We all know the primary drivers of the problems: Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), untrusted apps on the Android marketplace and the fact that iOS is not 100% secure either – just to name a few. And what are they after? Well the obvious answers are: enterprise data, user data, payment data (bought anything on your mobile device recently?) and then there is the whole question of just plain privacy.

There are startups and big companies focused on the problem space. There are companies wrapping apps within a secure wrapper i.e. containerization, ones that separate the data and the user from the device and those that address the problem with a personas based approach (aka VMWare Horizon) to just name a few approaches. So, what remains within the problem space that still needs to be solved? Well, turns out there are plenty and the panelists with full of ideas on what next to solve. Let us talk first about some opportunities addressing specific use cases:

• Containerization of email attachments. The most used app on mobile devices is email. Email attachments constitute one of the most common threat vectors for malware entry on to a device. As it stands today, there is no widely adopted or embedded method to open all email attachments within a secure or permissions restricted container so that the actions that any potential malware can effect are limited or curtailed
• Password unlock: Today the most common way to lock a mobile device is with a pin. Innovative ways to enter the pin other than just plain from a keyboard would make it harder for malware such as key loggers to read the pin. For example, Microsoft recently announced a method by which a picture is presented to the user and a sequence of touches of specific points on the picture constitute a password that unlocks the device

Then there are the larger, broader topics that enterprises are scrambling to tackle and represent some of the larger opportunities for startups:

• Solve problems around compliance : What kinds of enterprise data can reside on the device? If it is resident on the device then is the user allowed to access it all times? What if the user is accessing the data from a public network? And what does all this mean for compliance?
• Solve problems around APTs: The user is now the new perimeter of security defense and not just the enterprise network. The footprint that an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) can attack is now your whole employee base multiplied by the number of devices they own on average! This is a new class of attacker who is sophisticated, extremely well funded, typically with a very targeted goal and is willing to wait as long as it takes to get there. But remember, the attacker is not rewarded for finding the hardest way in but rather the easiest way in. No security measure is 100% secure. So, what can you offer that can increase the cost of intrusion?
• Device Traffic monitoring for security: What is coming in and going out of every single user’s device? What is the level of visibility that the enterprise has to this? What is the level of visibility the user has to this? What traffic behaviors can be analyzed to protect against known and zero day malware?
• Mobile+Social+Cloud : All of this exists on your device today already – Facebook Mobile+Zynga is probably the most recognizable example. How do we protect against the threat vectors that this combination opens up?
• Gamification of Enterprise mobile security: Yes, I know – this one is a little bit out there but this really could be an out of the box way to think about not just mobile security but enterprise security? What can we learn from game industry in terms of user and autonomous agent behaviors as well as incentivization and bring to the security space? Gaming+Mobile = hot space. Gaming+Mobile+User Incentivization= Security could be an interesting equation. Ash Devata might be on to something here and this may be a wonderful topic for a follow on discussion

And then as I sat there listening to the panel, I realized – wait a second, I bring MY device to the enterprise to improve MY productivity FOR the enterprise. The solution approaches are being thrust on to MY device! So, why should I not be allowed to Bring Your Own Security (BYOS)? Who is tackling the consumer mobile security problem? Something to chew on …

Panelists:
• Puneesh Chaudhry, CEO Copiun
• Todd Christy, CTO Verivo Software
• Ashok Devata, Marketing Manager Data Security, RSA Security
• Andrew Borg, Senior Research Analyst, Aberdeen Group
• Moderator: Rodney Brown, Mass High Tech

By: Vikram Venkatasubramanian

About the writer: Vikram is a TiE Boston member and security industry professional based out of the Boston area who is very interested in the mobile and virtualization security problems.

Last month, thousands of words were written about Steve Jobs, topped off by the recent release of his official biography. I will add a couple short paragraphs to those words, based on my direct impressions on meeting him and pitching both my company (Quattro Wireless) to him and, post-acquisition, discussing iAd product ideas with him. A short anecdote will suffice to tell the story of both his style and his impact.

