Innovation Gold Fund
In 2005, Fr. John I. Jenkins, president of the University of Notre Dame, challenged Notre Dame to become “the world’s preeminent Catholic research university.”
In the 21st century being counted as a leading research institution comes down to one thing: impact.
Hundreds of world-changing inventions including the internet, Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine, Google, antiseptics, and CAT and MRI scanners came from discoveries made at other universities.
The impact these innovations have had on the world has been nothing short of revolutionary.
The IDEA Center at Notre Dame was created to ensure that the ideas and inventions coming from the University’s labs would impact the world much like these inventions have.
It takes a great deal of resources to make groundbreaking technologies ready for impact.
The IDEA Center at Notre Dame was developed to ensure that the ideas and inventions coming from the university’s labs wouldn’t just sit on a shelf but would impact the world much like these inventions have.
The Innovation Gold Fund aims to provide capital to advance early-stage University inventions to a technical proof-of-concept and to support student entrepreneurial apprenticeship programs that fill the operator resource gap on faculty startups.
The early stage of university inventions creates a “proof-of-concept” gap between what is investable and where the technology readiness sits today. An operator gap also exists as faculty are rarely interested in leaving their positions at the University to become founders of startups based on their technology inventions.The Innovation Gold Fund will be leveraged to fill both of these gaps by evaluating commercial potential, demonstrating the value, advancing the technology, and training student founder associates in order to derisk the project to investors.
- $500K - $1MM Annual Fundraising Goal - Proof-of-Concept derisking capital raised through philanthropy
- Industry Focus - Investments will be open to all industry verticals but will target the regional high-growth industries of Big Data/AI, Blockchain, Software/IoT, Manufacturing Tech, and Healthcare.
- Deep Tech Pipeline - Investing exclusively in technologies and startups coming out of Notre Dame faculty members’ research and labs.
- Evergreen - All returns will be funneled back into the Fund via reimbursement of derisking expenses and/or SAFE note investments.
- Impact - By 2028, we estimate investments to progress more than 100 faculty technology inventions.
Competitive Advantage
- Exclusive deep tech pipeline of 50 - 70 ND faculty inventions per year.
- Unfettered access to ND resources, faculty, and students to help support commercialization activities.
- Dedicated 8 person commercialization team who are experts in entrepreneurial training, derisking and commercialization.
- Proven Commercialization Engine process that has been designed to programmatically assess, vet, and develop nascent technologies. This process identifies each technology’s competitive strength, potential market value, and breadth of likely IP protection.
- Network of over 1,400 ND alums that have signed up to support the IDEA Center and are available to engage as technical experts, industry advisors, operators and mentors.
- Startup space at Innovation Park, a 80,000-square foot entrepreneurship center and unique collision space designed to catalyze business acceleration, entrepreneurship and collaboration in the region.
TIMELINE - Innovation Gold Fund will start accepting donations starting in January 2022. To make a donation, please fill out the form below.
