Speaker 1  0:02  
Hello, and welcome to today's autumn webinar, How to Attract industry partners. My name is Anne McCollum and I am one of autumns educate team and today's staff host. All lines have been muted to ensure high quality audio and today's session is being recorded. If you have a question for the presenter, we encourage you to use the q&a feature on your zoom toolbar. If you have a technical question or comment, please feel free to use the chat shinies need closed captioning during today's session, the Zoom live transcript feature is turned on and available on your toolbar. Before we begin, I would like to acknowledge and thank autumns online professional development sponsor, Marshall Gerstein. We appreciate your ongoing support. And now I would like to introduce today's panelists. John Perry is an experienced executive with a career spanning 35 years in technology commercialization, corporate technical sales and business development, and startup venture advertising, excuse me, advising and investing. He has expertise in bringing cutting edge technologies to Global Fortune 1000 companies, and has successfully executed partnerships and test instrumentation, consumer electronics, specialty chemicals, digital media, computing, and AI and medical instrumentation market sector. Ellen Darko is a senior executive with over 35 years of experience in health care, life sciences and technology. Her career spans leadership roles in marketing, sales, market development, r&d and consulting. She has worked with companies ranging from startups to multi billion dollar revenue conglomerates, we are excited to learn from both of you today.

Speaker 2  2:02  
Thank you. All right, I'm gonna attempt now to share my screen.

Unknown Speaker  2:07  
Here we go.

Speaker 2  2:11  
How to Attract industry partners. This is a subject that's near and dear to many of our hearts. And being a marketer. It's very near and dear to my heart. But before we get started, we just wanted to add a little more color context to our background. So you've had an idea of some of the places we've been and some of the people we've been advising and investing. So John, do you want to speak a little bit about your background? Sure.

Speaker 3  2:35  
You can see I started out in corporate after my electrical engineering degree way back. And after 14 years moved into research where I learned about commercialization, winning grants, and doing a lot of partnerships, and commercializing technologies. From there, we entered the startup world and did an awful lot of roles regarding advising, investing, a lot of business development, and then actually joined a startup and got into the operations as an entrepreneur. And now I'm back in corporate for him for IBM on cutting edge technologies. Helen,

Speaker 2  3:21  
Thanks, John. My background also spent some time in r&d where I began my career at seral, which is now Pfizer, it's a pharmaceutical company, I was a scientist there on lead projects, went into sales from there because my personality was too big to stay in the lab, as I was told, and went to dynamics, which is now Thermo Fisher. And then also like John spent some time at Hewlett Packard, and then later in my career went over to Salesforce. In between all of that, and around all of that I've really spent the bulk of my career in marketing, consulting and marketing and business development, where I've held leadership roles at companies like SAP lab Vantage try path imaging, which is now part of a different company, fast track iqvia, bio port and Prussia and then have consulted with a number of startups, mid tier and enterprise companies, and did a lot of the market and business development, expanding markets and relationships for click and Rose and spring ml, which was a startup that worked with Salesforce and Google. So let's get to the heart of the matter why we're here today. We're here today to really talk about how to attract business partners and and investors and customers and clients. And so when we think about attracting, we're going to split this up into two main sections and then keep the third section for really interacting and engaging more with you. So the first two sections John and I are going to cover our first principles and I'm going to cover that piece and the basics of attraction. Knowing your audience your market and creating a win win. Then John is going to follow up with some tips and tricks and we're real world examples of how these things get applied, what works, what doesn't work. And then we're going to open it up so that we can work on some of your problems and some of your technologies and try to help you with next steps that you're looking to achieve in terms of attracting business partners, investors, and industry strategic partners. So without further ado, first principles, the basics of attraction. The very first thing in marketing, and that you get taught in marketing or even in a business program is to really know your audience. And this is a step that a lot of companies that I've consulted with and worked for, sometimes tend to sort of skip, they think they know who their primary audience is, but they're not really sure. And so this is a really important piece. And I've split it up into two main sections in terms of knowing your audience, knowing the target of your audience, whether it's a primary target, a secondary, Target, or tertiary. So you know how to focus and prioritize is really important, especially when you're just getting into the marketplace. Knowing and understanding the type and role that a person holds that may be the target person for conversation is also very critically important. Is the person an economic decision maker? Will this person be an investor for you? Or will this person invest in the company and or purchase products or solutions from you? Or are they an end user, someone who actually has a problem that you're solving and needs to utilize your product or service? Are they some other decision maker influence or mapping these out and knowing these is critically important in terms of what you're going to do in the next steps of defining what your message is, and how you're going to get those meetings? Persona are critically important. What's a persona? Persona is how you describe the person that is either the decision maker or the investor or the strategic partner, how are they motivated? What is their personality? What are their goals? What are their style, really digging in deep to understand what motivates that person, what their their goals are for the business, how this aligns to their business, and how you can position yourself as critically important to getting those meetings and to attract those industry partners. And doing a deep dive on that is not time wasted. It's time very well invested. Then understanding what keeps these people up at night? What are there unsolved problems for each target? And what do I mean by that? So for an economic decision maker, typically a problem is going to be something around money, and how to spend their money better, or how much money they can get back if they purchase what you're selling them or if they invest in your company. But for an end user, that unsolved problem may be something very different. They may be looking at solving an automation problem in their laboratory, or they may be looking for how do I use my data better? Or how do I find the data I have or anything? It could be just anything? And so understanding what unsolved problems are out there for each target person, industry account that you're looking to have a meeting with, is critically important. And knowing that by their their own needs, and motivations is very important. Understanding the cost of the problem you're solving is equally important, and how to really phrase that is it pure, pure dollars and cents? Or is there opportunity cost, that they're doing something instead of something else, they could be doing better, that would free up their time? What do they currently do about the problem. So taking the time to really understand your audience, understand what motivates them understand what keeps them up and understand how you can make a fit with what you have to offer is going to start to build your win, win and get to your next meeting. Equally important is not really knowing your market, I can't tell you how many times I've gone to work for a company where they really didn't know what their market was. They thought they knew what they were making and who they were making it for. But they didn't really know much about their market, mapping out the size of your market, understanding that market potential for both your primary use your secondary use and your tertiary use of your solution is important. Understanding and being honest about your competitive landscape is extremely important because that's going to help you nuance your message and understanding what part of the share of the market you're going to be able to get with the solution you have is also important. Understanding your market from a geographic perspective is important. And I'll give you just a quick little example. When you're working in healthcare it if you're working in public sector versus private sector solutions may have to be very different depending on regulations in those two different types of markets, and the different persona and people that are in those markets. target customers is important. Being able to identify a list of whether you're going to target enterprise large, very large Large companies, enterprise companies, smaller mid market companies, or small or medium businesses, and the type of investors that invest in those different spaces is very important. And do you have a defined industry area? Is there a primary area, a secondary area that you can serve? Or is there only just the single area and what is that, and then really defining the solution uses. So whether you have a product, a service, or a combination there of really understanding the first use and the primary market you're going to go after, so you know how to prioritize and focus is very important. Also, having secondary and even maybe tertiary growth, opportunity markets is important, but can can be confusing, and can help it and can keep you from focusing and not straying from your primary market, you should have them identified and ready to go. But really understand what is your primary market, and how are you going to focus. Lastly, to pull all this data and information together, and you start to create the Win win, because at the end of the day, if you want to attract an industry partner, and investor, a client, or anybody that wants to do business with you, you really need to be able to create that win, win and be able to sell to them or market to them, what is in it for them, not so much what is in it for you, but what is in it for them. And to do that remembering the four P's of marketing is important. There's about 18 P's now, but just kind of distilling it down, understanding product slash solution, your pricing, your place your promotion, and being able to create a unique value proposition, messaging by persona, so that you can create a 32 second 30 to 62nd, elevator pitch to get them hooked so that they want to hear your three minute pitch and so that they want to take a meeting, this is how you start to attract industry partners having a crisp message out there that really clearly shows what value you will provide that person in that industry with your solution, and making sure it's a differentiated against your competition, and that you can show a return on investment for those that are investing. And for those that are the economic decision makers, making sure that you share with them, what else is in it for them. And that's how you get more meetings and how you get more attraction in the industry. And with that, I'm going to hand over to John for tips, tricks and real world examples.

