InCube's impact could multiply
Print edition of San Antonio Express News (6.11.10) and online at My SA News
One of the best ways to understand the meaning of this week’s announcement that Silicon Valley’s InCube Laboratories LLC is expanding its medical devices business incubator to San Antonio is to accompany San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro on one of his frequent visits to public schools.
“Who wants to be a scientist or an engineer?” Castro likes to ask the students. Hands shoot up in the air.
Castro knows, however, that those positions have been limited in San Antonio, especially during the recent economic slowdown.
It’s a problem that also frustrates InCube’s founder, inventor/entrepreneur Mir Imran. So when the $25 million incubator opens its San Antonio operation later this year, Imran also will make education a part of the deal.
That’s one of the reasons the University of Texas at San Antonio is investing $500,000 in the incubator, to be called the San Antonio Innovation Center.
Mauli Agrawal, UTSA College of Engineering dean, said the attraction was the “student training and seminar classes with Mir and his team.”
UTSA students will learn more about engineering, but they also will receive a priceless education about becoming entrepreneurs from “Mir’s team,” Agrawal said.
“Lectures are one thing,” he added. “Seeing it is another.”
The whole city wants to see this.
San Antonio has a medical-device industry already. Kinetic Concepts Inc. probably is the largest. Medtronic Inc.’s diabetes sales-and-service center here is huge. Vidacare Corp., ENTrigue Surgical Inc. and CardioSpectra Inc. also are making their marks. Cardiospectra’s Dr. Paul Castella started San Antonio’s first biomedical venture fund, Targeted Technology Ventures.
San Antonio never had experienced the excitement, however, that Imran has generated in San Antonio this year. Along with InCube Labs’ incubator, which will prepare startup companies for serious, professional venture investments, Imran wants to create a $100 million San Antonio-based venture capital fund to support the resulting startups.
Imran will raise $50 million from national investors, primarily pharmaceutical and medical technology giants. The other $50 million must come from local investors, and already they have pitched in about $30 million, led by USAA’s $10 million investment.
A $100 million venture capital fund might be enough to launch commercially 15 new medical device companies as they emerge from incubators like the San Antonio Innovation Center or the one to be operated by the Texas Research & Technology Foundation.
The wages at the San Antonio Innovation Center, ranging from $50,000 to $200,000, already are higher than any of the recent job creation announcements. Jobs at the companies coming out of the center will have similar pay levels.
Imran believes San Antonio needs about 20 to 30 medical device companies to create a “deal flow,” and this is what any city desires. You know deal flow is going on when companies in the same industry start bidding on and stealing from each other the best engineers, scientists and executives.
The best from around the country would start looking here, because the action would be lucrative. The venture funds in California, Massachusetts and New York would send partners here to open offices to screen investment opportunities.
This is how wealth — the kind of wealth that distinguishes cities and nations — is created. If the United States is going to remain a leading economic power in the world, this kind of activity has to flourish. It will create products the world will buy.
If a city is going to lift its living standards, it must have a share of this activity.
That’s the hope and meaning the arrival of InCube Labs brings to San Antonio.
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