Introducing the Entrepreneurism & Leadership Mentor Profile Series: Entrepreneur, Author, Founder & Mentor Jack Savidge

The von Liebig Entrepreneurism Center is approaching its 15th year of serving the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering as a pathway to innovation and an organization dedicated to teaching entrepreneurism to the engineering leaders of tomorrow. Helping UC San Diego affiliates take their products into the market is one thing we’re more than proud of doing. In the last three years, we’ve taught more than 52 NSF I-Corps teams, awarded more than $500,000, raised over $1 million in early stage funding and launched two international programs in Asia and South America. The students from our program have had some incredible successes, taking home prizes every year at the UCSD Entrepreneur Challenge, California Dreamin’ Entrepreneurial Contests and even gained recognition at regional Social Innovation Challenges.

The Oculux I-Corps team takes home second place at Entrepreneur Challenge

We could not have accomplished these workshops and programs without our von Liebig advisors and mentors. At the von Liebig Entrepreneurism Center, we are tirelessly looking for those who have done their research, have proven their technology and are determined to put their product on the marketplace, so that we can connect them with mentors who are equally dedicated to seeing them succeed. Our advisors are seasoned entrepreneurs, former CEOs, directors, consultants and engineers, but most importantly they are also the mentors, coaches, experts and angels who have been instrumental in growing and expanding our teams’ businesses and market potential.

Wearless Tech Inc. completing the National I-Corps Program with von Liebig mentor Dennis Abremski

As a tribute to our wonderful staff of mentors and advisors, we would like to introduce a brand new series of mentor profiles to be featured in the Entrepreneurism and Leadership Programs newsletter every two weeks. Our mentors have amazing stories to tell and we are excited to share them with you.

For our first profile, we have selected an individual who has had an inspiring and unparalleled entrepreneurial career journey as well as a huge impact on the von Liebig Entrepreneurism Center.

Jack Savidge Entrepreneur, Author, Founder & Mentor

Jack Savidge is a recognized entrepreneur, mentor, consultant and new venture teacher. At the Jacobs School, we know Jack as the influential founding member of the von Liebig Entrepreneurism Center and the mastermind behind the Center’s unique model. His entrepreneurial career is unparalleled and has hit numerous bases; Jack shared that his career journey wandered through cutting grass, washing cars, driving delivery vans, fixing cars, creating high school field-days and refreshments stands and selling postcards to tour boat passengers. Then during 13 years with 3M Company he convinced management of the need for and became the firm’s 1st Marketing Manager. When he was 36, Jack left a 3M executive future to start an independent consulting company that spanned 45 years in La Jolla.  While a consultant to worldwide clients, the Executive Director of a local nonprofit and Vice Chairman of a regional health insurance plan, he also conceived a university-based technology incubator whose advisors of mentors, coaches, experts and angel­ advisors worked with potential UC San Diego entrepreneurs. He led the von Liebig Entrepreneurism Center funding and formation in 2001. Jack has been an advisor for the Center since its inception and his card reads - Founder and Senior Advisor.

Despite his long and exciting entrepreneurial career, Jack explained there was not a particular moment where he was taught to or decided to become one. “I did not know what an entrepreneur was at age eight, when I clipped a comic book coupon to become a door-to-door seller of garden seed packets. Then World War II urged again selling Savings stamps and war bonds up and down my street. I learned the thrill of making the sale using only my skills as Jonathan Swift wrote, ‘vision is the art of seeing the invisible’ – and I would add ‘and making that vision almost real to a listener’.

Jack explained that this breadth of experience is what helped him become a mentor and learn more about the different PathMasters along the way. “One cannot be a consultant or mentor until one builds an experiential reservoir of how people, product and service users, and different cultures react to change,” Jack explained. “Potential technical entrepreneurs took me into their trust as, being marketing centered, and I represented no intellectual or experiential threat and was a good listener who would challenge their thinking.”

Jack’s Work with von Liebig

When Jack championed and gained approval to architect the Center in 1999, he envisioned a center that would continually create unique, entrepreneurial value-adding education and transfer processes that would accelerate industry adoption of Jacobs School knowledge, students and technology. He focused the von Liebig missions to be the transfer mechanism of proof-of-concept UCSD technology to the private sector, to transfer entrepreneurial knowledge to the UCSD community and to transfer entrepreneurism practices to Jacobs’s students. He strongly emphasized the importance in teaching people entrepreneurism the “why and what” of an entrepreneurial environment and delivering such course concepts that would be adapted by a scientific or engineering mindset. Jack knows that the von Liebig secret is its advisors and that emerging entrepreneurs should use them as their coaches, mentors and experts.

PathMasters for Microbusiness

“Most entrepreneurs reach for anyone called an “advisor” assuming they perform all roles of mentor, angel, coach and expert,” Jack explained. “In my view, this one size fits all is time and money wasting and hastens dissatisfaction between entrepreneur and advisor.” His recent book PathMasters for MicroBusiness guides micropreneurs (all start-ups microbusinesses) and current mentors/advisors to find each other,  how-to measure the other’s skills and needs, and what performance to expect from each other.”

