WARF, says the two groups are “almost identical” in the things they do day-to-day, like working with researchers to apply for patents. But unlike WARF, which is a distinct entity from UW-Madison, the OTC is housed within the University of Minnesota and does not hold its own endowment, he says.
Two of the most well-known businesses that were spun out of research performed at the University of Minnesota are the medical devices giant Medtronic (NYSE: [[ticker:MDT]]) and Net Perceptions, Schrankler says. The latter company was part of the boom-and-bust cycle of the late 1990s and early 2000s; most of the remnants of Net Perceptions were integrated into Amazon’s (NASDAQ: [[ticker:AMZN]]) recommendation engine, he says.
A more recent success story spawned from research at the university is MiroMatrix Medical, Schrankler says, which is in the regenerative medicine industry.
Gener8tor plans to hold its first 12-week core program in Minnesota in the first half of 2017, McGuire says. With that version of the accelerator, Gener8tor invests in participating startups, and takes an equity stake in them.
