VisionTech Travels to West Lafayette for Purdue “Pitch Day”

Feb 24
Oscar Moralez, Managing Director
Oscar Moralez, Managing Director

This Wednesday, February 25,  representatives of VisionTech Partners and VisionTech Angels will  travel to West Lafayette to participate in Purdue University’s faculty “Pitch Day,” part of the Entrepreneurial Leadership Academy. Our role: to serve as technology commercialization and business start-up experts for the ten Purdue faculty members who will pitch their ideas.

We are looking forward to a great event. Too often, university faculty interested in commercializing their discoveries or in developing entrepreneurial activities have too few opportunities to gain the skills they need. Purdue’s Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship initiated the Entrepreneurial Leadership Academy in fall 2007 as a way to support, educate and mentor faculty interested in commercializing their discoveries.

One of the key objectives of Purdue’s Pitch Day is to foster collaboration with organizations like VisionTech Partners and VisionTech Angels that can provide valuable business startup and commercialization mentorship to faculty entrepreneurs. During Pitch Day, each faculty member gets 30 minutes in front of VisionTech and other participants, 10 minutes to pitch their ideas and 20 minutes for VisionTech experts and others to ask questions and provide advice.

Purdue faculty members selected for Pitch Day reflect a wide spectrum of entrepreneurial interests, objectives and stages. We will be hearing from individuals with technologies in agribusiness, biotech, information technology, and nanotechnology. While our official role is to assist faculty in building their knowledge base, it also provides VisionTech with a “sneak preview” of Purdue technologies and start-ups that we can possibly participate in as investors. So it is definitely a win-win for Purdue and VisionTech!

I would like to extend a special thanks to Dr. Candiss Vibbert, assistant vice president for Engagement and associate director for Purdue Research Park Engagement, for inviting VisionTech to participate in Pitch Day. Events such as this support our goal of being where inventors, entrepreneurs, investors, universities, and strategic partners converge to share, develop, fund, and launch innovative technologies.