Vanderbilt University is providing grant funding to the newly formed Greater Nashville Venture Capital Association to assist with its initial operations.
While Vanderbilt has created the organization and plans to provide it with some startup funds, the school is looking for volunteers to host the launch event, which will be held Nov. 13 at the university’s Owen Graduate School of Management. It is unclear how significant Vanderbilts’ financial contribution is to this initiative.
Just because Vanderbilt thinks it’s something good for the region doesn’t mean the region will embrace it, said Alan Bentley, associate vice chancellor at the Vanderbilts Center for Technology Transfer and Commercialization. We hope so. We expect this to happen. The only opinions from local investors we talked to are quite positive on this subject.
Vanderbilt is hosting the meeting so that regional investors and stakeholders in the entrepreneurship space can hear about the association’s vision. Bentley said the goal of the event is to meet people willing to volunteer with the organization and take on leadership positions.
Vanderbilt sees a potential need for such an organization in the city to coordinate venture activities, convene people, support professional development, recruit venture events in the region and facilitate such activities, Bentley said.
Bentley said there are similar associations across the country. But he said the Middle Tennessee region doesn’t have anything like this yet. While Vanderbilt does not engage directly with the venture capital industry, he said the efforts fit with the nonprofit university’s mission.
“We believe there is a high level of alignment between the efforts we are taking at Vanderbilt to commercialize university medical center innovations and what the corporate community can do through this association,” he said.
Having this type of association will help retain talent in the region, Bentley added.
Many of our faculty, staff and students aspire to become entrepreneurs, he said. I think this association can help facilitate that effort by retaining more talent to do whatever they want from an entrepreneurial standpoint in the Middle Tennessee region and the greater Nashville region.
He said his office is specifically responsible for commercializing ideas developed at Vanderbilt and that new venture creation is a key path to achieving that goal.
“Having a venture capital association like this will really help identify our venture capital resources and our startups,” Bentley said. Most research conducted at academic institutions is paid for by the public, so the public must see the benefits. Their benefits are new products and services that will benefit society. If we can do more of this [locally] and what’s more, we will all be better off.