Steve was very involved with product discussions and decisions within Apple even after he went on medical leave this past January. I visited with him and fellow executives in February for an iAd business and product update. He listened during the business update without too much comment until it was my turn. “I have an idea,” I began, and it was remarkable to watch him lock in. His gaze was intense and he almost willed me to lose my nervousness and to settle down and tell the story behind the idea – there was no Keynote presentation or document between us, just people around a table focusing on an idea. We debated furiously when I had finished explaining the gist of the idea, and then he went to the whiteboard to recap what I had said and we had discussed and how he thought I should think about it and present it to the market.

I left the meeting thinking that he had given me the utmost respect any person can give another – to stop, focus, and listen to the other’s idea. I have no idea how bad he was feeling that day, but I can imagine –since I worked for his company and I needed his input, so he was there to give it to me in very simple, precise terms. I remarked to a friend after the meeting that this is what it must have been like to learn from the legendary Indian sages, like Vishwamitra – a teacher who demanded absolute clarity and simplicity in thought and deed but who repaid the student’s efforts a thousand fold with his own intensity, insight, and vision.

Steve Jobs, co-founder, CEO, and chairman of Apple Inc, died on October 5, 2011 at the age of 56. As the world mourns the loss of this successful and visionary entrepreneur, we at TiE Boston pay tribute to Steve Jobs with an article by Brett Arends of MarketWatch on 12 lessons for us all from the life of Steve Jobs. We hope this provides you with inspiration and ideas that will keep Jobs’ legacy alive.

Click here for the article.

Richard Roberts did not grow up thinking “I am going to be a Nobel Prize winning scientist.” Instead, he dreamed of being a detective. That probably came from his love of puzzles and logical thinking, which his school headmaster encouraged and fostered. Like most extraordinary people, he also had that one major event that would change the course of his life; he received his first chemistry set as a gift. Playing with his set and discovering fireworks and experiments eventually led him to the realization that he wanted to be a chemist. Just because he had a passion for chemistry, did not mean that he actually enjoyed studying the sciences. In fact, he despised not only chemistry but also biochemistry. He even failed A-level Physics during his first attempt. Aside from learning science in his own way, he also loves playing chess, billiards, and video games! So you see, he is not so different from many of us.

I am not saying that we should not be in awe of all the amazing achievements he has made for the science field because we should be. I am just pointing out that to this extraordinary man, there is another side; an ordinary side that all of us can relate to. We should use this knowledge as inspiration to be innovative in the work we do. If a man like Roberts, whose childhood dream was to be a detective, can go on to becoming a Nobel Prize winner in Physiology or Medicine, then anyone who has had a passion and big dream should be able to accomplish what they believe in.

Come out to the Newton Marriott on October 18, 2011 to hear Sir Richard Roberts talk about “Genomes, Computers, and Experimentation in Biology.” For more information, click here.

Ever imagine a new car for under $2000, a refrigerator for $69, or even a cataract surgery for $30? Probably not. But thanks to Mashelkar’s push to innovate through clever engineering, even the most expensive products have been brought into the realm of the possible for everyone.

He has been propagating a balanced culture of innovation and intellectual property rights for over a decade. His efforts led to the growing awareness of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) in India. He successfully challenged the US patents on Basmati rice, Turmeric and Neem, setting up new paradigms in the protection of traditional knowledge base which led to the set up of India’s first Traditional Knowledge Digital Library.

Thanks to Mashelkar, using ancient recipes that have been passed down from mother to daughter for generations does not fall under patent infringement. Just like Gandhi stood up to the British against tax on salt, Mashelkar stood up to the corporations trying to patent Indian staple items. Maybe that’s why his model for innovation is called “Gandhian engineering.”

Mashelkar has said that India is the land of ideas and the US is the land of opportunity. It is no surprise then that he would take such an active and critical role in shaping India’s reform policies in Science & Technology, Auto Fuels, IPR, Telecom and Higher Education in order to change India from the land of ideas to the land of opportunity.

To hear from a man who overcame poverty to become one of the most decorated Indian scientists with over 50 awards and medals at national and international levels is sure to make you think and maybe even inspire you to innovate in a new way.

Don’t pass up the opportunity to hear Mashelkar discuss innovation and creating breakthrough technologies on October 4 at MIT.