Speaker 3  12:18  
Okay. Thanks, Ellen. Appreciate.

Unknown Speaker  12:21  
Thank you.

Speaker 3  12:24  
Why don't you go ahead and advance the slide. So I plan to talk about two different things that I've been involved with Rutgers tech advance funded since the beginning. So I think that's going on eight years now. And I got involved with that group. But it's a great group over there. Where it's, many of the universities have a derisking fund for their professors who are professionals apply for funding, I think the different amounts 50,000, to $100,000, to de risk the technologies. And I've been involved in probably judging and reviewing 10, maybe 15 different projects, and I've listed some of these projects. And what I thought I would talk about would be common mistakes. But Elon, if you hit the advance, there's a second vector. And really, if you look at the theory, Elon presented a lot of the must haves, how you attract partners, the way I boil it down into very, very specific tactics. And basically, I've had to do these tactics my entire career. And they kind of follow this. This formula, you know, first, and the biggest mistake, I see which one segment, one segment are you going to take your first dollar from. And that's important because a lot of professors believe it's good to be additive, we're gonna go into this market, and then also this market, and then this market, we're gonna go into all these markets, three markets is better than one market. That is not true. Because if you're solving each market is a different problem. You cannot solve three problems at once you want to tackle one big problem. You've got to think through which one segment you're going to attack first, and why first, and figure out how to get the data and go after that one segment. When you've got that thought through, you then say, well, who are the companies I'm going to approach and you need to have you can't approach one company. And you probably can't approach even though NSF wants to see you approach 100 companies with the ICORE program. It's difficult to approach 100 companies as we know, so how many should you approach you should definitely go After five to 10 companies, but you know, have five good companies figure out who they are who those companies. The third thing once you know the companies, which role in those companies do you go after? And things, the tools like LinkedIn are available? And you can find these people, relatively easy today, but which role? And why would they care? As Ellen talked about, you know, what would keep them up? And how do you figure out which role? And then what do you say, to get their attention? How do you approach them? What does that email look like? What is it that's going to get them to pay attention to you? You know, what data do you have? What have you done, to get them to wake up? So those are the tactics that you essentially have to do to get interest and to execute? So going back to I, what I thought will might be fun is the most of the projects have reviewed? Number, the first principle, you know, additive, and we'd have to go back and say, focus on the first thing, what is that first segment? Where are you going to take your first dollar? And I don't want to pick on any of these projects. What we would like to do actually is hear your technologies, your questions, what how are you thinking through? Which technologies who to go after? And how do we get this more interactive? That's really what we'd like to do in the next 30 minutes to 40 minutes is the start. Helps seeing how we can help you. I hope that makes sense. If you could use q&a. Give us your your challenges.

Speaker 3  17:03  
I believe and is going to be ready to read off anything that you're trying to do. We've both been involved with NSX. We know this, you know, NSF has been very demanding. And they've offered the ICORE program, which is all about partnerships going out and talking to people.

Unknown Speaker  17:33  
Anything coming across yet?

Speaker 1  17:34  
Now I'm I'm monitoring closely. Maybe you need to throw something out there to get them started. Oh, here we go. Here we go. I have one question is how do you approach market research identify a single segment.

Speaker 2  17:55  
So I kick it off, if that's okay, John, if you'd like, I spend a lot of my time doing market research for different companies. I mean, some some of it is kind of hit or miss. But honestly, my approach is always to first look up as much as I can about an industry or a market that I'm interested in. And I just do a number of searches. And then I also search my contacts in my LinkedIn, I maintain a lot of contacts in my network and anybody here today that wants to join, please raise your hand and you know, in LinkedIn and send me an invite, but I go through that, and I try to find other people that are in the market that I'm researching. So one example I have I did some consulting with a small company called a Kurian here in the Philadelphia region where I live. And they had a product and solution around clinical trials, which I knew something about. And they wanted to enter a new market. They were in the cardiovascular market, but they wanted to expand into oncology. So the first thing I did to approach that was I researched oncology clinical trials and learned as much as I could about that online and with connections in my LinkedIn to really better understand that space. I talked with a number of industry leaders, and then they actually asked me to conduct market research for them. And what I did was I looked at the market for clinical trials and there were different segments within that clinical trial oncology market. You had sponsor organizations like pharmaceutical companies, you had CROs that were outsourced. And then you have physicians, private investigators that were actually conducting the trial and I went out and I interviewed these people. I think it's very healthy to get as many interviews as you can, with people directly working in the space to really understand the market. It will also give you an idea of the different persona and the different personalities and motivators in the market, identifying the single single segment once you've collected all this research that you've done in a primary mode by just Google searching online research libraries, PubMed. If you're in the medical area, LinkedIn, and any resources you can find available. Once you've assembled all this information, you start looking at the size of the different markets. So when you want to identify a single segment, you may want to start looking at what does your technology solve? And what problem is that? And how big of a problem is that for different segments? How much are you seeing out there that's being reported on these different segments, and the one that has the most reporting going on typically, and the most dollars to spend against it that you can find, usually online, is going to help you identify that single segment based on the money piece. But you also want to look at the challenge of getting into that space in the competitors in that space. So once you can identify a segment by money, you should also look at it by competitors, you should also look at that segment versus other segments by geography and proximity to where you're located and ways that you can leverage your own network and how much leverage do you have to attack the market? These decisions are never singular in nature, they are always multiples, you have to look across a lot of things to come down to one idea in one segment. I hope I've answered that question or have started to answer that question. If those two questions are very large, and I thank you for submitting them, Jesse. Hopefully, I gave you some insight. John, did you want to comment further? I

Speaker 3  21:30  
guess I have a question is the issue that you have a technology in search of a market? And you know, could you just say some more? either? What market? Are you thinking about? Could you just say some more?

