The Life Foundry

TETRAVITAE BIOSCIENCE

Hans Blaschek had the unusual experience of being the accidental entrepreneur.

Blaschek, a University of Illinois professor of food microbiology, recognized early on that his laboratory discoveries had commercial potential. But it wasn’t until John Banta and Jim Keating of IllinoisVENTURES, LLC – the seed and early stage technology investment firm created to help commercialize University of Illinois technologies – knocked on his office door that Blaschek co-founded a company.

TetraVitae Bioscience – which produces biobutanol using a proprietary fermentation process and enhanced microorganism platform – is the outcome of that pairing. Its product is a scale up of technology that Blaschek developed in his lab, a bacterial organism that produces high concentrations of biobutanol.

“Because butanol is so toxic to the organism even very tiny incremental increases are a big deal. That’s why we patented the microorganism at that time,” he says.

TetraVitae is focusing its commercialization efforts in the “chemical feedstock” market, manufacturing biobutanol as a renewable alternative to be used as an additive for coatings (such as paints), molded plastic, and packaging.

“We never had to convince, even in the early days when John (Banta) and I went to Palo Alto we never had to convince (investors) that producing biobutanol was a good idea. They already had that info,” he says. “What they were interested in is how do you have a better mousetrap than the other guys. What is it about your technology that is better?”

TetraVitae has outside funding from investors including IllinoisVENTURES, RPM Ventures, Country Financial and Harris & Harris Group. It exclusively licensed the technology from the University of Illinois, where it set up its labs at the EnterpriseWorks incubator. In 2011, the company reached a major milestone as it successfully completed the demonstration of its process to produce biobutanol in a corn dry-mill pilot plant, showing it can be economically viable on a large commercial scale. For the demonstration, TetraVitae retrofitted an integrated corn dry-mill pilot facility at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville's National Corn-to-Ethanol Research Center.

Blaschek’s direct involvement at TetraVitae tailed off after an active first year, during which he actively pursued venture capital funding and helped make day-to-day decisions. As the company has matured, his role is limited to serving as a board member and being consulted on a scientific basis now and then. He also retains an ownership stake.

“We had a sense that this had a lot of potential on the commercial side,” Blaschek says. “But seeing it now coming to fruition is really the cool part because you can point to it and say, ‘This did evolve as an outgrowth of work carried out in my laboratory.”

STARFIRE INDUSTRIES

It happened one night in the Research Park.

Brian Jurczyk, co-founder and CEO of Starfire Industries, was discussing the problem of fertilizer runoff with a representative from another company located in the Research Park, and an idea was born that may address a worldwide agricultural and environmental issue.

Jurczyk developed a plan to use Starfire technology to scan a farm field and map out local nutrient concentrations and soil properties. The farmer can use the map to see where fertilizer needs to be applied, avoiding excess.

"It saves them money -- they don't waste; and it helps the environment while yielding more crop/acre. It's a win-win scenario," he says.

Jurczyk submitted a proposal to the National Science Foundation, which funded further research and development work with a Stage 1 SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research Program) award for precision agriculture. The idea has attracted interest from other companies on the Research Park, a local agricultural farming cooperative and the University of Illinois. Future opportunities for collaborations are a possibility, depending on the outcome.

Solving novel problems, leveraging government research and development awards and attracting corporate partnerships is the formula for Starfire's success. Started in a garage, Starfire moved into EnterpriseWorks and later graduated into its own space within the Research Park. As of 2011, it expanded to 17 full-time staff.

"A lot of our employees come to Starfire specifically because they want to be challenged--they are empowered and participate in the entire product development process," says Jurczyk, a University of Illinois alumnus four times over (undergraduate, master's, doctorate, and MBA). "What's fun about working here is that we get exposure to a lot of new things--creative people don't want to be bored."

Starfire employs industrial plasma engineering technology to do nuclear fusion -- without producing any radioactive materials. It is bringing a product to market that makes neutrons to be used for industrial analysis.

The company has used SBIR grants as its foundational funding, and it has been able to leverage those grants by attracting corporate partners to provide matching funding. The SBIR grants, on their own, often aren't enough to "go the full distance to prototype or to demonstrate that product fully," Jurczyk says.

The corporate partners typically are interested in the same technology, and have a need for the product or process, but don't want to take all the risk in funding it. As a result, the company has licensing agreements with a Fortune 50 and a NASDAQ-traded firm, and is working on more.

"It's all about finding and cultivating a champion within that organization that will go to the bat for you and be so fluent in your technology that it's almost like they're a member of your team," Jurczyk said.

RITHMIO

How far can a business idea travel in a year? If you use Rithmio as a measure, all the way from missile and satellite analytics -- to the wearable device market in one fell swoop.

Over a little more than 12 months, Adam Tilton, co-founder and CEO of Rithmio, has pushed ahead at a remarkable pace, establishing a startup company, reaching a $650,000 seed money raise, and ramping up to sell the company’s gesture recognition software to major electronics manufacturers.

“We’re at this great intersection of wearable technologies and the Internet of Things,” Tilton said of Rithmio. “That’s our big opportunity. So many devices can be connected in different ways to share information and do even more.”

Rithmio’s whirlwind journey began the summer of 2013, when Tilton and his advisor and co-founder, Prashant Mehta, attended the National Science Foundation’s I-Corps program. Their goal was to commercialize analytics software, developed by Mehta’s Mechanical Science and Engineering lab, for the defense industry, to improve missile guidance and satellite navigation.

“The first day [at I-Corps] I got up and talked about what we had and the type of defense customers we were after, and people sort of chuckled,” Tilton said. “Two days into the program, we were really wondering how we could find enough potential customers in that area.”

While in San Francisco, Tilton attended a wearable device demonstration and noticed how slow and inaccurate that particular device was. He immediately saw the potential in his own lab’s algorithms and thought, “I can do something better than that.

The key, Tilton said, was developing a motion-sensing device with gesture recognition—one that combines accelerometer and gyroscope functions into a single sensor. While still at the I-Corps program, Tilton worked for two straight weeks on a prototype before showing Mehta, who knew Tilton was on to something. Mehta’s lab immediately shifted its focus, and by that September, Tilton had a software startup, an I-Start grant, and offices at EnterpriseWorks.

“From the ground up, this is a different solution to pattern recognition and classification,” Tilton said. “What we’ve done involves repetitive motions. When you apply pattern recognition to motion data you get gesture recognition.”

Gesture recognition allows a device to “identify and track any repetitive physical activity with greater accuracy and differentiation,” Tilton said. Not only are repetitions accurately tracked with Rithmio, but the software is able to monitor and report on the quality of the repetition and form.

“You train your gesture recognition system just by doing the activity,” Tilton explained. “The software will learn the gesture according to how it was taught on training day.”

Once the device is trained, Tilton said it’s able to do an incredibly accurate analysis. It can even compare two people’s activities against one another.

In addition to refining the product, Tilton focused on honing the business plan and securing financial backing. Winning the top prize at the 2014 Cozad New Venture Competition was key.

“Our Cozad experience was huge,” Tilton said. “It helped us refine and practice our pitch, put together a business plan, and get feedback. There were investors and others in the room who saw our potential and wanted us to move to the next step. Really, the Cozad judges were responsible for making all of this possible.”

Tilton also references a “Made in Illinois” t-shirt he owns, saying that from his work with Mehta and his lab, to the many opportunities he took advantage of through the Technology Entrepreneur Center and EnterpriseWorks, the University of Illinois provided everything Tilton needed to create something big.