Founder Brian Krejcarek has been a self described tinkerer since his childhood in Orgeon. He has been building physical things for as long as he can remember, and until this week, his most noteworthy creation was a cabin that he built in the woods near his home. Based on the overwhelmingingly positive reaction that he engendered amongst some of the US’ most prestigious and prolific angel investors, founders and entrepreneurs this past week (both on the grand jury and in the audience at Jason Calcanis’ very successful reformulation of what had perviously been known as the Tech Crunch 50), this is no longer the case. As of Thursday night Pacific Time, it is absolutely clear that GreenGoose now easily qualifies as Brian’s most impressive achievement to date. Like every success story, this one was not without its challenges.

Brian decided to come to the Northeast to advance his idea, looking for a program to provide him with mentoring and capital. Ultimately, he was connected to Betaspring, a mentor driven accelerator program for technology and design engineers which is based in Providence, Rhode Island and is a member of the TechStars Network. Brian met with Owen Johnson and the leadership team of Betaspring, was accepted into the program, and had second thoughts at least twice before finally heading to New England to participate in the twelve week program. Brian was very hesitant to leave his home state and his beloved lifestyle. Ultimately, his desire to build a great company and to change the world won out.

Brian showed up in Providence with his trademark green crewneck sweater – the same one he wore on sage at Launch in the photo above – and a very rough design realization of his vision of making a fun game platform for doing things in the real world. The approach is to use very low cost wireless sensors embedded in stickers that can be placed on toys, water bottles, tooth brushes, dental floss, cereal boxes, skate boards and bicycles. Its both for young kids and families but also applies to “big kids” and can be played on the web as well as Facebook and Twitter or on your mobile device. Brian applied himself diligently during the Betaspring program, applying the lessons conveyed by his mentors and refining the system design.

Upon successful completion of the program, Brian moved to Cambridge and started working out of the Cambridge Innovation Center. It was there that he quickly caught the attention of Bill Warner, Founder of Avid Technology and Wildfire and more recently, a prolific angel investor and tireless supporter of entrepreneurs. Bill has been on a mission to mobilize the Boston angel community and was instrumental in bringing TechStars and the Open Angel Forum to Boston.

Bill is a system designer, and when he passed by Brian’s working area he was immediately captivated, as Brian was not staring into a laptop but an oscilloscope – an instrument that was far more common during the historic minicomputer era in New England than in today’s mobile app and web 3.0 world.

Bill sat down with Brian, and the young entrepreneur educated the master on the state of the art of low cost sensor and accelerometer design. Within an hour Bill was completely hooked and became Brian’s first investor. Of course, as many people know, along with Bill’s money comes his relentless support and encouragement. Given Bill’s increasing national visibility as an evangelist for angel investing, he was invited by Jason Calacanis as one of just two Boston area investors to join the Grand Jury at Launch.

Soon after, Bill immediately started encouraging Brian to begin to accelerate his product development so that he could be ready in time for the Launch event. Owen and the Betaspring team provided their own push. Brian was far from confident that he could pull it off. The push from Bill and Betaspring combined to convince Brian to go for it. By all accounts, Brian has spent the past several months literally working around the clock to make the deadline. According to Nick Tomarello, another Launch company stage presenter and Bill Warner protege, Brian is often at the CIC working until 5AM. As Brian shared with me at the event, he has barely slept in months.

When I met Brian at the event, I was struck by several things. First, his personality. He is quiet and unassuming and he has a very boyish enthusiasm. Brian is also maniacally focused on placing every discretionary dollar into the product. His green soft cover briefcase was badly scuffed and the handle was held together by duct tape. He told me that his grandmother gave him $50 so that he could buy a new briefcase. Of course, the cash was immediately spent on the business (sorry Grandma). His baggy green sweater – the same one he showed up with in Providence – now had dark elbow patches which were a recent addition. This guy is clearly not very concerned about fashion and it clearly did not matter.

Brian was initially not slated to present on stage – he was one of many companies relegated to the Launch Pad or what is affectionately called the Demo Pit. A little push from Bill Warner and other members of the jury ultimately won the day – and it gave Brian the opportunity to find his way onto the stage and to forever change the trajectory of his young company.

When he took the stage very late in the day the jury had already sat through over twenty presentations. It would have been understandable if they had lost some of their mental energy and focus. Then, something remarkable happened – as Brian described GreenGoose, he absolutely captivated the audience – and the jury – with his pitch and his demo.

