall, Triton can easily be towed by a pick-up truck.

The unit has internal controls to compensate for uneven ground, and a built-in GPS and compass

identify the time and location of data as it’s captured. Because of better acoustics, it is also less noisy than other sodar products.

The Position

Reporting to the VP Global Sales Peter Gibson, the Director Eastern European Sales will be responsible for the planning and execution of sales activities for Second Wind in Eastern and Central Europe. The Sales Director be focused on direct sales of the company’s Triton SODAR device and services.

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CEOs and executive leaders of innovation-stage companies often ask themselves what is the best approach to employee appreciation, productivity and retention.

We’ve all heard the stories around the lengths some venture capital-backed companies go in their efforts to service the needs of their employees.  What started as the water cooler and drip coffee pot, fast-growth companies have super-sized, continuing to up the employee pampering ante–  installing company-paid cappuccino machines and Kurig coffee makers with what appears to be an endless supply and variety of coffees and teas.  Keeping well-stocked office kitchen pantries with either favored junk food, healthy snack choices, or both.  Catering lunch, breakfast, dinner, sometimes all three meals plus a midnight snack that rivals food options found on luxe cruise liners.  Car valet services, onsite dry-cleaning pick-up/drop off, massages, yoga, concierge services, onsite daycare/nanny service, bring-your-pet-to-work options.  And on and on and on, the calories and comfort food arms race continues its grim march toward caffeine OD and adult-onset diabetes.

However, there’s a moral and dilemma CEOs often face when trying to strike the right balance of perks and austerity.

The argument for pampering:  In the new knowledge-worker driven economy, there is often precious little machinery or automation.  So every time an employee walks out the door to Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, the sandwich shop, or the drycleaner, the corporate engine slows down a notch.  Therefore, the logic emerges that if you can remove all interruptions for employees, you’ll get far more in productivity out of them than junk food and pampering you put in to them.

The argument against:   It’s expensive.  It creates a sense of entitlement in employees.  It creates a false sense of prosperity in a company that may be pre-revenue and in need of several more rounds of funding before it can stand on it’s own two financial legs.

Some might say that economic recessions pound the potential for excess back to square one.   OK, so perks have slowed down a bit after each economic set-back in the last decade, starting with the Internet bubble bursting and post-Y2K malaise, the aftermath of 9/11 on the U.S. economy and, most recently, the banking sector melt-down.  However, after each setback it seems a new “floor” gets set that’s just a bit tonier than the last one.

So how do CEOs handle this arms race in employee perks you ask?

Below are a few lessons learned and secrets shared by a number of CEOs who know a bit about the word “value” in serving up employee perks-

Perks Case Study A: Intra-office “micropreneurship.” The secret of the concession license

One venture-backed CEO wanted to offer some of the perks, but not all when it came to stocking the pantry.    So, rather than facing an all-or-nothing approach, the CEO decided that a business principle was in play that could be exploited in a win-win-win fashion–  what the company had as an asset was the equivalent of a monopoly.  He reasoned that employees were a captive audience.  If the CEO offered the “vendor concession” contract to an aspiring employee who wanted to make a few bucks, the company would offer exclusive stocking/inventory rights to that employee to stock the pantry.  However, in trade, the employee had to agree to offer below-market pricing on food and beverages, and also manage the “SKU requests” that the employees would log from time to time regarding food selection and preferences.  His formula in a nutshell looked like this:

-          win for employees-as the got a below market food and beverage offering, the equivalent of a “company subsidized” pantry offering

-          win for the “intra-preneur”-who was given the food concession to run, and could make a few extra bucks running the business

-          win for the company-the company didn’t have to provide all the food gratis, nor had the headache of fielding all the requests from employees

Perks Case Study B:  Serving dinner not as an entitlement, but only to the truly meritorious

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One of the questions we as executive recruiters often get asked  is the trade-off between experience and aptitude.   Both sides of the equation are prone to asking it, clients and executive candidates alike.  Sometimes this teeter-totter is referred to as “domain expert versus best athlete.”

What do they mean when they ask?  There’s actually a lot of nuance in the question-when are skills and experience most important to success in the role versus pure talent and aptitude?

• •    Just because a CEO is moving from one industry to another, does s/he lose his ability to successfully lead?
• •    If a VP Sales has been successful at one stage of company growth, can s/he take that same sales toolbox and be successful in another stage company, say either emerging-stage or mature-stage?
• •    Can a VP Engineering be equally effective managing in large companies and small?
• •    Do companies look for the same types of leadership in good economic cycles as well as bad?
• •    How does an executive’s move out of their wheelhouse of skills and experience impact their compensation and/or level in a new industry and company?

