The startup journey of senior UARF fellow, Barry Rosenbaum

Interviewed by Faye Nicholson

Tell me about yourself.

Barry:  I graduated from Northwestern University with a Ph.D. in chemical engineering. I went to work for Exxon Chemical and spent my entire career for Exxon in the elastomers business including technology, manufacturing, and business management. I lived in Europe for six years. My final assignment with Exxon was bringing Advanced Elastomer Systems to Akron. One of the proud moments of that assignment was to rehab the BFGoodrich rubber plant. We helped to revitalize downtown Akron on South Main Street.
I retired from Exxon Chemical and went to work for OMNOVA Solutions. I was the director of corporate technology and, the technology vice president for OMNOVA Solutions for about seven or eight years. 
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How did you get involved with UARF?

Barry: After I retired from OMNOVA Solutions, I went to work for the University of Akron Research Foundation (UARF). Gordon Schorr and I started a concept of Senior Fellows who were retired business executives. Gordon spent 35 years with BFGoodrich, and our role was to help commercialize technology and build bridges and strategic relationships between UA and corporations in the region. We started the ARCHAngels Network. We did a lot of things, all focused on trying to create technology based economic development in Northeast Ohio.


How did you get involved with the I-Corps Program?
Barry: In 2012, Josh Wong, who is a professor of mechanical engineering at UA, came to me and said he had an invention which was a gecko-like adhesive technology, and he wanted to apply for a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) I-Corps program. The I-Corps program requires a team of people. You must have a faculty member who is a principal investigator, graduate students that are entrepreneurial leads and a business mentor. Josh came to me to see if I would be the business mentor for the team and participate in the seven-week I-Corps program at the University of Michigan. 
The I-Corps program requires 100 interviews within seven weeks. We asked the question like, “If you had an adhesive that was strong, and cleanly removable and reusable, would you buy it?” The answer was consistently yes, but they asked, “How much does it cost?” We had no idea. We asked, “What would you be willing to pay?” That question generated a lot of information. It turned out one of the key potential customers we interviewed was Elmer’s, an Ohio company. They gave us a lot of insight into what the value proposition of our concept would be.
Later we decided to start the I-Corps program at The University of Akron. We were one of the first of three to get an NSF I-Corps Sites award. We also started an I-Corps at the state level, so we are the only state in the country that has an I-Corps program supported by the state.

Tell me about Akron Ascent Innovations.
Barry: At the end of the I-Corps program you have to decide and make a judgement: Will the company go forward? Should we try to start a company or not? We had a lot of feedback from the marketplace, but we didn’t have a product. We had a concept and Professor Wong had done some research so there was substance behind it. So, the recommendation was to go forward and form a company, so we did. Professor Wong named the company Akron Ascent Innovations. After the founding of our company, we included UARF as a significant partner in the company. 


What did you need to start your startup?
Barry: We needed seed money to make a proof-of-concept sample. The State of Ohio has early state investment opportunities. We applied and received some state funding. We also applied to the NSF SBIR program. We included interview results from I-Corps in the application which was heavily oriented towards customer feedback. We included testimonials from Elmer’s and one of the RPM divisions. We got the state funding, and we got the SBIR award. We got the award primarily because of the work that was done in I-Corps on commercial development. We were able to hire people after we received the funding. We needed funding for equipment, and post docs to run the equipment to make proof of concept samples. The Phase I proposal from NSF was $150,000 and the Phase II proposal was $750,000. We were able to form a team and became a tenant at Bounce because we needed a laboratory, testing equipment and production equipment.

Talk about some high points and low points from your startup.
Barry: One high and low point was when we got a call from Velcro. They were interested in our product and bought a third of our company. For several years, we had productive developments with the company. After working with Velcro for a couple of years, the Velcro board of directors decided to pursue a different strategy and decided that they weren’t interested in pursuing their relationship with AAI. They gave back their shares. It was disappointing, but it didn’t hurt us financially.
Another high and low point was when we formed a close relationship with a company called SNS Nano Fiber Technologies. They also had a licensed technology from The University of Akron. They had spare capacity and, after doing some work with them and learning how to manufacture our product, we formed a team. Right in the middle of a commercial launch, SNS Nano Fiber shut down. So, in 2019 we lost our manufacturing supply and that was sort of a disaster for us. 
In the third or fourth quarter of 2019, we had been working with a strategic innovative company and we explained to them that we were going to run out of money. We didn’t have a manufacturing source. We were scurrying around to other places to make the stuff and we lost three employees because we couldn’t pay them. The company was very interested in expanding our technology platform and making a better adhesive. They agreed to fund our company for 12 months and replace our chief operating officer with one of their employees with a focus on technology and identifying a manufacturing path, not sales.
In 2020 Covid-19 hit, and it was a very difficult time. But the company stayed with us and continued to provide resources. At the end of 12 months, they were very happy with what they saw. We had technology potential, and we had established a manufacturing pathway. I thought they would continue the development program for 2021 but they said, “No, we want to buy the company.” So, we were acquired in June of 2021.


How has UARF helped your startup?
Barry: In every way. There are aspects of any business that entrepreneurs don’t think about until they get into the business. You have to hire people. How do you pay these people? How do you get their pay delivered to their bank? You have to have health insurance, worker’s compensation, and file taxes. The people on our team were technical people; they didn’t know how to do that. None of this would have been possible without Mary Ellen Hinkle, treasurer of UARF. They helped enormously with the services required to operate a company. Elyse Ball has been helpful in confidentiality contracts, employment contracts, consulting and finalizing negotiations with the acquirer.


How has AAI interacted with students?
Barry: When we got funding from NSF and from Velcro, we supported graduate students in the Department of Polymer Science and in the Department of Mechanical Engineering for four years. We subcontracted a lot of money to The University of Akron to support student interns. We also received NSF funding to support students at Lorain County Community College.


If you had one piece of advice to offer students, what would it be?
Barry: My advice would be to work very closely with the Tech Transfer Office and very closely with the equivalent of UARF, so you won’t have to figure out how to provide health care for your employees. I would advise working closely with resources at the university who support startups. I would go through I-Corps. I-Corps is the guiding light. Understand customer needs, market opportunities and the fit. If you can check those three boxes for a couple of years, it’s a tremendous learning experience.

What would you like to see?
Barry: I would like to see UARF engage universities and the innovation community. I want to commercialize university technology. There is a difference between commercializing university technology and going on Shark Tank. You are not eligible for the NSF I-Corp program unless the research was funded by NSF. Technology that comes from the university is almost always funded by the state or the federal government, or a corporation. If you have university research and it goes through I-Corps and identifies a customer need and a market fit, then that’s the research that I want to commercialize. 
My wish is that your newsletter or some medium encourages a relationship between UARF, faculty, university tech transfer offices and companies because companies have so much to offer even at an early stage. Velcro is a good example; they were willing to take the risk. So, building that relationship to inspire companies to get involved in university research of potential interest would be my wish.
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Is there anything else you would like to add?
Barry: The fact that we were a hard tech startup from a university and got acquired by a strategic innovative company demonstrated a pathway to work with strategic innovators and not venture capitalists who won’t invest until you have sales. The acquirer was not interested in our sales, they invested in the potential of the technology. Working with companies who see the longer-term potential is a model that can be duplicated and replicated because a lot of the technologies that come out of UA are those kinds of technologies.

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