Washington University’s Office of Technology Management (OTM) launched about two to three faculty-founded startups per year when Nichole Mercier began working there in 2005. If it was a good year, four startups were launched.
The pace has since accelerated.
Mercier, now OTM’s managing director, has overseen rapid growth, with WashU’s OTM recently achieving a significant milestone: 100 faculty-founded startups launched. More than half the companies have been created in the past 10 years as the university's OTM has sought to improve how it helps faculty turn research into startups, Mercier said.
WashU’s OTM, based in the Cortex innovation district, helps faculty at the university transfer technology from their research to commercial applications. That includes assistance with patent filings, licensing agreements and company creation. Prominent startups launched through the OTM include cancer drug company Wugen, bioscience company Acera Surgical and financial technology firm Exegy.
The OTM’s ability to help launch more companies follows its effort in recent years to create a “service model” that better helps faculty members commercialize their research, Mercier said. Staffing also increased to over 30 employees, a figure Mercier estimated has doubled in the past 10 years. There’s also a more “ripened” St. Louis entrepreneurial economy that includes more investors and startups than when Mercier started at the OTM nearly 20 years ago, she said.
“When I first moved here, a lot of the ecosystem was very nascent,” Mercier said.
From 2020 to 2023, WashU’s OTM created six startups each year, according to its annual reports. The OTM said in fiscal year 2022-2023 that it produced revenue of $22 million, which accounts for income from licensing software, copyright and assets, as well as payments from product sales and other fees paid from licensing.
The growing number of startups launched from faculty research at WashU has come as the OTM has “worked really hard on creating a culture of innovation,” Mercier said. She said events, such as OTM’s annual celebration of investors and another event each year to add the logos of new startups to a wall at its office, can spur faculty to pursue commercial efforts around their own work.
“That helped people to see who else was doing this type of activity and it gave them people they could even go talk to about that,” Mercier said.
WashU’s OTM expects to help create six to seven new startups this year, and possibly 10 if it’s a strong year, Mercier said. OTM has created a “new ventures” team focused on helping faculty better understand how and when to launch companies, while also helping startups gain access to external leaders and funding.
“We’ve seen that the companies that are leading to mergers, acquisitions and exits are the ones that have an external CEO and are the ones that have some investment within the first six months that they launch,” Mercier said.
The new venture team includes Director Karen Gheesling Mullis, a former venture partner at Clayton-based venture capital firm RiverVest Venture Partners; and Senior Associate Liz Peek, previously program director at Los Angeles-based medical technology accelerator MedTech Innovator. The new ventures team has sought to create relationships with investors to aid WashU-founded startups, Mercier said. The team in January attended the J.P. Morgan Health Care Conference, holding 50 meetings there with investors and sending out about 60 pitch decks following those conversations.
“We’re really going out there and trying to hit the pavement hard,” Mercier said.
The OTM, with its new ventures team in place, has also strengthened its relationship with BioGenerator, the startup creation and investment arm of local innovation hub BioSTL. Mercier said BioGenerator has increased its investment in WashU startups, as the OTM’s new ventures team has worked with new companies to strengthen their value proposition and market opportunity, making them stronger candidates for investment.
