The work, structured the way it was run.

Constraint

Companies were entering institutional raises with predictable diligence failures—unclear cap tables, incomplete data rooms, regulatory assumptions, and capital strategies that did not survive investor scrutiny.

Intervention

• Built the original Capital Readiness framework for the Kauffman Foundation, structured around live investor diligence rather than pitch practice
• Refined and applied the methodology inside later institutional commercialization and company-building programs
• Used experienced investors to expose and repair fundraising, regulatory, evidence, and data-room gaps
• Established a repeatable capital-readiness process founders could carry into active raises

Outcome

• Over the past three years, participating Capital Readiness companies have secured more than $370M in follow-on capital, including $173M in private investment and more than $200M in non-dilutive federal funding through SBIR, ARPA-H and related programs
• Eleven program cohorts completed and 110 companies supported through the University City Science Center program
• Investors-in-Residence represent $1.35B in venture capital
• A repeatable diligence-first model replaced accelerator-style pitch preparation

Constraint

Regional innovation coalitions carrying multi-year federal mandates need practical operating capacity — governance, reporting, contracting, evaluation, systems management, and commercialization — alongside the research and technology agenda itself.

Intervention

• Provide consulting support to The Builder Platform, powered by The Engine, in a strategic advisory and implementation-support capacity
• Help facilitate peer operations sessions for participating organizations on operational scaling, management cadence, accountability, systems, contracting, and evaluation
• Translate publicly issued federal requirements — NSF policy, Uniform Guidance, and research-security guidance — into general operating implications
• Contribute to general-purpose operating resources such as review checklists and starter-pack materials covering subawards, contractors, procurement, and shared systems
• Contribute to the design of a proposed learning-platform concept oriented around conversion readiness rather than grant writing

Outcome

• Peer operating sessions and shared, general-purpose resources delivered for participating organizations
• Operating and systems resources organized to support peer learning and playbook development
• Publicly issued federal policy and research-security guidance translated into general operating implications
• A learning-platform concept framed around conversion readiness rather than proposal writing

Constraint

A state economic-development agency had access to federally capitalized investment resources, but the operating machinery required to deploy them—fund architecture, intake, diligence, approval, co-investment, reporting, and ecosystem activation—still had to be designed.

Intervention

• Designed the operating architecture for a state-backed venture and co-investment initiative
• Developed tiered investment mechanics, deployment models, fund materials, and an implementation roadmap
• Built the intake, diligence, investment-memo, approval, secure-document, and reporting requirements
• Created an investor, incubator, and co-investment outreach strategy to generate qualified deal flow

Outcome

• An integrated fund operating model replaced disconnected program concepts
• State staff received concrete SOPs, diligence checklists, decision requirements, and platform criteria
• Governance, sourcing, review, and reporting were aligned into a launch-ready implementation path

Constraint

A national technology-transfer initiative needed both investment vehicles and a repeatable upstream system that could help university technology-transfer offices identify, validate, and prepare credible opportunities those vehicles could actually fund.

Intervention

• Supported and helped structure two technology-transfer venture funds under TTA Turkey: Diffusion Capital Partners (DCP) and Accelerating the Commercialisation of Technology (ACT)
• Served as the named Training Expert / Key Expert 2 within the TTGV, Bpifrance, and VentureWell consortium selected for the EIF-managed TTA Turkey Advisory Services program
• Advised the structuring of a separate $56M fund
• Currently advising a $16M fund and a $6M donor-advised-fund-based vehicle, both under development
• Built the national commercialization and investment pipeline around the funds, adapting commercialization and I-Corps methods into a Venture Pipeline Development Program
• Connected technology-transfer offices, national innovation institutions, mentors, and fund managers around common sourcing, validation, and investment-readiness practices

Outcome

• $115M+ in completed fund closes supported: final closes totaling €52.54M in the Turkey example — €30M (DCP) and €22.54M (ACT), approximately $61.5M — plus a separate $56M fund
• $135M+ across completed and active fund formation, adding a $16M fund and a $6M donor-advised-fund-based vehicle, both currently under development
• 120 technology projects were sourced from 10 technology-transfer offices
• 20 projects were selected for an eight-week intensive market-validation process
• EIF reported that the two Turkey funds had invested in 27 proof-of-concept projects, startups, and early-stage enterprises by the end of 2016 — a program-level outcome

Constraint

During COVID-19, diagnostic teams had to compress years of validation, commercialization, regulatory, manufacturing, market, and deployment work into months. NIH needed an integrated acceleration system, not a conventional grant program.

Intervention

• Served as an NIH RADx Core Expert / commercialization advisor through VentureWell, with documented active work from 2020 through April 2023
• Supported commercialization and adoption pathways for diagnostic ventures moving toward national deployment
• Helped teams connect market strategy, procurement and adoption, government opportunity mapping, strategic partners, and federal/defense-adjacent buyers
• Supported milestone-driven commercialization sprints, vendor and partner assessment, and program operating decisions

Outcome

• 1,042 proposals evaluated across the initiative
• More than 250 organizations funded
• 55 FDA Emergency Use Authorization tests
• More than 7.8 billion tests and test products produced as of April 2023