These questions are only a few of the factors that impact the answer.    The following discussion is aimed at trying to lend some clarity and context to question.

Let’s take a look at the hour-glass graph below to lay down some of these factors against our “expert or athlete” question:

1)     Level of management: The first factor is where an employee sits in the organizational chart.   In general, skills and experience are most critical at the “waist” of the hour-glass graph-mid-to-upper level management, starting at manager, through director- and VP-level.  At the top and bottom of the hour-glass, aptitude often ends up as the greater emphasis in “hireability.”  This may be fairly intuitive for many.

a.     Entry-level: When you first get out of school, employers often hire for a combination of attitude and intelligence and look for those who exhibit room to grow or “headroom.”   In fact, at entry-level, skills and experience for those roles are often a liability.  Employers may feel someone is overqualified, or a “flight risk” if that employee finds another better-paying and/or higher level position at another company.

b.     CEO-level: When you achieve P&L/CEO status, employers often will place more emphasis on the track record a CEO has in leading a company versus a tenured career history in a specific industry area.  Can a CEO move from rust-belt manufacturer to biotech?  Likely not.  However, there isn’t the same granularity of fit applied at the CEO-level as at the middle-management layer.  If a CEO has been broadly successful in in a number of software companies, it often becomes less important what type of software, or what industry vertical that software was developed for.  Certainly some screening is applied to industry, with some of the below more general industry characteristics takingi precedence-

i.      Experience in selling to similar customer base, B2B vs. B2C or government

ii.      Experience raising equity capital from venture capital or private equity

iii.      Experience creating exits for investors that have generated good returns for those investors

iv.      Experience taking a company from one industry into other industries, popularly referred to as “crossing the chasm”

c.     Mid-to-upper management:   Mid and upper management are where skills and experience over mere aptitude are often most sought after by employers.  Those who are hiring at this level will often even emphasize industry skills and experience above managerial experience, giving the edge to a candidate with industry-relevant background and a lesser degree of leadership experience, assuming that management is a learned skill and can be taught or picked up on the job.  Is this right?  That’s not the focus of our discussion here.  Rather, our goal here is to describe corporate hiring  norms from our observations.

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Our client is tearing down the walls of the pixel landscape.  The Company has developed proprietary breakthrough software that functions as a pixels operating system, moving video display from one source projecting one visual, to infinite sources projecting virtually unlimited visuals.  And all of this is at a pixel-density that can go beyond high-definition quality, at commodity projection device cost, with no manual calibration or image “stitching” required.  The Company’’s technology is used in various applications ranging from simulation and training to museum displays and digital signage.  The company serves corporate, government, and academic organizations.

Market Opportunity

Industry Outlook (software-enabled displays):

• •    Visual simulation and Large Venue Display – $1.4B and $22.2B
• •    Growing rapidly – 14.1% and 23.3% CAGR
• •    Incumbent companies expensive, inflexible, and manually aligned – the bottleneck to widespread use of advanced display
• •    Commercial public venue display increased from $16.5B to $22.2B from 2005-2007
• •    iSuppli (major research firm) predicts $51B by 2011
• •    Multiple options for use: API for large, seamless displays and computing clusters with over 6xHD resolutions displays; or seamless displays up to 6xHD with no application integration.

A single Company server can calibrate multiple displays and is not limited by projection hardware type or resolution.

The Position

The CEO’s core responsibilities will include:

Marketing direction:

Marketing strategy & product marketing– Establishing a short and long-term business direction the drives the company to become an industry leader and maximize the penetration of the markets served.

Business development, including channel sales, OEM & relationships, and all distribution agreements

Operations– Product delivery, deployment, fulfillment and post-sales customer relationship management.

Manufacturing & Operations:

Oversight of manufacturing and production teams responsible for commercializing the technology, establishing build/buy/outsource decisions, etcetera. Working with the rest of the team, oversight of quality assurance, working with the CTO to ensure that product development meets various international multi-regional market-driven specifications and is “rolled out” smoothly and on schedule.

Staff- team building, development, mentorship:  The CEO is responsible for human capital planning and hiring.  As important, the position will actively be responsible for developing new and existing staff to help prepare them for company growth and increased leadership responsibilities at all levels.  Finally, the new CEO will serve as leader and mentor to the founding team and as a complement to their existing skills.