Unknown Speaker  21:50  
Okay,

Speaker 1  21:51  
next up question from Teresa. Which data resources do you recommend?

Speaker 2  22:01  
Yeah, so I mean, I go online first, and then I tried to identify data sources because you can, you can, depending on the industry you're looking at, there are different resources for different industries. I mentioned PubMed. If you're looking at things going on in medical space, there's also clinical trials.gov. If you're doing things in clinical trials, there are data resources, generically for business. Harvard Business Review provides a lot of data and information CB insights, as an analyst firm, you can look for analysts in your industry. It's really very specific for whatever the problem is you're solving and what industry you're looking at, as to how you go about choosing data resources. For for your market research activities, no two industries are going to be the same. And the resources are going to be different for every industry and slash market that you're looking at.

Speaker 3  22:55  
And I've also found just typing in market sectors, just market industry for up pops many, many overviews of market, the most detailed market sector reports. And just from those free by Googling, those free market reports tell you the size of the market, globally, where the who the companies are, who are the leaders, what the issues are, I mean, they did a great job summarizing these. That's before you start paying for for anything. And I you know, and I just think those and the more you, if you look at if you go back a slide, go back to that slide. Ellen list.

Speaker 2  23:42  
Yeah, hold on a minute, I got the questions open, give me just a second.

Speaker 3  23:47  
The same. So these, these are the kinds of industrial chemical manufacturing projects that I specialize in. And suddenly you have to basically look for markets for these technologies. And you start to learn which sources specialize in these kinds of technologies in this tech transfer, you'll start you know, I'm sure you know who your favorite sources are. But Google is really your best friend. Google's

Speaker 2  24:20  
gotten very, very good. You can also check out DuckDuckGo. And there's some other search engines that search a little bit differently and might pull up some different results. So I would encourage if you're not finding what you want, although I'd nine times out of 10 find what I want on Google as well. It's gotten very good. You can look at the other ones. I would not shortchange analyst website like Gartner, Forrester, you know, the analysts do a pretty good job identifying markets and will give out some free reports before you have to start to pay. CB insights was another one. There's deci bio. It kind of depends on what industry you're in. But the analyst reports the freeware you can get from them. There's there's a substantial amount And there's also newsletters. So one thing I didn't want to forget to mention is, by signing up for these newsletters in the industry or looking at, you will start to see lots of links in the newsletters for more information check here, go there. And then they get sponsored by organizations that collect research and maybe willing to give some free research. Most of the research projects I've had to do for companies I've actually had to do on free research alone, and they hadn't had any funds because they were startup companies to really pay for any service. So it's amazing how much you can find out there. Right.

Speaker 1  25:39  
Okay, next question. Can you expand more on who to target companies?

Speaker 3  25:47  
Sure, I'll be glad to start with that. So a lot of technology, you would think, okay, who's if you're cutting edge technology, you might think probably the CTO, the Chief Technology Officer is the one who will ring in and say, I, I need new IP, I need more IP. But if you think about, okay, this technology enables something and enables a new business. And you can put a story that says revenue generation, you could possibly go to the Chief Revenue Officer, those are the kinds of things to think through who are the best people to approach you want to also approach I would say, almost always fairly high level to see can you get the attention at a higher level?

Speaker 2  26:51  
I would agree with what John's saying completely. I mean, I'll start as low as a senior director, VP level, if I can't get to the C suite, and I have wormed my way in, it takes a little longer wormed my way in that way. And someone else is asking a question about in person. And this kind of ties so that if you can put yourself in a scenario or a setting where you're attending a local or regional conference, you don't have to spend a lot of money to travel. But it's, you know, something, it's a free conference, where you have a chance to interact with the speakers at the conference after they speak. I had gotten several companies into both j&j and brocco diagnostics. Through that mode, just by networking at those events, or by talking to the speaker after the event. I got one of our companies into the C suite at Humana, which is not a small company by attending a Wharton healthcare conference and talking to Bruce shuck, who an aftershock I'm sorry, Bruce, getting his last name, I talked with him after his presentation, and I got an invite to come in and speak to his whole C suite. Down in Louisville, being at these places in person is the best way to do it. There are equivalent ways to getting the attention of a C suite person or a vice president level or above, through email and cold calls. You have to really put together the compelling message. And there's a technique called boss show. And if you look that up on Google boss show, it will show you how to kind of get a compelling message out in an email by asking questions up front versus just trying to, you know, show up and throw up in your email. Basically, you don't want to do a lot of that. If you can ask compelling questions about Gee, are you having difficulty with digital transformation? What's going on? Do you have a program in place? Or something you know, that's compelling like that for something else you're doing? Like, how are we solving this problem, then, you can usually get their attention to read a little further, but you want to keep that first email fairly short, just like the 32nd 62nd elevator pitch. You want to ask questions and provoke more than you want to sell to get them to respond. Because that will usually generate a response versus if you just try to sell to them.

Speaker 3  29:05  
Elon, the question of the 32nd elevator pitch. I'll tell you a tactic I love to do. The 30 Elevator Pitch approach it says only works during in person. Is there an equivalent for cold calls or emails. I love the LinkedIn 300 character invitation that forces discipline. So let me give you an example. Particularly when I was doing consulting work for startups, I would, I would type in a line like you only have three sentences. And I type in something that says I to the CTO, I want to show you a new sodium battery that charges 30% faster than its closest competitor or name a specific competitor. It's that simple. And usually the person accepts the invite. It's I want to show you Jumping, boom, you know, the conversation starts. So it's, it's usually compelling data, technical, highly technical data, the 300 character, LinkedIn sort of forces discipline, so that it's really quick decision. So that's something that's worked very well, for me, I'd probably have 40%. Acceptance. Using that approach.

Speaker 2  30:25  
I agree, I've also had a lot of success with the LinkedIn, especially if you have connections with the person you're approaching. If you can leverage, again, the importance of building a network, if you can leverage a network and people along with your message, you will get much higher response rate than if you can't write.

Speaker 1  30:51  
Ready for the next question? Yep, finding the right people to approach is tough to do. Can you talk about posting available technologies? Where and how do you use platforms like in place? How effective are these?

Speaker 2  31:09  
And there's a correction, it's in part not in place a couple of times? That's okay. No, it was a couple down. So I just noticed that. And I'm not familiar with either one of those tools. I've not used those before. I've used online marketplaces to post technologies when affiliated with a larger company. So, again, if you have already some investment from a larger technology company, they may have a marketplace and posting there has been highly successful if you're not at that stage yet. I don't I'm not as familiar with the marketplace as available. But maybe, John, you are.

