Every Great Idea Deserves To Be A Successful Business
Ikove unlocks the potential of technology commercialization by identifying and vetting disruptive technologies at leading research labs and launching those into successful startups that deserve to be shared with humanity.
Our portfolio companies have been featured in these publications
How we’ve grown
Our performance, from our founding in 2014 to the present:
A Significant Capital Gap Exists Between University Funded R&D and VC Funded Rounds
Universities & research institutions spend over $90 billion a year in R&D, but less than 1% is invested in commercialization efforts.
Unicorn share of venture investing has skyrocketed while early stage deals have been cut in half, ~2% of all venture deals received close to 40% of all money invested in venture.
Revolutionary IP is left sitting on the shelves at leading universities, Upwards of 95% of patented university innovations go unfunded and never reach commercial market.
The Startup Nursery Fund allows external, strategic investors to co-invest alongside Ikove’s Nursery.
Ikove’s Startup Nursery creates businesses around the best intellectual property funded through the research budget of leading universities.
Investors can now capitalize on exclusive opportunities related to the commercialization of disruptive intellectual property and startup companies.
DiretoTech is Scaling and Preparing for Further Growth
The DiretoTech ecosystem is focused on disrupting every step of the $75 billion per year debt collection, notification, payment, credit and cashback market in Brazil.
Direto has developed proprietary technology linking Creditors, Public Notaries and Debtors at scale, replacing an antiquated, bureaucratic, in person system, with a fully digital infrastructure.
DiretoTech consolidates five portfolio companies in order to scale nationally in Brazil and is currently raising a growth funding round.
AssetWatch, Your Partner in Eliminating Downtime
AssetWatch, formerly Nikola Labs, is the developer and provider of a rapidly deployable, end-to-end condition monitoring platform designed to prevent unplanned downtime. Unplanned downtime is a trillion dollar problem for global manufacturers. The company's wireless vibration and temperature sensors collect machine health data presented on cloud-based software and condition monitoring engineers and machine learning algorithms analyze data, providing predictive insight and enabling proactive maintenance before machines fail.
Having graduated from Ikove’s Startup Nursery, AssetWatch now proudly serves 160+ customers with systems installed in 410+ facilities.
Atreon’s Rotium Bioresorbable Wick Has Received FDA Approval
Atreon’s mission is building a line of orthopedic products that provide a structure for improved healing of sports medicine injuries.
Rotium is an electrospun, bioresorbable synthetic scaffold placed at the tendon-to-bone interface created to address the inferior healing of existing solutions. Tendon-to-Bone injuries impact over 10 million people. Rotium is designed to promote tendon healing by regenerating native tissue architecture and strong tendon-bone integration by providing a healing environment that shortens the inflammatory stage, therefore restoring function and improving procedures' success rates.
Our Process
Ikove has a unique venture development model. We primarily invest in companies that we co-found. We focus on technologies coming out of Universities and Research Institutions around the country. When the circumstances are appropriate, we will also co-found joint ventures with established companies or startups. These JV’s usually develop from opportunities to establish new industry verticals or to establish operations in new geographies.
We Go To The Source
Ikove pursues technologies that have been developed and reinforced by significant investments in R&D at leading research institutions. Technologies are vetted through our Startup Nursery, and if they successfully move through our pipeline process, we recruit CEOs and operators to be part of the founding cap table of the companies.
We Focus Where Few Are Looking
We are headquartered in the Midwest, where we have access to world-class technologies, infrastructure and teams at a fraction of the cost of the East and West Coasts. Our CEOs can relocate the companies where they see a strategic fit but still have the benefits of lower costs and valuation arbitrage as the operating businesses settles in places like San Francisco, New York City or Hong Kong.
We Are Founders
Ikove is heavily involved in the launch and operations of the business alongside each company’s management team. This allows the founding team to focus on the product and their market. We focus on deep tech businesses, to focus on disrupting industries that are backed by strong and significant IP.
We Invest In DeepTech
We invest in technologies that solves big problems with significant market potential and are backed by strong intellectual property and knowhow.
Built to Exit
We build our companies to become fast-growing, profitable businesses that can go all the way to IPOs; but given current exit dynamics, we position our portfolio companies in a way that they can be acquisition targets. We develop our companies with a clear “build-to-sell” focus.
Investing in Overlooked Research Institutions and Universities.
Ikove leverages the relationships it has built with selected institutions, then adopts a multi-layered due diligence process aimed at vetting the most promising technologies and creating the right teams to bring those technologies to market.
We pursue early-stage investments with an emphasis on technology commercialization
Through our proprietary Startup Nursery, in partnership with multiple U.S. research institutions, We identify and validate developing high-impact technologies, providing capital and commercialization resources to bridge the gap between R&D and VC funded rounds.
The Latest News from Ikove, Our Partners and Our Portfolio Companies
Our portfolio of companies are making noise with groundbreaking innovation.
AssetWatch Named A Top Workplace in Columbus C.E.O. Magazine
Matrix F.T. hosts first public cultivated meat tasting in Dublin, Ohio
