It wasn't a fun house but the entrance to CMU's Entertainment Technology Center, a graduate program in which high tech meets Hollywood. Schnel was meeting Tuesday with the program's co-director, Donald Marinelli, to get acquainted and to prospect for potential deals. It has launched start-ups at the University of California at Berkeley, Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ITU Ventures gets cozy within the nation's best high-tech schools so it can find promising business opportunities before anyone else does. It accomplishes this goal by finding faculty advisers and students who can serve as intermediaries between universities and the VC firm.
Universities are a constant source of innovation.
And a blossoming entrepreneurial culture at CMU had piqued ITU Venture's interest, Schnel said. On top of cranking out his class work, Mueller circulates among undergraduates, graduate students and professors to serve as their tie to big money beyond the university. A former employee of state-sponsored business incubator Innovation Works, Mueller has connections to both local and national venture capitalists. It also has signed faculty advisers at many schools. To Khosla, stronger ties between CMU and the venture capitalist community serve to benefit both sides.