With Qualcomm Buyout Looming, EvoNexus Aims for Self-Sufficiency

EvoNexus CEO Rory Moore 2017

In the nine years since San Diego’s EvoNexus incubator began amid the great recession of 2009, CEO Rory Moore has emphasized it is a pro bono program—startup teams admitted to the technology accelerator get free office space and other perks, with no strings attached.

EvoNexus operates as a non-profit, which is possible because dozens of local tech companies, law firms, and others provide funding to sustain the incubator’s pro bono operations. Three strategic partners in particular provide substantial (undisclosed) support—Qualcomm (NASDAQ: [[ticker:QCOM]]), ViaSat (NASDAQ: [[ticker:VSAT]]), and the private real estate developer the Irvine Company.

Now, for a variety of reasons, including the possibility that Broadcom (NASDAQ: [[ticker:AVGO]]) will succeed in its hostile offer to acquire San Diego-based Qualcomm, Moore is moving to change the incubator’s business model. In a bid to put the incubator on more self-sufficient footing, Moore said the EvoNexus board of directors is expected to vote Friday morning on a proposal that would require future startups admitted to EvoNexus to provide a small percentage of their founders’ shares to the non-profit.

It may take years to realize any revenue from the change. But the idea is that even a small stake in a few successful outcomes could go a long way toward putting EvoNexus on a path to sustaining its business operations long-term.

Of the 186 portfolio companies that EvoNexus has admitted since 2010, Moore said 21 have been acquired for a total of roughly $650 million. The biggest by far

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.