Speaker 3  31:43  
It's it's a tough, it's, I acknowledge the difficulty. And the reason I think every tech transfer office has a website, which isn't good. It's a place to start. And, you know, coming up with messaging, of what are the technologies and how could they be used? So that is part of the challenge. And it really is taking a technology? And doing what with it? What is what is the goal? You know, it's it, that's a difficult, you know, a difficult challenge, I will definitely admit it. It's about making making money from intellectual property is isn't is not, not for the faint of heart. Let's put it it's, you really have to go through the, you know, the gap of investment to build something, what is that something? And that's not the intellectual property, you're taking intellectual property that could could become five different things. What is the one thing that is the vision? So I wish it were easier, but it's not. And that's why we get paid the big bucks.

Speaker 2  33:02  
Yeah, a lot of these are, search and destroy missions. And just like the market research, everything is compartmentalized per industry, by industry, market, etc. And the best resource, there's no silver bullet best resource. There's no single silver bullet best marketplace. Really knowing your audience, knowing your your market, and then finding out everything you can about those things like where do people go for information? That was one of the questions I actually asked when I did the market research program for Kurian, as I asked them, Where do you go for information, and depending on the industry, you're gonna get a different answer. But in the medical field, and then in the clinical trials space, they go to conferences, and they go to Lancet or PubMed, or, you know, some of the scientific journals, other people go to different places. And so really understanding that will give you a line or a lead into where's the marketplace for talking about your technology. Sometimes it's not just posting on a platform, it may be creating a what we call an article that gets published in the appropriate trade journal that starts to talk about your technology and the importance of the technology. It's earned media, it's if you've got a good story to tell, and you're solving a good problem, the media and will pick it up, and they'll want to post it and they're always looking for content. So that is a way to get your news out there is when you can get a media pickup for a story you have to tell about the technology you're trying to bring to market.

Speaker 3  34:34  
ln here's a tip that I know workers does this and I think other universities also do this. But they keep a bench of executives, like myself. There's a pretty deep bench of I'm gonna say various technical and business backgrounds, maybe 30 of them and and it's it's not necessary rarely perfect. It's for the fun of here's the technology and they say, Hey, would you give us some advice in different fields. And so I know the resources could be thin. So something's, particularly if you want an NSF grant or something's important enough, you can tap into a group of executives, two or three, like the tech advance fund, I think three reviewers on a project basis. And they're important enough to I think there's a maturity of a couple of $100, you know, to do a very thorough review, and get feedback from marketplaces as to where where would be good places to use this technology.

Speaker 1  35:51  
Okay, next question. Once you have identified the appropriate person to approach in industry, any tips on sending out that first email?

Speaker 2  36:02  
So I think we kind of touched on this two ways. One was the email way and using the Basho methodology of provocation and question and then a little bit enough to get a hook and to get some feedback. The other was what John shared about the LinkedIn and approaching it that way, we have a 300 character limit, because it does force you to really distill the message you want. I think the most important thing is going back to knowing who the audience is that you're approaching what motivates them what problems they have, and then positioning a provocation statement of how are you solving this problem today? Would you like a better way, and then giving a little bit of elaboration on what the better way might be, is going to elicit more of a response than if you just try to say, Hey, I got this great technology, it does this, this, this and this? Are you interested? That's not going to work? That in today's market. So

Speaker 3  36:54  
another tip, another tip, and trick measure everything? So you have those five companies and five target roles, and it's the CTO, you send out five emails, measure who responded, what was the response rate? What were the percentages, okay, maybe the next five, you might change that if you did not have a high. If you didn't get responses. Don't keep making, don't keep doing the same thing, change, maybe change the message, change one thing, measure that maybe change the role, measure that. So every time you do a change manager, where you're getting success, it's very important to not change too many things, but figure out where success is coming. And that's, that's what this tactical outreach is all about.

Speaker 2  37:57  
Yeah, that is critical, I would underscore everything John said, If you don't measure what you're doing, you are not going to know what's going to work. Hit or miss is not. It's not effective over the longer haul. And you won't, you won't have any way of knowing how to modify your approach, you can get some really quick feedback in the early days. And one other thing, one other point kind of around that is if you start out with people that are what I would call more safe, you won't poison your pool. So if you start out with some people that are friendlies with your message and see what their feedback is, you can get to something very crisp and very successful that resonates with people in a way that isn't going to poison your pool.

Speaker 1  38:44  
Okay, next question. Do you have any preferred sources of industry level market insights useful to IP marketing?

Speaker 3  38:58  
Again, wish wish it were easier. I mean, I look at a sector. You know, having sector contacts is just critically important. There's so many sectors. So having a good network of folks you can tap into is very important.

Speaker 2  39:22  
I can't say that any better. So I want networking, networking, networking. That's how John and I actually met and he invited me to come and join him today because we met a long time ago in a network group that I was building here in the Philadelphia region. And we stay connected and it's really important to value your connections and treat them respectfully so that in the future when you need to go to them for something they're there for you.

Speaker 1  39:49  
And they next question may be in response to a previous question. It says to elaborate this would be for approaching an industry partner for feedback on the technology and So interest in partnering I

Unknown Speaker  40:03  
think that had to do with let me scroll up here.

Speaker 1  40:05  
Probably the one once you have identified, yeah, sending

Speaker 2  40:10  
out the email and finding the right people, how do you post available technologies to attract these partners?

Speaker 3  40:23  
And so think about your ass, right? So I want to show you something. Or what are you using for, you know, to solve this really big problem? You know, just trying to start a conversation, Ryan, I'm a leader in this field. Have a big painful problem that hopefully will resonate often with the Chief Technology Officer and who you want to basically network with.

Speaker 1  40:56  
Okay, another question from Jesse. Sometimes that is the case, we have texts without a market, or texts with several markets, sometimes we do not know where to begin, we have a large portfolio of technologies to market, we don't always have the time to do this type of in depth market research for each one. We often use email templates and resources, like licensed lead Apollo, to find contacts and send emails. So follow up. What one simple thing could we do to increase our marketing efforts if we don't have the personnel or time to devote to in depth market research?

Speaker 3  41:37  
Yeah, but having technology in search of a market, I have the scars you really want to figure out market full? What is it that the markets are begging for, but you know, good examples, faster charging batteries. You know, there's a lot of things markets are dying for.

