| UNC-CH
In the early stages of founding a startup, you want to know how attractive your venture is to customers and understand new market opportunities. But you may not have the time to do the research to determine viability. Kickstart Venture Services can help you and other startup founders with research, data and strategies to determine opportunities for growing your business.
Explore our business assessment services
Business Case Development
Building a strong business case is critical to your company’s future. When your startup is ready to incorporate, the KickStart Venture Services team can help you develop a business case for launching the company. The business case examines a number of aspects of the business opportunity: technology, product, market, customers, intellectual property, etc. Once the business case is complete, KVS helps coordinate a Commercial Advisory Panel (CAP) that includes outside advisors and UNC commercialization staff. A group of experts with business and relevant domain expertise, the CAP provides you with feedback on the opportunity, including next steps and guidance for incorporating the company, gathering more information or determining if no business opportunity exists. If your startup moves forward to incorporation, the CAP provides further guidance.
Customer Discovery Workshops
ViaVerus AME Customer Discovery Workshops provide you with step-by-step instruction and the highest integrity data to confidently make mission critical decisions about your customers and business development plans. These sessions cover healthcare-specific issues such as dealing with medical professionals, reimbursements and FDA regulation.
As a researcher or founder who’s ready to move off the bench or the drawing board, you may be uncertain of and unprepared for the next steps. Where do you start? For most, customer discovery is the first step, but many startup founders have little or no training on how to conduct initial customer discovery. These workshops are the perfect next step.
Venture Catalyst Program
The Venture Catalyst Program is led by KickStart Venture Services in collaboration with Innovate Carolina and CareerWell. The program allows founders of UNC-affiliated startups and innovations to converge, collaborate and grow young companies with the support of talented graduate students and postdocs. This program provides startups with business support and entrepreneurial fellows with direct experiences translating scientific, technological and social-driven ideas into the market.
Are you passionate about gaining real-world learning experiences working with startups, lending entrepreneurial expertise to help others build their ventures or connecting with experts who can help your own startup thrive? If yes, then apply to become a Venture Catalyst Fellow.
E(I) Lab
E(I) Lab is a six-month experiential program that exposes graduate and professional students and postdocs to the lifecycle of innovating products with proper product-market fits. You’ll participate in ‘hackathon’ style weekend-long events and form teams of four-to-eight members to develop innovative solutions to pre-identified healthcare challenges. Over the next six months, you work with your team and faculty mentors to build solution prototypes. You’ll also learn and apply the I-Corps curriculum, including business model canvas and customer discovery processes, to identify suitable product-market fits.
Patent Landscape and Market Research
The Patent Landscaping and Market Research Service, available to current UNC faculty, staff, and students at no cost, helps you assess your technology, the marketplace and potential investment funding. The service offers you custom analytical reports that provide a strategic view of your competitive landscape, current and projected market conditions, as well as opportunities for grants and funding to complete research, launch new products, services, and ventures, or expand into new markets. Information included in market landscape reports depends on specific requests and availability of relevant information. Analysts have access to a vast array of resources in market research, competitive intelligence and science/technology literature. Databases for grant and funding opportunities include federal, state and private sources.