For our 10th anniversary, we interviewed Jen Koevary, UArizona professor and COO/CFO for startup Avery Therapeutics. Jen started her career working for TLA and helping startups, and then went on to get hired on at Avery where she is continuing to build her career in research and entrepreneurship.
"Working at TLA, the advantage was that I got to work on so many different things. The disadvantage was that I got to work on so many different things! I really wanted to have an opportunity to pursue that one thing and take it to that next level... Since TLA has developed, the ecosystem has sprouted up everywhere that it's more than just TLA. At this point there's Startup Tucson. There's venture capital funds that are starting. There's the Desert Angels, which existed before, but I think has continued to develop. And it's kind of like the ignition to this fire that ended up growing and growing." –Jen Koevary
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Transcript
I did an entrepreneurship program through Eller, and through that I got to know Sherry Hoskinson.* She ended up going to work at TLA, and when I graduated, I was looking for opportunities in and outside of Tucson. I was hoping to stay in Tucson and talked with Sherry about the start of Tech Launch Arizona and what was happening, and I thought it was a great opportunity to merge my interests of engineering and entrepreneurship and to be part of something new and exciting at the university.
We helped with startup creation and also just evaluated ideas that were coming out of labs at the university and determined what help or assistance they might need in order to get them to the next step of being licensable. What I enjoyed most about working with Tech Launch was getting to work with inventors from all over campus and being able to see new technologies that I had never had a chance to be a part of before, and taking those technologies, evaluating what is the opportunity in the marketplace outside of the university in the real world, and getting to take them to that next step.
Working at TLA, the advantage was that I got to work on so many different things. The disadvantage was that I got to work on so many different things! I really wanted to have an opportunity to pursue that one thing and take it to that next level.
Since TLA has developed, the ecosystem has sprouted up everywhere that it's more than just TLA. At this point, there's Startup Tucson. There are venture capital funds that are starting. There's the Desert Angels, which existed before, but I think has continued to develop. And it's kind of like the ignition to this fire that ended up growing and growing.
So Tech Launch helped Avery when we were first starting by giving us opportunities to pitch and perfect our story. That allowed us to get the feedback that investors would give us before we went to investors so that we went to investors we could anticipate some of the questions that they were going to ask and be prepared to answer those.
Today we are working on our investigational new drug application and we'll be submitting that to the FDA in about a year to request permission to go into clinical trials. This is a technology, FDA regulated, first-of-its-kind technology using Nobel Prize-winning technology. There are very few companies in the world that are applying this particular type of technology to a therapeutic. While it is a long road, every day is exciting because we are the first to do something.
To work with an organization like Tech Launch is a unique opportunity every faculty member or student that is able to should take advantage of, and be able to access the resources and the knowledge that they can use to help get their technology out there in the world. Knowing that this is a resource, it's also important to know that it won't without them.
*At the time, Sherry Hoskinson was the director of business development for TLA.