Speaker 2  42:12  
Yeah, and then on the other side of this, you mentioned you have technologies with with several markets. And you want one simple thing to do, because you don't have the bandwidth or time to do the in depth market research. My suggestion would be to focus I think John said this very well, in his section on tech one, l. Ellen was telling you pick one, two, or three, but know what your order is. So you prioritize dancing and just pick one. If you can narrow down the markets that are most attractive for your technology, and do some in depth on just one or two of those. You should have some some time or at least enough time to really hone that message. Just talk to a few people that are friendlies. Run the message by them, ask them for their feedback and input. And you can very quickly I think, you know, retool any any message that you would need to get get more clicks into more people in your market. But the key here is to really try to focus it down so that your bandwidth isn't the issue anymore. Without without doing and I'm not, I'm not necessarily advocating complete in depth market research. But you need to do enough depth of market research that you're asking the people you want to have a meeting with the right questions that are intriguing and to have a conversation with you. People like to be asked questions because they like to think about things and they like to be perceived as it is an industry expert. And if they are an industry expert, make them feel that way. And then the want to speak with you. And then you can show them what you have as you go down that path of the conversation. So the more you can ask questions like a consultant would do, versus telling them why you what you have is the best thing since sliced bread. the better off you'll be and you don't have to do as much in depth market research to do that. Because by asking questions, you're going to get that research. As you're going down the path kind of changing tires while you're driving. I realized that that is what has to happen at early stages. You don't have the time to really do the deep dive I get it. But by asking those questions and giving yourself the chance to get the feedback from people, you'll move more quickly.

Unknown Speaker  44:35  
Okay, next. I'm sorry. No, I

Speaker 2  44:38  
was just gonna say John, does that resonate with you too? Or? Yeah, good.

Speaker 1  44:43  
Okay, any advice for those marketing very early stage technologies?

Unknown Speaker  44:48  
Oh my god.

Unknown Speaker  44:51  
How much time do we have?

Speaker 3  44:53  
That's another presentation. I had 100 projects for 15 years. To the very first intellectual property. And so my big tip for that is you really have to figure out the product that's going to be there a year from now and write a data sheet. That's unbelievably compelling. You know, you have to envision the final service or product, and show that datasheet spec sheet to the customer and say, I can get you this and get them extremely excited to say, When can you get this to me, you know, and you want to have the conversation around that future, you're envisioning the future of product or service. And that's your job as this the inventor, this the entrepreneur, that's what you have to figure out.

Speaker 2  45:52  
I want to answer that because there's another really critical component to what John is saying. And that is called birds of a feather. Birds of a feather flock together. And having been on the bleeding edge of technologies and launching an AI product to the market in 2001, through the FDA, which nobody else had ever done before. And I did that was very painful if I hadn't had birds of a feather. And let me explain what that kind of means here. As you are going to market with a very early stage technology, not only is it critically important to paint the future of where you're going, but it's equally important to have advocates that are using the technology at the state who have an app and are publishing on it and talking about it and share the vision with you, they are birds of your feathers, and they will help propel you forward and getting key industry leaders that see the vision you see aligned with you and and working with you partnering with you on bringing those technologies to market can can really shorten that cycle time to getting things to the marketplace. And they can also help you attract business partners and investment. That has always been for me, one of the biggest success factors I've ever had in my career. Anytime I've launched a brand new product to the market, in any company, whether it was an enterprise company, whether it was a small company with no money behind it was having birds of a feather that were flocking together with me. And that's it, I can't impart that wisdom strongly enough, because without it, it's probably not going to go anywhere very, very quickly.

Speaker 1  47:34  
Okay, who exactly? should I contact within the industry? What titles?

Speaker 3  47:42  
So getting back to the role? I mean, so that's part of the analysis, who really cares? So, you know, arguably, I think we both said, fairly senior level. So director, vice president level, and then is it a technology roll? Is it a revenue roll? Which, you know, who cares? Too good. Once that new data sheet, that new product, that new service? You know, let's let's go over to the list of tech advanced projects and quickly say, Okay, you have a way to make graphene by graphene manufacturing has been the bane like nobody can make graphene cost effectively. What if you actually can do it? Where would you go to? But so those are the questions that you actually have a way to make graphene manufacturing process, probably go to the VP of manufacturing, it might go to the CEO. Right. So you have some big, big news. Is it big enough news to be a Wall Street Journal? Title? Right. So that's how you want to think about the your announcement. Now. How do you go to that I wish it was easy, you know, it's not easy, but, but it's not formulaic. But that's part of the challenge.

Speaker 2  49:17  
Yeah, there is no silver bullet on this. There's no cookie cutter. I mean, the higher you can go in an organization, the better if you're solving a big enough problem, if you go to a CEO with a problem that that kills the ants in the basement of his building, he's not going to care or she's not going to care. But if you're going to them saying your roof is leaking and the walls are falling down, they're gonna care. You know, it really it's all interdependent and and there is no silver bullet. The higher you can go the better when it's appropriate, if it's not appropriate. Taking a step down is sometimes the right thing to do. I just finished working with a company that went in through the end users for their whole last eight years of business that they've been doing because his that was their way in. And they were solving the problem for the end user and the end users were successful negotiating with the upper level management and getting it on the radar and getting it in, it was a very lat long and painful sales cycle and process. But that's the way they built their business. So they're changing it now. They're going up higher, and they're defining the other, the other problems for the other decision makers, the economic decision makers, but they were, you know, behind and just going and users at that time it worked for them, but it didn't work real well. So you always have to consider that. And so I agree with everything John said, and you got to define the problem, you got got to define the market. And you got to define how big the problem is for the person you want to tackle. And then you make the pitch for that person. Yeah.

Speaker 1  50:47  
Okay, for making a which one segment to attack? How do you make a decision when you have the same material that has received positive feedback and industrial funding support? And two vastly different markets for the same material?

Speaker 3  51:00  
Great question. And so let's take a great example. membrane, you've got a membrane that separates carbon, and maybe you have a membrane that can do desalination, two completely different techniques, or the same technology to different big problems. And you actually could do both. The the challenge, okay, wrapping your head around those problems, the people who are making those decisions are vastly different. So just be aware, it's very, very difficult, particularly as a startup who's trying to focus on solving one big problem and taking your first dollar. So I understand you have two phenomenal things with two markets saying Love it, love it, love it, you know, your axe? It's actually a good problem to be the question, how do you clone? The? How do you clone the science of them? And you're solving business problems with two different teams, at the same time when most startups don't even have the resources to support one great team? So wish it were? You know, that's a good problem to have you have technology that is that phenomenon? It's

