Meeting the Challenges by Grabbing the Opportunities

1
Meeting the Challenges by Grabbing the
Opportunities

• Can Scientists be an Entrepreneur?

Photo Credit Bill BransonMedical Arts and
Photography BranchOffice of Research
ServicesNational Institutes of Health
2
Address

• Yiqing Liang
• Clever Sys. Inc.
• 11425 Isaac Newton Square, Suite 202
• Reston, VA 20190
• Tel [phone] Fax [phone]
• yqliang_at_cleversysinc.com

3
The Company

• Clever Sys. Inc. (CSI), located in the Washington
  DC area, specializes in digital video
  technologies and their applications
• Started in 1999, with no capital funding, and one
  person, in a basement

4
The Company (Cont)

• Current Staff 6, 3 PhDs in Computer Science,
  and one PhD in Physiology.
• 15 products in automated tools for Lab Animal
  Behavior analysis
• Annual revenue over 1.3 million
• Over 50 High Profile Customers like
• Academia MIT Whitehead Institute Salk
  Institute Johns Hopkins University Emory
  University The Jackson Lab
• Industry Pfizer Eli Lilly GSK Merck Wyeth

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How to Grow from Zero

• Capital
• Conventional Financing
• VC Investment,
• Bank Loans
• Knowledge is Power
• Other Resources
• Business Directions Where are you going to
  make money?
• Hard work and Persistence

6
Business Direction

• What is Needed Niche Market
• What you can do
• What Others cannot do yet

7
Grabbing Opportunity

• Opportunity Escapes
• Two Contracts from DARPA on digital video
  analysis
• Nothing Happens
• Digital Video Analysis Technology is an
  Opportunity
• Where is the Specific Opportunity?

8
Business Directions The Opportunity

• Mission Supporting the Scientific Community
  Through Next Generation's Technology for Behavior
  Analysis
• Behavior Analysis in Life Science
• Lab Animal Behavior Analysis
• Patient Disease Diagnosis, such as
  Seizure/Epilepsy in Children and Newborn Baby
• Patient Rehabilitation

9
Behaviors in Other Areas

• Extended Applications Security and Homeland
  Security, Store Customer Survey, Athletes
  Performance Analysis, Dance Performance

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How to Develop Capital

• We Scientists have our own Capital
• Knowledge
• Experiences
• Novel Ideas
• Can We Materialize the Capital
• Opportunity
• Seeding Money

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How to Develop Technologies

• Initial Technology Direction
• Follow-up Technologies
• Non-Stop Development Efforts
• Others will Compete no Safe Heaven

12
SBIR as Seed Money

• Small Business Innovation Research Program -- 2
  of Federal Research Funding
• Ownership is yours
• Risks
• You have to be working for the company as your
  principal employment
• Follow on funding is your responsibility

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Can We Be an CEO?

• When talking to VCs or Business People, one often
  heard statement You need an CEO!
• Can Scientists be CEO?
• Yes! We should be confident!
• We are not less than MBA in doing business

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Should Scientists be Salesman?

• Salesman determines the cash flow and brings in
  the capital
• Scientists may be the best salesman
• Customers respect the people who have common
  language and understand them
• Scientists get to know the market what the
  customer needs
• Gaining New Knowledge

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Can Technology be Decisive Factor in Building a
Company?

• Business people
• Capital is the key
• Technology is also the key, Especially today,
  with software development going to India and
  Manufacturing going to China

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Issues

• Market Size for Investment?
• Recurring Revenue
• Life-Style
• SBIR Life Style
• Software Development Life Style

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Behavior Analysis Technologies of Next Generation

• We are not video tracking, and we are doing video
  behavior recognition!
• Video tracking reduces animal to a point in space
  -- the center of mass, losing a lot of
  information about animal
• We are doing behavior recognition, using all the
  information of animal full body (shape) and
  identified animal body parts (head, tail,
  forelimbs, hind limbs, abdomen, upper/lower back,
  ear, etc.)

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CSI Products- Making Use of Information from Full
Body and Body Parts
CSI Approach
Current Approach
CSI Approach
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CSI Products- Making Use of Information from Full
Body and Body Parts (Contd)
Others Approach
Frame 527
Frame 528
Global Difference
CSI Approach
Identify and use Body Parts and their activities
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CSI Products- Making Use of Information from Full
Body and Body Parts (Contd)

• Reducing animal to a point

• Using full body information

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Standing Out from the Crowd

• Capturing and utilizing information of animals
  full body, body parts, and temporal relations to
  capture semantic meaning of mouse complex
  behaviors, rather than monitoring a point in
  space.
• Supporting new paradigms and parameters
• CSI products achieve more revealing capability
  that was not possible before, saving significant
  labor cost, and meeting the demand for high
  throughput scanning in real time while obtaining
  more accurate and objective results.

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Standing Out from the Crowd (contd)

• All CSI products and systems work for both mice
  and rats
• All systems are functional with any type of
  device
• All types of home cages
• All types of Mazes (radial arm, EP, T, Y, Zero,
  etc.)
• All systems function in overnight , red light or
  IR environments
• All systems feature Virtual Grid analysis tools
  and free calibration

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Behavior Analysis - Our core competency (contd)

• Current Company Focus on Lab Animal Behavior
  Analysis
• The opportunities in Post Genomic Era
• Building upon existing technologies
• Building Our Technology
• Six (6) Phase I grants from NIH
• Two Phase II grants
• Our interest is in covering all animals (ex.
  Primate, fruit flies, zebra fish) and all
  paradigms of animal behavior analysis

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Products/Services Overview

• HomeCageScan
• TopScan Suite
• LocoScan
• MazeScan
• ObjectScan
• WaterMazeScan
• FreezeScan
• BenchMark/AnnoStar
• SeizureScan
• DrugEffectScan

• SocialScan Suite
• SocialScanTop
• NeuroDegenScan
• TreadScan
• CylinderScan
• DepressionScan Suite
• ForcedSwimScan
• TailSuspScan
• PrimateScan