# Presentation: 510815

## Meeting the Challenges by Grabbing the Opportunities

***Meeting the Challenges by Grabbing the Opportunities***

***Can Scientists be an Entrepreneur?****** ***

**Photo Credit:** Bill BransonMedical Arts and Photography BranchOffice of Research ServicesNational Institutes of Health

## Address

- Yiqing Liang
- Clever Sys. Inc.
- 11425 Isaac Newton Square, Suite 202
- Reston, VA 20190
- Tel: 703-787-6946   Fax: 703-757-7467
- yqliang@cleversysinc.com

## The Company

**Clever Sys. Inc. (CSI), located in the Washington DC area, specializes in digital video technologies and their applications**
**Started in 1999, with no capital funding, and one person, in a basement**** **

## The Company (Cont’)

**Current Staff – 6, 3 PhDs in Computer Science, and one PhD in Physiology.**
**15 products in automated tools for Lab Animal Behavior analysis**
**Annual revenue over $1.3 million**
**Over 50 High Profile Customers like:**
**Academia: MIT Whitehead Institute; Salk Institute; Johns Hopkins University; Emory University; The Jackson Lab**
**Industry: Pfizer; Eli Lilly; GSK; Merck; Wyeth; **

## How to Grow from Zero

**Capital**
**Conventional Financing**
**VC Investment, **
**Bank Loans**
**Knowledge is Power**
**Other Resources**
**Business Directions – Where are you going to  make money?**
**Hard work and Persistence**

**Notes:**
VC Disadvantages
You may lose your control, do things you do not like, and  you may be pushed away from original directions
DiamondVideo (ObjectVideo) Story

Bank Loan
     Personal Guarantee – line of credit apps in 1999 and 2000

Business Direction – it is not you want to show off your own merits  
     software engineering  computer vision because computer vision is more likely suitable for small business
     defense applications  animal behaivor analysis

## Business Direction

**What is Needed – Niche Market**
**What you can do**
**What Others cannot do yet**

**Notes:**
Doing away with what was doing: Defense. This will not only find new business directions but also new technology

ObjectVideo (DiamondVideo) story

Emphasis is “What others cannot do yet”. 

NIH Program Manager asked DOD, NASA, and NSF: is it feasible?

Doing others can do is not really good for scientists who are short of capital to compete in the market

## Grabbing Opportunity

**Opportunity Escapes**
**Two Contracts from DARPA on digital video analysis**
**Nothing Happens**
**Digital Video Analysis Technology is an Opportunity**
**Where is the Specific Opportunity?**

**Notes:**
NIH Mary Lou’s support

## Business Directions – The Opportunity

**Mission: Supporting the Scientific Community Through ****Next Generation's Technology for Behavior Analysis***** ***
**Behavior Analysis in Life Science**
**Lab Animal Behavior Analysis**
**Patient Disease Diagnosis, such as Seizure/Epilepsy in Children and Newborn Baby**
**Patient Rehabilitation**

## Behaviors in Other Areas

**Extended Applications: Security and Homeland Security, Store Customer Survey, Athletes’ Performance Analysis, Dance Performance**

## How to Develop Capital

**We Scientists have our own Capital:**
**Knowledge**
**Experiences**
**Novel Ideas**
**Can We Materialize the Capital**
**Opportunity**
**Seeding Money**

## How to Develop Technologies

**Initial Technology Direction**
**Follow-up Technologies**
**Non-Stop Development Efforts**
**Others will Compete – no Safe Heaven**

## SBIR as Seed Money

**Small Business Innovation Research Program --  2% of Federal Research Funding**
**Ownership is yours**
**Risks **
**You have to be working for the company as your principal employment**
**Follow on funding is your responsibility**

## Can We Be an CEO?

**When talking to VCs or Business People, one often heard statement: “You need an CEO!”**
**Can Scientists be CEO?**
**Yes! We should be confident!**
**We are not less than MBA in doing business**

**Notes:**

MBA – Mainly the summarization of business experiences

Scientists – We study not only experiences (in science), but also innovative thinking (no prior experiences exit, but you new discovery)

Therefore, Scientists should be able to do better in business than MBAs

## Should Scientists be Salesman?

**Salesman determines the cash flow and brings in the capital**
**Scientists may be the best salesman**
**Customers respect the people who have common language and understand them**
**Scientists get to know the market – what the customer needs**
**Gaining New Knowledge**

## Can Technology  be Decisive Factor in Building a Company?

**Business people: **
**Capital is the key **
**Technology is also the key, Especially today, with software development going to India and Manufacturing going to China**

## Issues

**Market Size for Investment?**
**Recurring Revenue **
**Life-Style:**
**SBIR Life Style**
**Software Development Life Style**

## Behavior Analysis Technologies of Next Generation

**We are not *****video tracking*****, and we are doing *****video ******behavior recognition******!***
**Video tracking reduces animal to a point in space -- the center of mass, losing a lot of information about animal**
**We are doing ****behavior recognition, ****using all the information of animal full body (shape) and identified animal body parts (head, tail, forelimbs, hind limbs, abdomen, upper/lower back, ear, etc.)**

## CSI Products- Making Use of Information from Full Body  and Body Parts

*CSI Approach*

*Current Approach*

*CSI Approach*

## CSI Products- Making Use of Information from Full Body  and Body Parts (Cont’d)

***Frame 527***

***Frame 528***

***Global Difference***

***Identify and use ***
***Body Parts and their ***
***activities***

***CSI Approach***

***Others’ Approach***

## CSI Products- Making Use of Information from Full Body  and Body Parts (Cont’d)

**Reducing animal to a point**

**Using full body information**

## Standing Out from the Crowd

**Capturing and utilizing information of animal’s **_**full body**_**, **_**body parts**_**, and **_**temporal relations**_** to capture ****semantic meaning**** of mouse ****complex**** behaviors, rather than monitoring a point in space.**
**Supporting new ****paradigms**** and ****parameters**
**CSI products achieve more ****revealing**** capability that was not possible before, saving significant labor cost, and meeting the demand for ****high throughput**** scanning in ****real time ****while ****obtaining more accurate and objective results.**

## Standing Out from the Crowd (cont’d)

**All CSI products and systems work for both mice and rats**
**All systems are functional with any type of device**
**All types of home cages**
**All types of Mazes (radial arm, EP, T, Y, Zero, etc.)**
**All systems function in overnight , red light or IR environments**
**All systems feature “Virtual Grid” analysis tools and free calibration**

## Behavior Analysis - Our core competency (cont’d)

**Current Company Focus on Lab Animal Behavior Analysis**
**The opportunities in Post Genomic Era**
**Building upon existing technologies **
**Building Our Technology**
**Six (6) Phase I grants from NIH**
**Two Phase II grants **
**Our interest is in covering all animals (ex. Primate, fruit flies, zebra fish) and all paradigms of animal behavior analysis**

## Products/Services Overview

**HomeCageScan**
**TopScan Suite**
**LocoScan**
**MazeScan**
**ObjectScan**
**WaterMazeScan**
**FreezeScan**
**BenchMark/AnnoStar**
**SeizureScan**
**DrugEffectScan**

**SocialScan Suite**
**SocialScanTop**
**NeuroDegenScan**
**TreadScan**
**CylinderScan**
**DepressionScan Suite**
**ForcedSwimScan**
**TailSuspScan**
**PrimateScan**