Speaker 2  52:21  
a great problem to have. The one thing I learned that I took away bigger than life from business school was how to make objective decisions without having my heart in the decision process at all. And this is that kind of question, right? You probably are looking at this saying, Oh, I liked this group. I liked it in your you're involved in and attached to both these markets. And they're both making, you know, they're both making progress. So it's a hard thing to do. But what you you can look at is how to make that objective business decision. Look at the market potential for both markets, side by side and make a pros and cons list. Look at the amount of shear versus competitors and the shear that competitors are going to take for each one of those markets. Look at the ease of market entry versus the barriers to entry in each of those markets. Look at your supply chain. If you have a supply chain involved for each of those markets, if you don't, because it's the same material, then that's a wash, ignore it. Anything else that's a wash between the two you ignore in your decision process. And you only focus on the differences between the two markets. And at the end of the day, which one's bigger, easier or smaller and easier depending on what you're willing to give up. And you make that decision from an objective standpoint. Not from a subjective standpoint and not from your heart. It's got to be with your head and with analytics and with data that you make that decision because otherwise you will be sorry, you made the decision. And it doesn't hurt to that your decision either. And get some industry friendlies advisors, people that you trust, to review your objective decision making and maybe call out Did you ask this question? Did you ask that question, and then add those to the list and define your pros and cons. I once had to make a decision between two job offers, which I know is not the same thing. But in a way it is I had to make a decision that I was going to pursue one track and completely give up the other track. And that's the decision you're talking about here. I had to sit down and I had to list pros and cons and oh boy, even at the end it just was it was a really, really difficult decision. And I made the wrong decision at first. But I wasn't afraid to pivot before the decision was finalized. And I was glad I did pivot because even though I took the one for smaller money than the larger money I got the better culture fit I got the better market fit for me and that's what you're really ideally looking for, for you and for your products is what is your best fit and what's going to propel you forward the past and asking those questions and objectively evaluating side by side is the best way to make a decision like that. Well said I Thank you. It's a hard one because I am not always perfectly objective. I lead a lot with my heart. And so that's that's something I had to learn. And it was a very good lesson. And I And I'm grateful for that lesson.

Speaker 1  55:14  
What are your best tips to improve response rates for market research interviews?

Speaker 2  55:20  
This, this is an easy one, offer them the the results of the market research, anonymized. So you're not going to give out anybody's name or Ph i or PII or anything like that. offer them a final report of everything, if they participate in if they give honest, earnest answers. It's a value, it's going to be valuable for them to get it back.

Speaker 3  55:42  
And I would say also the measurement, start measuring and say what, so that you can improve, you want to improve? Response, right? You want to convert and improve conversion, essentially. And, and you can always improve. And that's really, I think, what your goal is, if you're not happy with the response, they really have to ask people why why aren't they responding? What's wrong, you know, talk to your colleagues network saying, How can I improve this otherwise improve conversion.

Speaker 2  56:20  
There are some also pretty simple rules of thumb to follow in terms of conducting market research. So if you look at when you're expecting someone to respond for free, that the the research itself, the questionnaire, the interviews have to be short, easy and not take up a lot of their time. If you're going to offer a per diem as some type of financial benefit, debit card, you know, a gift, something like that, you can have a little bit longer. But you should always stick to the time you say it's going to take, make the questions very clear, so that they easily can respond. Set the expectations right up front and follow some of the the kind of tips and tricks for if it's a free one, it can't be more than five or six questions. If it's, you know, if it's a paid one, you can take up to 15 minutes or half an hour or, you know, follow those types of rules that are out there and be very, very careful to set the expectations correctly and to stick to them so that people feel like you've valued their time. And again, offer them the research back and that is always a winner, you will get a higher response rate if they think they're going to get in you are going to deliver not just that they think that you are going to deliver a copy of the final report.

Speaker 1  57:44  
Okay, what was the fourth source for market research activity in biology space, PubMed clinical trial analysts, and then question mark, the fourth one. Oh,

Speaker 2  57:56  
yeah. What did they say? So clinical for clinical trials, analysts. newsletters, go to the newsletter sign up for things like fierce bio, there's a number of other newsletters in the bio space that will point you into the direction of getting more research and more links to things that are happening. CB insights was another one I've gone to before, but that's more of a technology. One DESE bio is another one. They focus on the biotech space pretty exclusively. And they do a very good job. A lot of its paid, but you can also get some free things online. And the in I already mentioned the analysts, I guess that's the bio was sort of an analyst. I hope I've answered that question I think I did with the newsletter was the fourth one. What

Speaker 3  58:47  
my my recommendation because I've had to do this in so many fields, Google biology, market research, best biology market research, you'll get five pages of every source. Yeah, know exactly where to go.

Speaker 2  59:02  
Agreed. I mean, that's, that's the obvious one to me. And I always forget to mention it, because that's what I do first, but it has gotten a lot better. I remember the old days of Google, it wasn't very good. But it's gotten a lot better. Another browser you can use it's more private DuckDuckGo Bing. There's several if you want to get different search results and compare them to your Google results. But Google really does the job. I mean, they're they're pretty, pretty good. Agreed.

Speaker 1  59:32  
This is a simple one. How do you maybe it is maybe it isn't how do you show B

Speaker 2  59:36  
A S H oh, I believe. Let me just I can't I can't go to that right now. Hold on. It's a B as in boy, a sh Oh, hold on. Let me just make sure that's correct.

Unknown Speaker  1:00:10  
Yeah, sales,

Speaker 2  1:00:14  
faster sales training, they they go through the way to kind of write these letters. It's all about asking questions upfront and making sure you understand the problem and who you're writing to. So you provoke them so that they you get a response. When when I was developing personas for another company and a playbook so that they could go to market and they had their playbook. We had to look through the industry and what, you know, what were some compelling issues. So I was working in cybersecurity at the time, and asking questions around. Did you realize there were x amount of cybersecurity attacks on Y amount of hospitals in X amount of time kind of thing? And did you realize that CISOs CSOs are looking at these types of technologies to shore up, they're proud and asking those kinds of questions, gets a person thinking about, well, what am I doing? And then well, wow, this person is asking some really interesting questions. Maybe I should talk to this person and see what other people are doing. Even asking the question, would you like to know what other industry leaders in your space are doing about this problem? is a way to get a conversation with somebody? And yes, it's B as in boy, A S. H. O.

Speaker 1  1:01:35  
Can you give any examples of universities that are successful in licensing their technology to organize marketing efforts in regard to staffing and approach?

Speaker 3  1:01:51  
Sounds like an organizational question like do you have physical sciences, people and responsible biology? Pharma? It sounds like, you know, when you're taught, you're taught, it sounds like the questions oriented to how should I organize my licensing, operation? And technology? Are you reading that? That way?

Speaker 2  1:02:23  
I'm a little confused by the question. I read it slightly differently. It sounded to me like the person. Vanessa is looking for examples of universities that are trying to staff for marketing efforts for their licensing of their technologies. But I switched the order when I was thinking about that. So I might have that wrong, but it does sound like they're looking for guidance. She's looking for guidance on staffing and approach to organizing marketing efforts around licensing technology. And do we know any universities that have done a good job of this? That's that's how I interpret it. I

Unknown Speaker  1:03:13  
could be completely wrong.