Brian simulated the motion of brushing his teeth – where a tiny sensor with an abundance of battery power – translates the motion of the toothbrush into a message that is wirelessly transmitted to the base station and publishes a record of the completed activity online. He then proceeded to demo other activities, like taking vitamins and drinking water, with a similar result.

The implications of the demo were made clear – GreenGoose enables people to get lifestyle points for each activity they undertake in pursuit of a healthy goal. The company’s tagline is “Play Real Life Even Better”. We have all read about the Internet of Things for a while now – and IBM’s Smart Planet ubiquitous campaign has made the concept mainstream. GreenGoose is an elegantly simple and highly practical early realization of the idea. The audience got it and boisterously vocalized their support. The jury’s reaction was immediate.

It was a particularly compelling demo considering so many of the other companies were playing the execution game in the social / mobile / geo-location space. In this case, there was real technology under the hood. As several of the more technical members of the jury noted, what GreenGoose has delivered is by no means easy. They are pushing the boundaries of deploying low cost sensors and accelerometers (the sensors are approximately 45 cents per piece with the product now in pre-production in low cost China).

A humbled Calacanis was asked how he could have possibly missed this one.

Give Jason credit for admitting in front of the audience that he and his screening team had erred by not green lighting GreenGoose to the elite group of 50 presenting companies. Jason then quickly took the offensive to compensate for his rare miss (the Conference was extraordinary), and began exhorting the jury to commit on stage to investing in GreenGoose. He simultaneously pushed Brian to make his deal terms explicit. Within a very brief period, both Shervin Pishevar, Founder of WebOS and currently CEO of SGN and an angel investor in Plancast, Gowalla and Aardvark (acquired by Google) and Jay Levy had each committed to invest $50K in the company. This is simply something that you do not see happen in Boston. The audience went wild.

In a short period of time, VentureBeat picked up the story and erroneously reported that GreenGoose had raised $100 million dollars on stage. Despite the bubble in Silicon Valley, this was a three order of magnitude miss was particularly noteworthy. On day 2 of the Conference, Brian spent much of the day in back-to-back meetings with various investors at the conference. Bill Warner was at his side for many of these meetings. The GreenGoose demo station was visibly – but quite understandably vacant.

As the conference was wrapping up, the Grand Jury handed out a Series of Awards. GreenGoose won the well deserved award for Best Overall Company to Emerge from the Launchpad.

During the wrap-up, Bill announced that he expected GreenGoose to close on additional $400K in investment by end of day, Friday, bringing GreenGoose’s raise to a half million dollars. For Brian, it was an incredible validation of his venture and a huge push forward. Maybe now he can finally replace his beat up briefcase before his grandmother figures out what he did with the really money.

Click Here to read this article on BostInnovation’s website
Editor’s Note:
Mike Grandinetti, a serial entrepreneur across five software start-ups, is currently the Managing Director of Southboro Capital and is an active Mentor in TechStars, the Founders Institute, SeedCamp Europe and IBM SmartCamp. He is an active judge and mentor in Mass Challenge and served for many years as a judge in the MIT $100K. He served as a mentor at the recently completed Launch Conference in San Francisco.

On People
There are 3 types of people, those that fight change; they are usually brushed aside; second, those that adopt to change; they are the ones who work for you; and those that cause the change, these are the entrepreneurs!

On Entrepreneurship
No one will give you the chance to become an entrepreneur but yourself. So you have to decide to take the plunge on your own! The path of an entrepreneur is very lonely and hard. Giving up that comfortable job is very tough, especially if you are also married and have had a taste for settled life.

Society does not support you, as well. No one from outside will encourage you to become an entrepreneur; they in fact will think you are odd, wasting your time, etc. Once you succeed of course they all come and tell you that, “they knew all along you had it in you to make it.”

On the difference between Entrepreneurs and Managers
Entrepreneurs are disrupters, innovators, restless; they cannot sit still until they have worked out the idea that is driving them sleepless. An entrepreneur thrives in chaos; he/she is not happy with a 5% improvement but works on 5x or 10x change on the frontier. Entrepreneurs have a totally different mindset and thrive in times of rapid change. Thus, I think entrepreneurs have a huge advantage today as the internet is rearranging the economy worldwide.

