SO far, San Diego remains a fertile breeding ground for entrepreneurs, despite the problems in the broader economy.
That is due in large part to a nonprofit organization, Connect, that was created 23 years ago to bring together people knowledgeable about business and investment capital with researchers at the universities and research institutes in San Diego.
“In 2007, we helped 54 companies start up, and there are 150 in the queue,” said Duane Roth, chief executive of Connect.
Connect is neither a business nor a philanthropy. It offers prospective biotechnology, telecommunications, computer software and electronics companies advice and programs that introduce them to investment and venture capital firms. It does not charge for those services, but it relies on contributions from 200 members, among them business, legal and financial people, as well as the directors of research institutes in the San Diego area like the Scripps Research Institute, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the Burnham Institute for Medical Research.
This idea of combining scientific potential and financial heft was the brainchild of the founders of the Qualcomm Corporation, which became a telecommunications giant; Hybritech, a pioneering firm in biotechnology that is now owned by Eli Lilly; and Richard Atkinson, the president of the University of California, San Diego. In 1985, they formed Connect as an extension of the university to turn faculty ideas into commercial products. Connect did just that under the leadership of William Otterson, a computer executive who built the organization over 13 years, despite his long struggle with cancer, which ultimately took his life at age 69 in 1999.
“Bill Otterson created the culture here, telling scientists and research people to share ideas and then compete in the marketplace,” said Mr. Roth, a pharmaceutical industry entrepreneur who took Connect’s reins in 2004. Today, he says of San Diego, “We have a chance to become the premier region in the country for innovation.”
Rolf Muller, a founder and chief scientific officer of Biomatrica Inc., is one of the people Connect has helped. Mr. Muller and his wife, Judy Muller-Cohn, chief executive of Biomatrica, are molecular biologists. They met at Oregon State University, married, went to Paris to earn doctorates at the Pasteur Institute and came to San Diego 14 years ago to work in bioscientific research.
As Mr. Muller recounts it, some of their work involved storing samples of genetic DNA and RNA, which requires preserving cell structures in freezers capable of extremely low temperatures.
“For 80 years, we have stored tissue samples and cellular structures in freezers. The costs are huge — $60,000 a year at least for each freezer, and 500 university laboratories have hundreds of freezers to store 10,000 samples a week,” Mr. Muller said.
The Mullers were studying small animals called tardigrades that exist in extreme environments, like the Sahara desert. Tardigrades can suspend their metabolism by dehydrating themselves and living in such a state for as long as 10 years.
“They dry up completely but come back to life when you put them in water,” Mr. Muller explained. So, he said, he and his wife got to thinking: what if such a state could be duplicated technologically in a simple plastic matrix in which shrink-wrapped molecules are stored at room temperature, eliminating the need for freezers?
Four years ago, they decided to give their idea a try. Mr. Muller kept his job at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies “to support our four children” while Judy Muller-Cohn left her job at a biotechnology firm to work at their new company. “We mortgaged the house, took the college money out of savings and threw it all in,” Mr. Muller said in a recent interview at Biomatrica’s headquarters while Mrs. Muller-Cohn was traveling.
Connect “was a huge help because scientists need help from people who know something about business,” Mr. Muller said. Connect helped Biomatrica get a $1 million investment from an angel investor and then advised the company on securing technical partners in molecular diagnostics.
In 2006, Biomatrica presented its story to investors in what Connect calls its Springboard competition. “We were looking for $2 million, but before the competition was finished, we were oversubscribed,” Mr. Muller said.
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