Speaker 2  1:03:17  
We'll see it Vanessa can respond down below. Hold on a second. I'm scrolling scrolling scrolling. I have a correct. Thank you. Okay, so Vanessa is looking for examples of universities that have taken a staffing and approach to organizing marketing efforts, and more successful marketing, their licensing and technology. I mean, I'm trying to think of the top universities, I mean, records does a great job. I know that I also know Penn does an excellent job to pen innovation, but how they actually staff and approach I don't have the insights to that. I know, John, you mentioned earlier in this in this call that each each university does have department or department usually associated with it, that helps and has resources to help entrepreneurs get their their technologies out in the marketplace, and and, you know, provide staffing, some support and some services, but I don't exactly know how they're organized, because I've not been on the inside workings.

Speaker 3  1:04:29  
Have you? Yes. What's some and I don't want to comment about you know, I haven't I don't have that. Deep books. You know that Brett? I know some do a great job. And I don't want to it might be an offline discussion of the ones I'm familiar with. Because I'm not familiar with that many. And it's, again, it's a difficult problem. The because that intellectual property can go into so many markets. So that is the burden that the tech transfer professionals have is to figure out, wow, does that make sense? You know, should we go after which markets? And which ones and why? You know, I wish I wish it were easier for you. But

Speaker 2  1:05:32  
yeah, and we will give our email addresses. So we can you can follow up afterwards, too, in case you want to have more of a conversation. So I think we have a slide at the end for that. Let me actually, let me just put that up. While we're going through questions here. I can.

Unknown Speaker  1:05:46  
There. You ready for another question?

Speaker 2  1:05:51  
Yes, hold on a second. Something happened to my screen here. There we go. Yep. Yes, we are. Okay.

Speaker 1  1:06:00  
Can you offer guidance on what type of conferences do the C suite to VPS? Attend for us to establish these connections? Yeah, so

Speaker 2  1:06:10  
it's gonna go back to it depends. I know, that's been our standard answer. We're like accountants today. It always depends on what industry you're in, what technology you have to offer. One of the conferences I attend regularly. And I my mentor, and reviewer and moderator for the conference is HIMS. It's H I M S S, and it's for Healthcare Information Management System. Society is what it stands for. Very many VPs and C suite people go to that conference. It's a yearly conference. They also have regional conferences. So if you're not willing to travel as far you can go to a regional conference, if you're in the space of technologies offered to the healthcare market segment, pharma companies have begun going to that DIA is more of a conference for for those types of folks in drug information, Association for pharma and biotech. There are just millionaires, foreigners, oh my gosh, there's a million conferences that these people attend. But those are two of the higher value ones, one for the pharma biotech sector and one for the healthcare information management system, society sector that that I attend regularly that I find these kinds of people that work with chemicals,

Speaker 3  1:07:19  
it's ACS is a big one. Yeah, this question goes right back to the question about segment number one, the number one principle, the folks who are in a sector all hang out together, they all go to the same conference or conference is, so solving that one problem, you'll go and meet all of the people solving to you now have to go to two sectors, conferences, meet two sets of executives understand where two groups hang out, much, much more difficult. Start talking three, four, it becomes unmanageable, which is why, you know, picking that one sector, understanding where the folks hang out, what is the problem they're trying to solve? You know, again, they're traveling multiple problems, what's the biggest problem? Next bit of problems? Again, can't say focus, which is counterintuitive. They ought to really focus in. Okay,

Speaker 1  1:08:25  
should I post on the open innovation portal of the big companies? And how effective is that?

Speaker 3  1:08:36  
That's interesting. That's an interesting question. Trying to think of success ratio, you know, success rates. I guess I have not heard how successful people have been with open innovation portals, meaning if something's really a big problem, there is a group of executives who are investing to solve that problem. And, you know, there's a discussion of partnership, there's real effort, real investment, where if there's a, you know, nice to have, versus we really want to solve something. And so I don't have a strong Open Innovation Board. That was the way to go.

Speaker 2  1:09:29  
And yeah, I'll add a little bit to that. I don't have a lot of experience with this, either, except it's smaller companies that were that were looking for innovation partners. And I'll give the example. It was, it's a smaller company, I would call them into your company. The company was click and they're still in business. They're there. They're bigger now. They're a billion dollar revenue company now that they had an open innovation portal and marketplace where they asked people that wanted to be partners with them to go ahead and post the solutions they developed on their platform, and that would give them new business that would give them consulting opportunities that would get you they could sell their product on the marketplace. We had a lot of success with that. But that's because we had a business model in place where we had a huge partner community in terms of the four P's of marketing product, price place, promotion place is how you sell, we had both a direct and indirect sales method. This was a medium sized company. And so smaller companies could post on our site. And they they would get a ton of business through that. Because that was our go to market our go to market was through our partners 50% of the time. I think it depends with the bigger companies, how much business they do with partner smaller partner organizations, how valuable you're going to see or find that if they're not doing a lot of business through their their smaller partner organizations, it's not going to be as as valuable as if they are pushing a lot of, you know, engagements in business through that channel. Does that make sense? To you?

Unknown Speaker  1:11:00  
Yes.

Speaker 1  1:11:04  
Can you share some insight on how to grow your network and connect with relevant industry professionals?

Speaker 2  1:11:13  
Do you want me to start I built two networking organizations in Philadelphia for each and one was Kim firemen. One was under Greater Philadelphia senior executive group. And so I was providing places for people to network here. And a lot of local regional areas have different types of organizations. The best way I found to grow mine network was getting involved in these types of networking groups and professional associations. So healthcare Business Women's Association, HBA is large is international at this point, it's very huge. It connects mostly women, but men have begun to join in the regional areas that are interested in health care, and it's usually around pharma and biopharma. And that's where you can make a ton of connections. There are other organizations like that, that you can attend some meetings for free before you have to join, you want to be kind of careful, because you want to select the ones that are most valuable for you. So you want to test them out first, the one problem I know I ran into, and I was expanding my network was that I joined too many and all of a sudden, my wallet was empty. It's expensive. So you want to pick the ones that are most relevant to you. And John, do you want to add to that, because that's how I met you actually was through one of these networks.

Speaker 3  1:12:33  
So my tip would be and it also leads right into the next question on the executive bench. How tech transfer eight what you want to do to expand your bench? Think through the kind of group you want to, to attract meaning? Do you want to have a group of industry executives you could tap into and almost like a consultants who are advice? Or do you want, say, an entrepreneurs network where the entrepreneurs are constantly looking for cool technologies that they could take out and lead and they usually are market leaders. So they'll come in with or no cash and look over your technology. And you might be able to work with an entrepreneur's network, which is different than the group of industry consultants who you may have to pay either a small fee for advice, or they're looking for projects, maybe a project, something's big enough, like you want an NSF grant, and you're actually going to figure out how to take it to market or do an industry deal. So those are, you know, but think that through I know, Rutgers has a great group and they do the tech advance fund, each station, they invest $600, everybody, three executives get $200 A piece. There was an investment that Rutgers makes to expand their bench, they probably have 30 people that they tap into, and they keep refreshing.