Managers on the other hand are stream liners, they stream line the process – do not like disruption, and they make incremental improvements and want everything to run smoothly.

Managers have a tough time becoming an entrepreneur but the reverse is true as well. The process of transition from an entrepreneur to manager, once an entrepreneur has created an exciting company, is hard. Entrepreneurs do not settle down and that is why often the entrepreneur needs to move on and create the next thing that has started to consume his attention.

First principles of Entrepreneurship
“Being an engineer, I always went back to first principles.” As an entrepreneur you must focus on the value to the customer, on something the customer needs now! Price does not relate to cost but to value. If there is a demand for the value, the entrepreneur can price the product accordingly. Customer needs to be given the best and a reliable solution but they need to pay for it as well. Once you have that, the entrepreneur can price the product accordingly especially if your solution is the only game in town.

On Failure
Failure is absolutely a part of entrepreneurship. In this journey there are several things you need to learn, a great deal of sensitization that takes place. In the world of entrepreneurship the one who lasts out the others, the one who survives is the one who is likely to succeed. Even if you fail the first time, get out and do it the second time, third time, as the odds only get better each time.

But it’s important that the entrepreneur who has failed asks the right questions and is honest with himself. While entrepreneurs are wild, passionate and difficult to pin down, they must hold themselves accountable. They must develop milestones that they set for themselves and benchmark their progress to those to keep them on even heel.

In the face of failure, the entrepreneur should not say, “I failed because my engineer did not get the product out on time, or I failed because I lost an order and customer, or I failed because the investors pulled out the money.”

Instead, if an entrepreneur fails, he should have a mindset that says, “I was not smart enough to see that my VP of engineering was falling behind and he needed help. I failed because I was not able to see that my customer was not satisfied or that I was not able to convince the investors to stay on.” An entrepreneur should have both short term and long term goals and build a road map that tells him he is on track.

Entrepreneurship is not for everyone
Not everyone needs to be entrepreneur; it has to come from within. You have to find a way to de-stabilize yourself. Find a way to step out of the comfort zone. Going without a salary for a year or two is hard. Only 1-2% of people take the plunge to be entrepreneurs, once you do that the odds against you improve. And each time you try, the odds only get better. If you do well the upside is unlimited.

The Journey
When Kanwal took the plunge as an entrepreneur, he was one of the first engineers from India in Silicon Valley to do so and thus was a path breaker. It was a very lonely journey wherein he often heard that Indians were nerds; good at engineering and that he should stay in the back office and continue to build products. He was also very comfortable, had a settled life but got “de-stabilized” when one of his colleagues left to start a company.

Kanwal developed a completely new disruptive technology solution at the time and the rest is history. But he had the painful task of self learning the nuts and bolts of entrepreneurship. He soon realized that he would not succeed because he was working hard or that he was smart (because there were many like that) but because he could design and build a valuable solution that did not exist until then and better still had a lead of a few years with little competition.

On Exits
Building a company is not for every entrepreneur. Scaling up the operations to national, multi-national, applying the distribution and financial muscle are skills that every entrepreneur may not develop along the way. In such case the entrepreneur is better off handing over the key role to others. The entrepreneur, as the innovator, is better off consolidating their value and continues onwards. In most cases the routine also becomes mundane for an entrepreneur and in those scenarios they move on to do something new, innovate and create value in new markets.

On TiE
From his own experience, Kanwal became a strong advocate for entrepreneurship. He founded TiE with the purpose to encourage and inspire others to become entrepreneurs. Eventually the decision to become an entrepreneur comes from within, but having role models, mentors and teachers is of tremendous benefit, that is what TiE set out to do.

TiE’s influence has been to inspire people to take the first step. It becomes easier when you have role models, people who tell their stories and it sparks others; the idea is to de-stabilize folks.

On Mentoring
Entrepreneurs must find mentors who have been through the process themselves, those who have been a founder or part of a founding team, only then does it provide intrinsic value. As Kanwal put it, “The thing about knowledge is that it takes 20-30-40 years to accumulate, but if you share it you don’t lose anything. But the other person gains a lot from your experience. Thus, there is a huge benefit for entrepreneurs just from interacting with experienced entrepreneurs.” That is the platform TiE provides and its lasting value of bringing mentors to the aspiring entrepreneur!

