NSF I-CORPS PROGRAM

Presentation to the IAB Meeting

Karuna P Joshi

June 13, 2013

NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program

• Set of activities and programs that prepare researchers to extend their focus beyond the laboratory.

• Teaches grantees to identify valuable product opportunities that can emerge from academic research, and offers entrepreneurship training to student participants.

• Eligibility• PI Must have an active NSF award • Must have I-Corps team in place at initial contact

Curriculum

• Based on hypothesis-driven business-model discovery (pioneered by Stanford and Steve Blank)

• Focuses on addressing market risk• Requires getting out of the lab to meet potential clients

• Mandatory for all I-Corps participants• Attend introductory 3-day workshop • Participate in 5 follow-on webinars with team

presentations/ interactions• Attend 2 days of demos/lessons learned

I-Corps Teams

• I-Corps Teams have three essential members1. Principal investigator

2. Entrepreneurial lead

3. Mentor

• Two rounds of interviews for acceptance• NSF Project Managers• I-Corps training team

• Highly competitive (acceptance rate ~ 18%)

UMBC Team Members

• Entrepreneur Lead : Dr. Karuna P Joshi• Research Assistant Professor, UMBC• Product Idea based on EL’s PhD Research• Research Focus : Cloud Services automation, Cloud

Usability (with NIST)

• Primary Investigator: Dr. Yelena Yesha • Professor , UMBC• Research Focus : Personalized Medicine, Cloud

Computing, Databases• Advisor to EL

• Team Mentor: Lily Bengfort• Founder of CenGen, VP DRS Technologies• Mentor at Path Forward Center, • Founding Member of Howard County Technology Council • Trainer in the ACTIVATE program

Our product: Cloud Services Broker• Initial Idea: Application to automatically discover, acquire and consume Cloud based services.

• Over 100 potential Customers talked to

Size of the opportunity• Total Available Market - $240B by 2020 • Served Available Market - Federal agencies, • International Agencies and Higher Education sector

• Federal Agencies (annual $10 billion by 2018). • Initial Target (For minimum viable product)

• Estimate CSB 10% of Market ~ $100 million

Business Model Canvas

Free/Advertisements Pay per Use model Subscription based model Consulting Services

Federal agencies

Provisioning tool for private cloud

Commercial cloud providers

Infrastructure costs Developer costs

Target customers free initial use

Bundle services

UMBC Tech Incubator

Federal agencies

Industry Defense

Contractor

Infrastructure Developers

Procure services that best match data, security, compliance

Reduce acquisition time by 75%

Machine readable SLA for live feed of performance.

Manage services on private cloud Automate Negotiation

Develop MVPSet up contracts with cloud providers, consumers

Internet Mobile App Cloud

First workshop in New York

What we Did• Lectures on Business Canvas and it’s components• Instructed to interview 15 potential customers in 2 days• Stepped outside our comfort zone – cold called companies in

New York, talked to people at the coffee shop.

What we Found• Security was a top concern for customers• Customers ready to pay more for security/branded clouds• Increased our customer base to include Healthcare/Pharma,

Financial sector - Organizations with compliance/regulatory requirements

• Cloud Identity Management big business (Security/Privacy)

Follow-up sessions in DC

• Got out of the building to interview customers • Contacted key players in Federal agencies, cloud providers, other companies

• Attended DoD cloud Assurance conference – gave us key insight on customer expectations

• Weekly updates to the teaching staff

Follow-up sessions: What we Found

• Security/Privacy key concern for customers• Revised Value Propositions based on customer interviews

• Security risk assessment• Cloud cost assessment

• Removed a key value proposition “Automate Negotiation”• Large organizations have mature procurement staff.

• Focused our targeted market to Federal agencies, International Agencies and Higher Education sector

• Determined customer acquisition cost• Customer Archetype diagram, channels and revenue

streams

Customer Ecosystem Diagram

CEO/CIOChief Acquisition Officer

Contracting OfficersProcurement staff

Program Managers

Chief Technology OfficerCloud Infrastructure Manager

End UserServices /

Software ManagerCISO (Security Manager)

OSDBUs, SADBUs, SBLO

Final Authority/ Cloud Strategy

Influencer

Decision Maker

Service consumer

Our Customer Archetype

Business Canvas

Insight

• There is a market need for Cloud Service Brokers• Customers want Independent / Neutral companies for this role

• Market in a flux due to ambiguous definition of what a broker should do• Some customers want the broker to do everything – negotiate

SLAs, contract oversight etc.• Others are still working on a cloud strategy.

• Cloud Providers currently not interested in tying up cloud brokers • Trying to get the “cloud broker” functionality within their offerings .

Links• Technical video on Youtube