Speaker 2  1:14:07  
And on the other side of that there's also if you're looking to build your own executive bench for your small entrepreneurial startup kind of company environment, attracting people to those people like me, and like John like to be advisors and hold advisory roles for small companies and help and be part of their technical bench. So there's always the opportunity to tap into your network and expand your network and offer advisory roles. Some usually in an early stage and start up their non paid roles, but they could be option roles where you provide them some stock option for doing the service, especially if you're asking them for a lot of help. You can target the kind of people you want on your advisory role so you can pick people that our marketing executives or our sales executives or our revenues chief find The actual officers that can help you with a revenue problem. And it's always, you know, important to know what it is you need in terms of advice and how, and then you pick the personalities and the people that are best fit those needs that you have at the time, you can make it a rotating thing where it's not, you know, a full year, or maybe it's a full year, but then you rotate off and you get someone else in. There's all sorts of ways to do that on a smaller level for a company, as opposed to getting them attracted to a university and building the bench and tapping into a bench at a university. So there's, there's many ways to skin that cat.

Speaker 1  1:15:35  
How much marketing work should be on the P, I also work in a small tea to

Speaker 3  1:15:47  
coffee, you know, it's a tough one. The good news is, is we're saying, Hey, pick the first market, you know, pick the one market and then do a fairly decent job of, Okay, what does that market look like? And again, Google's your best friend, you can come up with some pretty quick, industry overviews that describe, here's how the polypropylene business works, you know, pick any, any sector and you can get a picture of the value chain pretty quickly.

Speaker 2  1:16:34  
Oh, sorry, I was just going to echo what what Todd said. He said it well, if focus is your friend, and Google is your friend, so focus Google and then go from there and get your your list and then you won't have to invest as much time in terms of, you know, how much time or how much work, only you can really decide that it's what you need to be able to move forward. So it's going to be individual to what your need is.

Speaker 1  1:16:58  
What is the best way to identify market needs problems using secondary research sources?

Speaker 3  1:17:11  
Secondary means public handle the public market, right?

Speaker 2  1:17:20  
The way I define it primary is when you go to a person that's actually in the space and you have a conversation. Well, that's a primary research outreach. A secondary would be aggregated research out in the public domain, pretty much. That's how I look at it, but I you know, I'm not sure the person's it means it that way. So that that's what I would,

Speaker 3  1:17:37  
you know, I'm being the, the way I use it. In my day to day life, I use headlines. You know, I'm in the cutting edge of AI technologies. And there's lots of headlines that I'm putting in my PowerPoint to get in front of CTOs on a daily basis. And so, you know, Forbes article, referencing, you know, a new generative model, right, look with Chet GPT has been doing the past months. So

Unknown Speaker  1:18:17  
yeah, headline headlines is the number one place with the headlines.

Speaker 3  1:18:30  
And that's, again, Google's your friend because they have a news section. So

Unknown Speaker  1:18:36  
are you working for Google now instead of IBM?

Unknown Speaker  1:18:41  
But unfortunately, use

Speaker 1  1:18:49  
market years actually don't know, who cares about their technologies? What position would be the easiest gatekeeper to reach out to?

Speaker 3  1:19:00  
The easiest gatekeeper, I found it just it's not. The chief technology officers needs intellectual property. Right. So if you're have it, the classic gatekeeper is the chief technology officer saying, Hey, I, I have this amazing technology. Here's what it could do. Would you be interested in taking a look? I mean, so I would think chief technology officers would want to get closer to tech transfer University books.

Speaker 1  1:19:39  
I think we have one more that came in through chat. Your LinkedIn InMails, where work better or the 300 word messages, so blanket, emails or 300 word messages, which is better?

Speaker 3  1:19:56  
So I'll give you my part. I liked the day is a blend of the 300 character. Because it's an ad, it's an invitation, I want to see if I can convert, I have InMail, I can do attachments, I can send technical papers, I don't want to spam anyone, I want them to accept my request. So that's why I like the discipline of the 300 characters. People will argue with that, but that's the way I like to do things.

Speaker 2  1:20:29  
That helps with the 32nd 62nd pitch, if you can't get your message distilled down to the 300 characters, or maybe 500, I would give you 500 Because I'm already and I have a hard time with 300. But the point being, you gotta get down to 30 seconds really are you are, you're gonna fail in any kind of communication to get that first spark ignited in that person that you want to ask you. Well, what's your three minute pitch, I liked your 32nd. One, I want to hear more, you want them to come back and say that, so you need to provoke enough. And just enough to get them to do that. And the discipline that John is describing, is going to help you with your, your 32nd, elevator pitch as well. So you really need to practice on that. And it is not easy. I'm a marketer, I've been a marketer most of my career, and it is not easy for me. So I can appreciate it's probably not easy for you either. The best thing I found to help with that is sometimes you can't see the forest through the trees. And if you're in the middle of the problem of trying to distill, the best thing you can do is reach out to someone you know, that knows enough about the industry to be dangerous, but doesn't deeply know it, and can maybe help you kind of distill it down because they're not going to be as subjective about it, they're not going to be as attached to it and they're going to be more objective. So that I would offer that up is what I would and that's what I do I run things by my I've got my own executive bench is a one person show that I go to people I go to when I say hey, I need to run this by you this communication I'm having I'm struggling with this because I'm emotionally attached to this communication. And it's, it's costing me can you help me, you know, pare this down, and they do know and people will help you to

Speaker 2  1:22:15  
question is how do they get access to the presentation slides? Yes,

Speaker 1  1:22:18  
I dropped. Stop that and chap. And I'm not sure if they're able to access it or not. I, I didn't set up this webinar. So I not sure you know exactly how it's set up. So email me worry about that. I will email it to them seems like the easiest thing to do. So we'll make sure that they get those slides and then they'll have your contact information to in there if they want to follow up with you. So on behalf of odd autumn, I would like to thank Ellen and John for this informative presentation. You guys were great. answering so many, so many questions. That was that was really good. I enjoyed it very much it was helpful for me. And thank you to all our attendees for joining today because you were they were who they drove this, this, this presentation today. A recording of this webinar will be available in the autumn Learning Center in about a week. It's included within your registration. So if you want to go back and review something, please take advantage of that. Please complete a webinar evaluation which should open when you sign out of this session. And I will also be sending a follow up email later too. So this helps us serve your needs better in the future. So thanks again, everyone, who was a great question and enjoy the rest of your day. Thank

Speaker 2  1:23:41  
you. Thank you, Anne, you did a wonderful job. Thank you for hosting us and thanks, John. Thanks for the invite. Thanks everybody. See you. Bye

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