Jack’s consulting assignments caused him to practice the role of each PathMaster. The book directly details differences of each PathMaster and best fit to help micropreneurs. The guidebook is thought-provoking as topics address the difficult, less talked about practices of poor counseling relationships, advisor compensation and their dismissal. PathMasters for MicroBusiness aims to guide micropreneurs and pathmasters alike, those who are budding entrepreneurs and those who are looking to begin and improve advisory consulting methods and behavior. Jack poses engaging questions and thoughts for entrepreneur and advisor to consider.

Jack’s Advice for Budding Entrepreneurs When asked what advice he would offer to aspiring entrepreneurs, Jack offered plenty: “Understand one’s inherent strengths and leverage those areas to seek value contributing work that excites one to get-up in the morning. It’s the old saying -- find a passion, follow it and the rewards will come. There is no Great Book with someone else’s map that will be yours - we all plot our own way. Think hard about the turns-in-the-road and measure to the next milestone by remembering that - ‘Risks are taken for success when the perceived rewards for success are greater than the perceived risks of failure. Perceptions of the two are measured with prudence.’”

von Liebig I-Corps Program Expands and Continues At Full Speed

Each quarter, the von Liebig Entrepreneurism Center’s I-Corps program continues at full speed, connecting students with the Center’s business and technology mentors and helping teams get ready to launch their products into the marketplace. During the 2014-2015 academic school year, the program had over 60 applicants express interest. 31 teams completed Phase I, offered in the Fall and Winter, and 25 teams completed Phase II, offered in the Winter and Spring. After graduating the von Liebig I-Corps program, two teams from the 2014-2015 cohort were accepted into the National I-Corps Program in Washington D.C., while others demonstrated their skills by competing in campus-wide, statewide and national competitions and taking home cash prizes and awards.

The Center is excited to see the I-Corps program expand and very proud of their teams and all that they have accomplished. The von Liebig I-Corps program is modeled after the National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps program, with two phases for teams to develop their business models. To offer flexibility and more mentoring to their students, the Center allows the accepted teams to decide whether they want to continue onto Phase II after completing Phase I of the program.

The von Liebig Entrepreneurism Center gladly welcomes UC San Diego students, staff and alums to apply to participate as a Phase I team in its the I-Corps program in the fall and join our network of mentors and entrepreneurs. While the hard work does not end here, we know it won’t be long until this cohort’s projects and ideas hit the market. Until then, we’ll let you take a peek at what many of our teams have been working on.

The Cocoon Cam team and mentor
Dennis Abremski completed the National
I-Corps Program in Washington, D.C.

Wearless Tech Inc., Intraocular Pressure Sensor, AMDepot, HeatSeq, Meego, Wastelights, Gyroscopic Ocean Wave Energy Converter (GOWEC), PlasmaCaps, 3D Organ on a Chip, EMERES: Cyber System for Structural Health Monitoring, Data Intelligence, Enzyme Diagnostics, MuDetect, Pressure Sensitive Touchscreen, Open Topography, SciCrunch and FRET Biosensors became experts at developing business models and are well-equipped with customer insight, mentor advice and industry connections to aid them in their next steps forward. These teams have completed the both phases of the program for a combined sixteen weeks of instruction and mentoring.

Team members Pavan Kumar Pavagada Nagaraja, Sivakumar Nattamai and Rubi Sanchez founded Wearless Tech Inc,. a company that further developed their project Cocoon Cam: Wearless Smart Baby Monitor in the I-Corps program with mentor Dennis Abremski, VP of SoCal EED, Inc. Cocoon Cam is a wearless (non-contact), network-connected baby monitor designed for parents looking for a simple, secure way to monitor their newborns. The device uses machine vision to measure heart and respiratory rate and infrared sensors to detect skin temperature. After completing the von Liebig I-Corps Program, the team went on to complete the National I-Corps Program in Washington, D.C.

Oculux team took 2nd place at this year's Entrepreneur Challenge,
AMDepot (not pictured) took home 4th place.

Mechanical Engineering graduate students Alex Phan, Yung Seo and Ben Suen of the Oculux (formerly Intraocular Pressure Sensor) team developed a novel implantable pressure sensor that allows continuous monitoring and enables physicians to personalize treatment plans for patients and better preserve their vision. The team explained that glaucoma is an incurable eye disease that affects 60 million people worldwide, and the lack of frequent eye pressure measurement prevents successful treatments and increase in total blindness. Oculux took home second prize at Entrepreneur Challenge this year and was also recently accepted into the Fall 2016 Cohort of the National I-Corps Program.

Mechanical engineer Wangzhong Sheng and nanoengineer Viet Anh Nguyen Huu of AMDepot developed a drug delivery vehicle that releases therapeutic amounts through a single injection of a depot that is activated by biologically benign flashes of light. AMDepot’s method reduces the frequency of injections needed, as well as allows noninvasively controlled dosing. AMDepot explained that the estimated global healthcare cost for eye-related diseases is well over $250 billion and that one of the most severe diseases, the wet-form of age-related macular degeneration (wet AMD) affects 2 million Americans and can lead to severe and sudden loss of vision. The current treatment for AMD requires monthly or bi-monthly injections of drugs into the eye, which can lead to complications with each injection. AMDepot also took home fourth prize at this year's Entrepreneur Challenge.