For him, becoming a mentor, a teacher, and an investor, has been a very enjoyable journey. As the world is changing rapidly, we find entrepreneurship exciting, its needs must be aligned with the changing times! That is why the work of TiE and its mentors is so crucial!

Vanita Shastri is the Executive Director of TiE-Boston, the second largest chapter of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) that Fosters Entrepreneurship globally through mentoring networking and education. She has a Ph.D. from Cornell University and has actively taught courses on International Entrepreneurship, Business in India, and Indic Civilization. She has also been a policy consultant at Harvard University and worked for Redwood Investment Systems, Inc. where she directed their global operations. Vanita has also founded two non-profit organizations, including the Meru Education Foundation and the Habitat Learning Center in Delhi, India.

BOSTON, MA – January 25, 2011 – TiE Boston, a nonprofit organization that fosters entrepreneurship in the New England area, today announced the launch of TiE Angels, an angel investment group comprised of charter members of TiE Boston. TiE Angels’ mission is to provide entrepreneurs access to seed capital and ongoing strategic and operational support. Entrepreneurs are encouraged to visit TiE Angels website (www.tieangelsboston.com) to submit their business plans for investment consideration.

According to the latest Money Tree Report, venture capital funding increased by 19 percent in dollars and 12 percent in the number of deals in 2010 over the prior year, the first such annual increase since 2007. However, according to the most recent data released by the University of New Hampshire’s Center for Venture Research, angel investors across the country put much less money into startup deals during the first half of 2010 than they did in 2009 or 2008. The study found that in the first half of 2010, 65 percent of membership in angel groups were “latent” angels, or individuals who have the necessary net worth but have not made an investment — an increase of non-participation from 2009 of 54 percent and 36 percent from 2008.

“Increased VC funding is a good sign for entrepreneurs and the economy, but angel investing still hasn’t picked up yet and entrepreneurs are having a difficult time securing funding in the current economy,” said Abhishek Jain, chair of the TiE Angels steering committee. “With TiE Angels our goal is to help promising early stage companies, particularly those in the Northeast, bridge the gap between innovative ideas and successful operational companies. TiE Angels is a natural extension of TiE Boston’s primary goal of fostering entrepreneurship. Now, in addition to all of the entrepreneur-related mentoring and events TiE already provides, we are enabling start-ups to launch with initial capital.”

Members of TiE Boston include successful entrepreneurs, top executives of Fortune 500 companies, Venture Capitalists, academicians, analysts and policy makers. TiE Boston charter members have founded or head some of the best known businesses in their respective industries. The 35 founding members of TiE Angels have significant financial and experiential resources to invest in promising new ventures.

“As an investor and an entrepreneur, I’m thrilled to be part of TiE Angels to help finance, advise, and take a bet on other promising entrepreneurs in the area,” said Ramesh Motwane, TiE Angels steering committee member. “Our economy depends on the innovation and fresh ideas that entrepreneurs provide. TiE Angels’ expertise and flexible operating structure will allow us to move quickly to seed fund the next great business ideas.”

TiE Angels plans to invest in a range of early-stage companies, with priority given to those in the following sectors: healthcare, clean-tech, Internet/digital media, mobile, software, financial technology, technology-enabled services, and communications. The group expects a typical angel investment to be approximately $500,000, but they can syndicate up to $2 million.

TiE Angels aims to provide a forum for innovative companies to present their ideas and to attract funding from an accomplished group of individual investors. Entrepreneurs seeking capital may submit their plans to TiE Angels at www.tieangelsboston.com to enter the evaluation process.

For more information, visit the TiE Angels Website at: www.tieangelsboston.com
About TiE Angels
TiE Angels is an angel investment group of TiE Boston. The mission of TiE Boston is to foster entrepreneurship through Networking, Mentoring and Education. TiE plays a critical role in bringing together investors, entrepreneurs, service providers and public organizations to create an eco-system that fosters the genesis of great companies. TiE-Boston launched TiE Angels to provide entrepreneurs and start-ups with much needed seed capital and the support that they need to get to the next level. TiE Angels is governed by a Steering Committee.