Investors/shareholders & board - milestone management, follow-on fundraising, liquidity strategy: The new CEO is primary liaison to the board and will aggressively manage milestone deliverables, be a key contributor at board meetings and to board/investor communications.  The CEO will be responsible for developing and managing against an annual operating plan and in addition to possible follow-on fundraising, will be accountable for optimizing the harvest for all shareholders.

Ideal Candidate Profile

The diagram below illustrates the intersection of competencies critical in the new CEO:

Compensation

Compensation is competitive with the position’s requirements.  In a performance-based environment, this will include base salary, milestone/incentive bonus structure, and a stakeholder position in the company.

An annual event in Boston punches up the fact that we have an incredible cleantech cluster-New England Clean Energy Council’s annual Green Tie Gala.

Although this event took place back during Clean Energy Week in November, I was reminded of it when out in Denver recently.  Denver has some great stuff going for it.  NREL (National Renewable Energy Lab), University of Colorado with multiple campuses in Denver and Boulder that have significant funding from both Federal and State agencies, and a history of technology oriented companies, albeit with a heavy emphasis on telecom (Qwest, Level 3).

However, what there isn’t as much of in Denver is what some call the “ecosystem.” Others call it the “cluster.” This is a body of people who hold different but overlapping responsibilities in the entrepreneurial ecosystem and whose fusion is its wellspring–

• Academics: These are those most often with the new disruptive technology or science breakthrough that serves as the seed of a new company
• Business entrepreneurs: those who have experience taking the seed of an idea, and building a company around it
• Investors: The first friends & family, then angel investors, and often venture capitalists or corporate strategic investors who pour money into these new ideas to fund the business entrepreneurs scale the disruptive idea
• Professional services providers: These are often the “connectors” in the ecosystem. They’re comprised of lawyers, accountants, executive search consultants, and start-up advisors. They act as the glue between the prior three categories, more often than not introducing one to another, supporting the growth of these companies with their area of specialty

[Footnote: If you compare Boston to Silicon Valley however, Boston is shallower in large technology and sciences companies that serve to spawn "runners" to new start-up companies.   The biotech industry is perhaps better in Boston at doing this than the pure technology industry in the last decade, with a growing base of larger biotech and pharma companies including Genzyme, Cubist, Biogen and Sepracor.  Medical devices companies also fair better in many ways to large tech, with Boston Scientific, ThermoFisher, and Perkin Elmer.  In technology hardware and software, beyond EMC, there are precious few large technology companies left in Massachusetts. ]

Details on the Gala?  This year’s Green Tie Gala was held at the JFK Memorial Library in Boston (last year was held at the Museum of Science).    There are many organizations in the innovation sector here in Massachusetts that have done a good job at galvanizing a broad cross section of constituents, including the Mass Biotech Council, as well as MITX (formerly MIMC), and the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council, or TiE Boston (Indus Entrepreneurs).  However, we’ve had yet to participate in a gathering of any that approaches that of the cleantech cluster here in New England.

Senator Markey gave the opening address to punctuate the cocktail hour.  To a person it seemed, everyone knew everyone.  Yes there were a few outsiders (a small contingent from the UK had come over as part of a trade mission coordinated with Clean Energy Week in Massachusetts because of its target rich calendar), yet all of these were welcomed by the larger fold, and the gathering seemed to virtually breathe together as some sort of larger unified body, a cluster with so few degrees of separation that walking from group to group or table to table was akin to going back to your high school reunion…. You knew at least half those sitting at every table.  For those who have experienced the annual Nantucket Conference, it is this atmosphere if intimacy and familiarity that presides.

To cap the night off, venture capitalist Chuck McDermott of Rockport Capital led his band in an after-hours session that continued the beat of familiarity both given its leader as well as in its musical selection (Chuck stating that the band only plays “songs popularized before 1960″).

Scott Kirsner recently penned an article in the Boston Globe on interviewing tips, what not to do.  Great compendium (our contributions excepted perhaps but for you to judge in the article sidebar on page 2) of what some might think intuitively as “faux pas”, but many simply may not think of at all, and are at risk of committing.

http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2010/01/10/you_have_your_foot_in_the_door_how_to_keep_it_there_1263010162/?page=1

Dedham, MA-  Tobii ATI is pleased to announce that John Stamatopoulos has joined the company as Vice President, Sales.

