Climate Startup Officer

Columbia University is seeking a Climate Startup Officer for its Columbia Technology Ventures office in New York. The role involves evaluating and commercializing climate technologies developed in university labs, with the aim of launching one or two spin-out companies within a year. This full-time position supports entrepreneurial activities and technology transfer initiatives, requiring experience in commercializing academic research.
Requisition no: 530544
Work type: Full Time
Location: Morningside
School/Department: Columbia Technology Ventures
Grade: Grade 13
Categories: General Administration

Job Type: Officer of Administration
Bargaining Unit:
Regular/Temporary: Regular
End Date if Temporary:
Hours Per Week: 35 hrs/wk
Salary Range:

Position Summary

Columbia Technology Ventures (CTV) is the technology transfer office for Columbia University and a central location for many of the technology development initiatives, entrepreneurial activities, external industry collaborations, and commercially-oriented multidisciplinary technology innovations across the university. CTV's core mission is to facilitate the transfer of inventions from academic research labs to the market for the benefit of society on a local, national, and global basis. Each year, CTV manages more than 350 invention disclosures, 100 license deals, and 20 new IP-backed start-ups, involving over 750 inventors across Columbia's campuses. CTV currently has over 1,200 patent assets available for licensing, across research fields such as bio, IT, clean tech, climate tech, devices, big data, nanotechnology, materials science, and more.

Over the years, CTV has been involved with launching well over 200 companies based on Columbia's technologies, and has also founded several technology initiatives to accelerate the path to market for promising technologies, including the PowerBridgeNY (PBNY) clean energy proof-of-concept center, the NYC Media Lab, the Columbia-Coulter Translational Research Partnership, Life Science Venture Exchange, and the NYS Cleantech Venture Exchange (CVX). CTV also administers the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) program (NEIR Program), which provides paid mentoring, executive team building, peer group facilitation, investor showcases, and other related services and education programs to eligible climate tech startups in New York, Verizon’s Forward For Good Accelerator Alumni program, and NYSERDA Climate Justice Fellows Support Program.

CTV's efforts are backed by 50+ full time staff and an additional 30+ graduate student interns (CTV Fellows), providing broad support to the Columbia community and other stakeholders. CTV also runs an Executive-in-Residence program, which brings seasoned industry executives, serial entrepreneurs, and investors to campus to support faculty and student entrepreneurial activities.

Exciting, transformative climate technologies are currently being developed in the labs at Columbia University. However, without the diligent effort of a serial entrepreneur, who has experience commercializing technology from the university lab setting, many of these technologies will remain on the “shelf.” As a result, CTV seeks to hire a Climate Startup Officer, who for a period of one year will initially evaluate five to seven technologies emerging from Columbia University labs and select three to four climate technologies to conduct customer and market discovery, identify product-market fit, and establish a road map for commercialization with the objective to launch and serve as interim CEO to one or two spin-out companies commercializing these technologies by the end of the one year period. The Climate Startup Officer may drop certain technologies and add new ones in consultation with the Program Director and CTV TLOs. The Climate Startup Officer will complete commercialization reports with recommendations for future commercialization action for the technologies not selected, e.g. licensing, spin-out, etc. Any startup as part of a spin-out will be given the standard terms offered to all CTV startups, which will be laid out prior to starting the role, so that the economics of the ultimate startup will be known in advance. The Climate Startup Officer will work collaboratively with Columbia MBA or PhD students, who will be paid a stipend to support the Climate Startup Officer’s evaluation of technologies and commercialization efforts. The Climate Startup Officer may also be asked to collaborate with other climate-related programs at Columbia, including but not limited to the following:

Climate School and SEAS
Columbia World Projects initiatives related to climate
NYSERDA-funded Carbon-tech Development initiative
NYSERDA EIR Program
NYSERDA Climate Justice Fellows Support Program

The Climate Startup Officer will work a hybrid schedule at the CTV offices in NYC and report to the Director, NYSERDA EIR and Other Programs.

Responsibilities

Identify and review Climate-related technologies for potential commercialization

Meet with Program Director and CTV TLOs to discuss potential technologies being developed at Columbia University. Examples of potential uses of current technologies under development include: energy storage, waste to value, solar, carbon capture and utilization, and energy efficiency.
Meet with Principal Investigators (“PIs”) and post docs at Columbia to discuss the technology development status and development roadmap for each technology under consideration.
Meet with PIs and post docs to discuss potential commercial uses for each technology under development.
Work with Program Director and TLOs in selecting five to seven technologies for analysis.

Conduct Market Research and Customer Discovery

Evaluate five to seven climate technologies being developed in labs at Columbia
Conduct customer discovery on three or four selected technologies to identify product-market fit for initial target markets for each technology.
Work with Columbia MBA and Phd students to conduct market research and early commercialization planning.
Complete market analysis and go-to-market strategy for each technology.
As needed, collaborate with Columbia labs to develop prototypes or perform other proof-of-concept experiments to help validate the work.

Communications and Reporting

Meet, as appropriate, with PIs, post-docs and other researchers related to the technology to better understand each technology and its commercialization potential.
Collaborate with other climate-related programs at Columbia.
Participate in periodic meetings with Program Director.
Participate in periodic meetings with TLOs to discuss progress.
Participate in the Slack community called the Climate Leadership Network.

Final Reports and Outcomes

Complete final reports for technologies reviewed during the fellowship, including recommendations for commercialization of each technology.
Complete final presentation and report for selected spin-out company, including go-to-market strategy, fund raising strategy and business plan.
Launch and raise funding for selected startups

Events and Conferences

Attend local and regional networking events.
Attend relevant tradeshows and conferences

Minimum Qualifications

BA/BS is required.
Minimum of four (4) years of business experience required.
Ability to understand new climate technology at a high level is required.
Minimum of three (3) years of relevant business experience in the climate field required.
Experience working in a founder, co-founder, or senior management role with one or more climate-related early-stage companies is required.
Experience with conducting customer discovery and market research for new markets is strongly preferred.
Experience working with university and other institutional lab organizations is preferred.
Experience working in one or more clean energy, clean tech or climate tech sectors required.
Excellent oral and written communication skills.
Willingness to periodically travel and attend relevant events during both daytimes and evenings required (reimbursement of out-of-pocket expenses is subject to Columbia’s reimbursement policies).
Proficiency in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Slack are required.
The most important criteria for this job are: ability to understand what early-stage startups need; ability to build a network of contacts; ability to multi-task effectively and efficiently; ability to interact effectively with people at varying levels of technical detail and career development and ability to track projects over time at varying degrees of detail. Accordingly, the candidate must have outstanding organizational and time management skills and be extremely detail-oriented in a high-volume dynamic environment.

Equal Opportunity Employer / Disability / Veteran

Columbia University is committed to the hiring of qualified local residents.

Applications open: Oct 20 2022 Eastern Daylight Time
Applications close: