Webinar Highlights

• Fireside Chat: 30 minutes of expert insights on starting a spin-out company, followed by 15 minutes of Q&A tailored to your needs. 

• Venture Capital Essentials: Understand the stages of equity investment, the value VCs bring, and how to engage and negotiate with them. 

• Finding the Right Investor: Discover strategies to identify the right investors based on your business stage, sector, and location. 

• The Pitch and Beyond: Learn how to deliver a compelling pitch, manage term sheets, and grow your company post-investment. 

This session will cover essential topics like funding sources, navigating investor dynamics, and legal considerations, while offering practical steps for turning your academic research into a commercial venture. 

Meet Our Speakers: Shomit Ghose

Shomit Ghose is a partner at Clearvision Ventures, a Silicon Valley Venture fund focused on energy and infrastructure sustainability. Previously, he was general partner at ONSET Ventures, where he led investments in early-stage, data-centric start-ups from 2001 through 2021. Prior to entering venture capital, Shomit spent 19 years as a start-up entrepreneur, serving in virtually all functional roles, and participating in multiple successful exits, including Sun Microsystems, Broadvision and Tumbleweed.

Shomit has held an appointment as lecturer at UC Berkeley’s College of Engineering since 2018, teaching about data and AI, and is also an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship and innovation at the University of San Francisco. He further holds an appointment as an entrepreneurial advisor at the University of California – Riverside. Shomit has served on both public and private boards, and multiple scientific advisory boards, in both the US and Europe.  He received his degree in computer science from UC Berkeley, and is proudly a product of California’s public school system. 

Shomit writes frequently on the topics of Big Data, AI, and the ethical and business impacts that ensue.  Relevant articles include those on robotics, generative AI, data risks, and job loss. 

Meet Our Speakers: Scott Brovsky

Scott Brovsky mentors and raises equity capital for tech startups from UC Riverside Riverside, Southern California, and the Western US. He focuses on the Climate tech, AI, Life Science, and Agtech verticals.

He has been working with the University of California Riverside mentoring entrepreneurs and tech startups since January 2017. He has helped raise over $45M in early stage equity capital for the startups that he mentors. In addition to his work with UCR, Scott is Co-Founder of the preclinical biotech startup ASC Bio. ASC Bio has developed a tissue engineered cartilage implant that will prevent the progression of osteoarthritis.

Scott has been a Founder or Founding Executive of five other tech startups including the VC funded mobile games studio Muti Labs, the Temecula based sports tech company NZN Labs/LIT Pro and he had some beginners luck selling his first company Industrial Strength Network (an early interactive agency) to frog design in 1998. Seeing the early promise of the iPhone and App Store, he put his own capital to work as an angel investor in independent mobile games while at Brovsky Capital. In addition, as a brand marketing executive, Scott has a successful track record in defining, launching, and driving revenue for major video game franchises such as The Avengers, Turok, Kingdom Hearts and Medal of Honor for leading entertainment companies like Disney/Marvel, Electronic Arts and Take-Two Interactive.