“We’re very excited to have John on board.  Tobii is poised for significant growth in 2010, and John will be instrumental in our success in the coming year,” said Tara Rudnicki, Tobii-ATI’s U.S. President.

“I’m extremely excited about joining the team, and feel a real missionary passion to help bring Tobii’s assistive technologies product line deeper into the markets we serve,” stated Mr. Stamatopoulos.

John’s background prior to joining Tobii included Global Director of Sales, Medical Device, Manufacturing, Pharmaceuticals, Capital Equipment, & medical Instrumentation for Fiberoptic Components, a contract manufacturer serving the medical devices and industrial manufacturing industries.  While there, John was focused on developing an international medical marketplace for custom Fiberoptic applications including hand instruments, sensors, and analytical instrumentation. Partner with OEM’s and contract manufacturers.   Before this role, John was responsible for sales leadership at IDEX Health & Science where he was recruited to direct sales for newly launched medical arm of $135M Health and Science division. Other sales roles John played previously included Account Sales Manager at Hill-Rom, a fortune 1000 global provider of healthcare solutions and sales executive at AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals where he was #1 in district for total Rx market share and recipient of “Best in ‘03″ and “Best of the Best” for professionalism 2004, including  national contest winner for market share growth.  John started his career in the medical industry  at Schering-Plough Pharmaceuticals, and has received industry-focused certificates at Loyola University of Chicago and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.  John received his BSBA from Northeastern University in Marketing and Management Information Systems.

Tobii-ATI (http://www.tobiiati.com ) is the founding pioneer in the field of assistive technology.  Tobii ATI has released a range of new alternative and augmentative communication (AAC) solutions that help individuals with speech impairments communicate. Tobii-ATI develops both communication hardware and software solutions for people with physical, cognitive, and speech disabilities. Tobii Assistive Technology, Inc. was formerly known as Assistive Technology, Inc.  Tobii Assistive Technology, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of its venture-backed Swedish parent, Tobii Technology AB.

A weekday morning in late November.  A brownstone residence on Beacon Hill in the shadow of the State House.  A dozen of the foremost experts in technology transfer and intellectual property in the Boston innovation cluster.  And a representative from the Department of Energy.  We at BSG Team Ventures had the recent opportunity to host a salon-style meeting in a home of a friend of the firm during Clean Energy Week here in the Commonwealth (for more on Clean Energy week, see http://greenovationconference.com/conference-info/cew.html).

The purpose?  Bringing the best minds in the Boston venture, entrepreneurship and innovation community together for a brainstorming session with the Department of Energy around best practices in technology transfer out of our national laboratories.   Attending the meeting were Alan Gordon from Harvard University Technology Licensing Office, Chris Noble from MIT’s TLO, head of the Mintz Levin cleantech practice Tom Burton, Peter Rothstein from the New England Clean Energy Council, Director of the Massachusetts Technology Transfer Center Abi Barrow, Director of Partners CIMIT John Collins, General Partner at Flagship Ventures Jim Matheson, and CEOs Chris Hobson and Peter Vandermeulen each running cleantech start ups with technology licensed out of several of the national labs themselves.

The challenge the current Obama Administration is taking on under Secretary of Energy Chu is how to better mine the metaphorical gold created inside the U.S. Department of Energy-funded  national laboratory network of some 15 that are spread across the country.  Some of these labs are household names–Los Alamos and  Sandia (New Mexico), and Lawrence Livermore (California).  Others are less well known-Argonne (Illinois), Brookhaven (NY), and Ames (Iowa).  Even the National Renewable energy Lab (Colorado, known more often as NREL), are not as well known as one would hope.  The history of these national labs springs from energy research spurred by World War II.  What the layperson may remember is that many of these labs were where secretive nuclear energy research was conducted.  However, much of the mandate for these labs some 60 years later is focused on discoveries that will broadly contribute to advancing the United States’ understanding of energy, renewable energy, energy conservation, and all the various scientific disciplines that can contribute-physics, materials engineering, chemistry, and more.  These labs are panning for a 21^st century gold-energy discoveries and breakthroughs that will create new batteries using renewable resources, wean the U.S. dependence on oil and coal as primary energy sources, and break new barriers in energy efficiency.

However, the problem has been that these labs have explored a lot, and engaged in extensive primary research, but have punched below their weight class in bringing innovation from discovery through to successful commercialization.  The DOE budget in FY 2009 topped $25 billion.  The national labs budget made up approximately $10 billion of that.  And with the Obama administration’s  stimulus package, these numbers only look to be increasing.  One example brought up in the conversation to punctuate the problem from one of the Boston-based attendees was that fact that Argonne National Laboratory in the last decade has created less than a dozen successful out licensing/royalty events that generated meaningful returns.   Logic holds that in terms of return-on-investment, there remains much room for added improvement.

So, two hours later, what were the issues that were brought up by the braintrust, and potential solutions that were tendered to improve the return on investment the DOE makes in the national laboratory’s innovation mission?

Some of the key issues with the current structure that came out of the dialogue:

•    Risk aversion of national labs researchers to leave the security of the lab to spearhead a risk-laden venture

•    Innate interest of lab researchers is more geared toward research and “discovery” versus market-matching and commercialization

•    Low/no financial incentive to take a discovery beyond research phase

•    No business ecosystem or business-savvy catalysts to help focus lab research talent on “known problems,” or the sifting through lab breakthroughs to match-make with existing  business  problems

Suggestions for improvement focused around the three ingredients that are key to metaphorical “combustion” of the innovation commercialization engine: More…

Periodically, we make an effort to pull together executive compensation trends and analysis focusing on venture capital backed companies in the United States.  The last executive compensation report we put out was in September 2009 (see prior blog post http://www.bostonsearchgroup.com/blog/ceo-compensation-analysis-west-east-founder/), and focused on C-level compensation, with a further contrasting of founder versus non-founder CEO compensation, both West Coast and East Coast.

This report is similarly focuses on West Coast and East Coast differences in executive compensation, however this time looking at the VP level across the functional organizational structure.  For purposes of this report, only companies who broadly fit the definition of “information technology” were used in the analysis, not including biotech, medical device/medical technology, or cleantech.

The titles looked at include the following–

Vice President Business Development

Vice President Engineering

Vice President  Marketing

Vice President Sales

Vice President Sales & Marketing

VP Software Development

VP Product Management

Note that below we’ve only included the analysis of the executive compensation data, in other words the deltas. If you’d like more detail and the information on which we based the analysis, please email damador@bsgtv.com with your name, title, company and business email address, and we can provide you with the baseline full report.

Do keep in mind that this is only one set of data. To draw the best comparables, it’s important to do all three data-grabs listed above. Also, this is a “blended” sample set of multiple venture-backed industry sub-sectors in the information technology category. Some industry sub-segments may pay more or less than others with further parsing.

West Coast Early vs. Later-stage Venture Capital-backed Companies

Cash compensation is almost always higher in later stage companies, and this is reflected in all 3 quartiles of data analyzed.  For West Coast venture-backed companies, the differences are $15,000 to $50,000 in most roles, with an average different of about $25,000.  The only exception is for the VP Sales/Sales Marketing role, where cash was significantly higher in later stage companies for these roles, ranging between $75,000 to more than $125,000 in the top quartile companies.

Conversely, equity is almost always higher in early-stage companies to offset the lower salaries referred to above.  For these West Coast companies, regardless of quartile, earlier-stage companies received on average ¼% to ½% more equity, with the biggest jump in VP Sales/Marketing, and lowest in the VP Engineering function.

East Coast, Early vs. Later-stage

East Coast compensation tells a different story from their West Coast counterparts.  Although cash compensation was similarly lower in early versus later-stage companies, East Coast executives of venture-backed companies didn’t see the “make-up” effect in equity.  In fact, equity appears lower in many of the quartiles compared, by as much as ½% comparing East Coast early versus East Coast later-stage.

East Coast vs. West Coast, Early-stage

Cash compensation, East versus West, shows that West Coast executives of early-stage companies more often than not earn more in base .  West Coast Engineering is $10,000-20,000 more in base, VP Marketing is up West over East by $10,000 to $50,000. VP Sales/Sales & Marketing is actually the one notably lower cash category where East Coasters are better off than West in the higher quartiles (but not the lowest).  As noted above, West Coast early-stage executives are compensated more favorably when it comes to equity than their East Coast brethren virtually across the board.

East Coast vs. West Coast, later-stage Venture Capital-backed Companies

As for cash compensation for later-stage companies East vs. West, a similar pattern existed being mostly lower than their West Coast counterparts, than its West Coast peers.  However, when looking at equity stakes in later stage companies East vs. West, the East Coast did better, often by ¼% to as much as ½%.