HeatSeq team members Dustin Fraley and Stephanie Fraley developed an integrative technology that allows for rapid, automated, and highly accurate DNA profiling from a single precious clinical sample. “We are developing this technology for use in personalized medicine, where there is a need for more comprehensive molecular analysis of DNA for profiling diseases and drug efficiency,” wrote the team members.

Meego team members Delara Fadavi, Aditi Gupta, Ian McNair, Sammie Wang, Oscar Guerrero and Katya Grishna explain that stolen laptops, in the United States alone, account for $2.1 billion in losses annually and that most thefts occur in public places or during travel. The team aims to deter laptop theft through their small, mountable portable device that will sound an alarm when unanticipated motion is detected and notify owners via mobile alert if their Meego has been activated.

The Wastelights team took the hard reality that the world has an abundance of waste, but not enough electricity, and served up a solution. Team members Joyce Sunday and Nitya Timalsina developed their second prototype of a device that eliminates waste by converting it into electricity and biochar. Wastelights’ constructed prototype is able to reliably provide energy and eliminate waste without combustion at low cost and maintenance. During the program, Wastelights was able to generate transnational interest and conduct interviews from abroad.

Oscar Rios and Ardavan Amini of Gyroscopic Ocean Wave Energy Converter (GOWEC) address the need for clean and efficient power generation in a wide range of markets through the development of their wave energy converter that utilizes gyroscopic principles. The team explains: “the world currently uses approximately 15 trillion kWh of electricity per annum, representing just 0.02 percent of the energy contained throughout the world’s oceans.”

Graduate student Rajaram Narayanan and Prabhakar Bandaru, Ph.D. of the PlasmaCaps team designed a powerful energy technology that improves energy density capacitors. PlasmaCaps was accepted into the accelerated National I-Corps program in Washington D.C. and plans to continue improving their design. During the program, the team was mentored by Kai Wenk-Wolff, M.B.A., conducted customers interviews and incorporated feedback into their redesign.

The 3D Organ on a Chip team recognized that too many drugs pass cell based testing on to animal testing and that pharmaceutical companies spend $1-3 billion on each drug when bringing them to market. After conducting 23 customer interviews, team members Aereas Aung, Gaurav Agrawal, Ivneet Bhullar and Han Liang Lim identified a specific market niche and verified a need for their platform to reduce the time and cost of preclinical studies.

Structural Engineering Ph.D. candidate Hamed Ebrahimian presented EMERES: Cyber System for Structural Health Monitoring, his low cost system for rapid health monitoring and damage analysis of offshore platforms. Ebrahimian explained the need for their technology, noting that platform structures age, are expensive and often fail. His automated resident monitoring system would replace inspection process of platform structures, while its mechanic space model is trained to pinpoint damage, location and other detailed information that inspections cannot provide.

Siarhei Vishniakou, Cooper Levy and Conor Riley make up the Pressure Sensitive Touchscreen team who want to expand traditional touchscreens’ limited capabilities. “Most touchscreens can only detect location, and cannot sense how hard the user actually pressed” explained the team. Their product is a touchscreen that can determine the intensity of a user press for music, medical and gaming applications. During the program, the Pressure Sensitive Touchscreen team conducted over 20 customer interviews, saw a great fit in the market and found their biggest competitor.

Augusta Modestino, Ph.D. and Ph.D. candidate Elaine Skowronski make up the Enzyme Diagnostics team that hopes to fill the gap within in vitro diagnostics, so that data can translate from high-throughput volume labs to point of care systems. During their presentation, the team explained that diagnostics are the silent champion of healthcare and that there is a need for better result comparisons for in and out patients.

The Data Intelligence team from UC San Diego’s Math Department created a novel technique for data extraction, allowing users to merge databases and cross reference data for improved predictions. During the program, team members David Meyer, David Rideout, Asif Shakeel gained insight into how and where their product would fit best in the market.  

Matt Walsh and Aric Jonejah, Ph.D. of the MuDetect team created a simplified analysis system that only detects relevant mutations to reduce both cost and supply of clinics and labs. During the program, the team learned how to identify and target customer segments and define their value proposition.

OpenTopography team members Vishu Nandigam and Chris Crosby developed an improved high resolution dataset and software tool for processing data using a cloud hosted solution with web based software and an interactive map interface. Their workflow-based system provides a significantly more efficient solution for distribution and processing of massive datasets.

The SciCrunch wants to accelerate biomedical research by means of an open access “data ocean.” Team members Anita Bandrowski, Ph.D., Jeffrey Grethe, Ph.D., Maryann Martone, Ph.D. and Andrea de Souza, MBA want to develop a platform that makes data accessible easily findable, interoperable and reusable. Throughout the program, the team conducted customer interviews that helped them identify the market’s segments and customers and analyze its competitors.