TandemLaunch Spring Call for Proposals

The next call for proposals deadline will be August 27th, 2012.

TandemLaunch has quarterly calls for proposals for our invention acceleration program. Please subribe to our e-updates to be notified of new calls. Thank you to inventors who have submitted to the April 27th deadline. We will keep you updated on the status of your project in our review process.

Making University Ideas a Reality

The TandemLaunch Program is suited for entrepreneurial university inventors who want to develop their multimedia inventions for the consumer electronics market. Our unique acceleration program empowers researchers by providing up to $1M worth of at-cost investment funding, business and technical development staff and equipment, market expertise, and industry connections. Researchers also benefit from our specialization in audio, video, display, and human-computer interaction technologies. The spring priority areas are expressive speech, and conferencing technologies.

Multimedia projects appropriate for the program are scalable to the broad consumer electronics market, can be licensed, and require a budget of less than $1 Million to develop an initial prototype. To learn more, contact Katie Young Morris at projects[at]tandemlaunchtech[dot]com

Background and Objectives

TandemLaunch Technologies bridges the technology transfer gap. While universities are the greatest source of technological innovation, there is a gap between university and industry that keeps a large percentage of these innovations from making it to industry and, ultimately, everyday consumers. One of the ways we bridge this gap is by providing university inventors with the turn-key resources they need (made-to order financing, staff, infrastructure, and industry connections) and aligning our interests with inventors by operating on a common equity share structure, rather than the investment cuts preferred by venture capitalists.

At the same time, we work closely with our industrial partners to ensure that every TandemLaunch project solves real-world challenges in a way that smoothly integrates with commercial processes. At the end of our program we enable the transfer of the invention into industry or the creation of a venture-funded company.

Spring Priority Areas

1.Expressive Speech – Speech synthesis and processing techniques that achieve natural synthetic speech audio.

2.Conferencing– Tools that enhance the audio and video conference experience, such as the identification and extraction of individual voices in a scene.

Funding Structure

TandemLaunch provides all funding, staff, and infrastructure required to develop projects accepted into the program. Project funding will be capped based on the nature of the proposal, with a maximum $1M investment. This is a continuous at-cost funding model, which means that resources will be assigned as needed, to the level required for the scope of the project, and as defined by the leadership team of the project (Inventor, University, TandemLaunch). When an inventor' s project is accepted into the TandemLaunch program, a new company (NewCo) is created, and its equity shared on a common share basis between the Inventor, University, TandemLaunch, and NewCo contributors (e.g. staff, advisors). TandemLaunch only receives equity in NewCo based on actual dollars spent to develop the project, up to an agreed upon maximum.

Inventions ready for commercial deployment are then licensed or sold to top players in the consumer electronics market, and NewCo equity shareholders receive revenue in the form of dividends. Inventors interested in developing a product business are also encouraged to apply. For more information on the TandemLaunch model, please contact us or refer to the Our Business and FAQ sections of our website.

Intellectual Property and Confidentiality

Applicants are requested to apply using publicly available information only. Please do not include any confidential information in your application. Applicants must agree that non-confidential application information may be used for external review by industry partners. Once a project is short-listed, the process to share further information will be agreed upon.

The intellectual property of proposed projects must be protectable, ideally through patents. When a project is accepted into the TandemLaunch program, an exclusive license will be granted to develop the proposed invention.

Application Procedure

Applications can be submitted directly to Katie Young Morris at projects[at]tandemlaunchtech[dot]com and should contain the following:

• Primary applicant’s name and full title, University, and contact information (including phone number and e-mail address)

• Names and affiliations of any secondary inventors

• A brief summary of the invention and the problem it solves (300 words maximum).

• A brief summary of the invention’s potential applications, current limitations, and development remaining (300 words maximum).

• An indication of whether or not the invention has previously been licensed and under what conditions.

• Demonstration materials or benchmark comparison data.

• The status of the invention's intellectual property protection, and a statement indicating whether the technology has previously been licensed and for what purpose.

• A rough outline of the investment required to develop an initial prototype of the invention.

• A list of any publications, presentations, patent applications, or other public documentation that exists on the invention.

• A statement granting TandemLaunch consent to use the publicly available information provided in the application for the purposes of external project review by industry partners.

Proposed projects will be evaluated to ensure:

• TandemLaunch has the appropriate expertise and resources to make the project a success.

• The invention can be scalable to broader consumer electronics, and is amenable to a licensing business model.

• The invention can be protected through patents.

• There is market interest in the invention.

• An initial demonstration prototype can be developed with an overall budget of $1 million or less.

All applicants will receive notice of decision, and a project opportunity evaluation summary.

Next Application Deadline: August 27th 2012

Submit Your Proposal to TandemLaunch