TIE ANGELS is not a venture fund, an investment bank, a broker/dealer, investment clearing-house, or an Investment advisor, but rather a forum in which investors may be educated on aspects of investment and business, as well as be introduced to companies for possible investment. TIE ANGELS is not registered with the Securities Exchange Commission or any state securities commission. Each member of TIE ANGELS is responsible for his or her own investment decisions, and TIE ANGELS is not recommending any particular company for investment. Investors must conduct their own due diligence and negotiate the terms of any investment they elect to make.

Media Contacts:
John Isaf
Weber Shandwick
(617) 520-7056

Vanita Shastri
TiE Angels
(781) 272-3875

Langer’s presentation was structured on his scientific discoveries and innovations and how these were the centerpiece of launching companies. Langer, a 30 year veteran of developing drug delivery systems, admitted that his path was not without challenges. Early in his career senior scientists and peers were skeptical of Langer’s experimental results. He was told, “You cannot do that.” But convinced of the scientific rigor and truth in the substance of his research, Langer pursued and filed for his first patent in the 1970’s. The patent process was arduous but Langer persevered and got his first broad scope patent that helped launch his entrepreneurial journey.

One of the stellar examples Langer cited was from his research on drug delivery systems approach for large (biological) molecules, which was against the scientific belief of the time which accepted such delivery systems to be only applicable to small (chemical) molecules. The early research in this case was from his post-doctoral work with Professor Judah Folkman, wherein they had explored novel methods for drug delivery with large molecules. It took an immense effort to get this technology accepted and patented, finally resulting in a broad blocking patent that was filed and led to the successful culmination in starting a biotech enterprise (Enzytech).

Ever since, Langer has had remarkable success at being an innovator, scientist and entrepreneur. He shared his experiences as a founder and the challenges he faced in taking breakthrough technologies from the research lab to the market. The initial resistance by the scientific community to his discoveries and his methodology only made his conviction grow stronger.

He perfected the model of getting the science right, then spinning off a company with graduate students, post-docs, and colleagues; helped and funded by venture networks to build real value for all stakeholders. In specific, Langer spoke about revolutionary inventions that were transformed into companies including Alkermes, Momenta, MicroCHIPS, Transform Pharmaceuticals, BIND Biosciences, AIR and others.

Langer’s entrepreneurial journey and his work offer key takeaways and lessons not just for Life Science entrepreneurs but for all entrepreneurs:

1. Faced with an industry or academic myth, do not give up.
2. Persevere
3. Academic excellence is a must.
4. Scientific research must have sound fundamentals.
5. Patent it, if rejected, don’t give up, work on it and get a broad based patent approved.
6. Scientific findings should be subjected to good peer review, both in publications and patent estate (examples of his such a company was Enzytech/Alkermes – now just Alkermes).
7. Publish your findings in respected trade journals.
8. Creating new solutions through scientific rigor will defy myths, which goes to the essence of entrepreneurship (examples of such a company are AIR and Momenta).
9. Entrepreneurship opportunities are presented through identification of a scientific problem.
10. Entrepreneurs figure out creative ways to work towards a solution (examples of such a company were MicroCHIPS and TransForm).

Langer highlighted that companies are successful when helmed by a champion who believes in the technology and/or solution and knows that it’s going to work. In that context smaller companies are better for innovation; as it’s easier to push through new and innovative ideas to see the light of day. Large companies are not great harbingers of Intrapreneurship. He emphasized that struggle for funding is common, so entrepreneurs should tap into both public and private or hybrid funding mechanisms for creation and advancement of new technologies.

Langer, who is a pioneer in biotechnology fields of drug delivery systems and tissue engineering, holds more than 600 granted or pending patents and has authored over 1,100 scientific papers. He has commercialized his research into products and founded multiple successful technology companies. To name just a few of his other accomplishments, he won the Charles Stark Draper Prize, the Millennium Prize and over 180 other awards. At MIT, Langer runs the largest biomedical engineering laboratory in the world. Langer imparted valuable lessons to entrepreneurs on what it takes to commercialize research and build a leading company in medical technologies arena at this TiE-Boston event.