Caroline Winnett is the Executive Director of Berkeley SkyDeck, a startup accelerator at the University of California, Berkeley. SkyDeck started as a mentoring space in 2012 and soon translated into one of the leading startup accelerators in the world.
SkyDeck was Formed as a partnership between UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, the College of Engineering, and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research. While it offers all the benefits of a traditional accelerator, what makes SkyDeck special is the vast resources of the world’s number one ranked public university. The robust and vibrant ecosystem includes a deep network of advisors, industry partners, and attracts some of the best investors. I have seen its evolution first hand because of my own association since my postdocs days at UC Berkeley
We discuss the evolution of the startup ecosystem at UC Berkeley and then dive into how SkyDeck has been supporting deep tech startups, challenges and lessons learned.
- Berkeley SkyDeck: https://skydeck.berkeley.edu/
- Startup resources at Berkeley: https://begin.berkeley.edu/
- Berkeley named top university for number of venture-backed companies
Evolution of startup ecosystem at UC Berkeley: Pre & post SkyDeck
- Changing academia-industry relations
- SkyDeck is just not for UC Berkeley community
- Support for deep tech startups at SkyDeck
- Criteria for picking deep tech startups for accelerations
- Lessons learned from working with scientific and faculty founders
- Scalability and market potential of deep tech startups
- Partnerships with corporations: realistic expectations
- Picking advisors
- Commercializing deep tech startups
- Investing in deep tech: Evaluating founders
- Tips for applying to Berkeley SkyDeck
- Apply here: https://skydeck.berkeley.edu/apply/
