PARC Opens Doors to Entrepreneurs

Startup@PARC program to help launch businesses by offering technical and scientific expertise to entrepreneurs and investors.

PALO ALTO, Calif.- PARC (Palo Alto Research Center Inc., a Xerox Company) today announced “Startup@PARC,” a novel initiative to join forces with entrepreneurs and investors to bring transformative technologies to the marketplace.

Building upon PARC’s success in strategic partnerships with new ventures, the program leverages the fabled research center’s approach to open innovation, a business model established in 2002 when PARC was incorporated as a wholly owned subsidiary of Xerox Corporation.

“PARC has been and continues to be critical to Xerox’s overall research efforts,” said Anne Mulcahy, chairman and chief executive officer, Xerox Corporation. “In operating PARC as a stand-alone subsidiary, we benefit from what PARC brings to our core business while also extending PARC’s talented team to help other companies and select entrepreneurs tap into PARC’s treasure trove of resources for innovation and faster market development. Startup@PARC makes this approach a reality.”

The Startup@PARC program goes beyond the boundaries of traditional entrepreneur-in-residence programs, which typically import industry experts to develop specific, pre-defined commercial opportunities. Instead, Startup@PARC creates a customized partnership for each new venture participating in the program, which could include technical expertise and intellectual property, facilities resources, and laboratory space. In exchange, PARC will receive cash, royalties, or equity compensation, or a combination.

“Through Startup@PARC, we are applying the market experience and strategic business lessons learned from many successful efforts with new ventures. We also offer the right teams an unprecedented opportunity to access our extensive portfolio of intellectual property and deep scientific competencies,” said Mark Bernstein, president and center director of PARC. “We are extremely excited about this approach to working with talented entrepreneurs and investors to build the leading companies of the future.”

One of PARC’s recent venture successes is in the clean technology area, involving a strategic partnership with award-winning, solar energy company SolFocus, Inc., to develop the company’s second-generation concentrator photovoltaic technology. SolFocus will enable solar energy to be cost-competitive with conventional energy sources. In addition to technology collaboration, PARC provided operational resources and services for SolFocus.

“Our partnership with PARC has been extremely valuable as we’ve moved SolFocus from being a two-person R&D effort to a 50-person commercial company,” explained Gary D. Conley, CEO of SolFocus. “The collaborative spirit at PARC combined with world-class resources has the potential to move an entrepreneurial concept to fruition much faster than would be possible otherwise. With the support of PARC, in just 18 months SolFocus has launched its first product, is developing the next-generation technology, has installed multiple test sites, and is breaking barriers in CPV technology.”

In the Internet domain, “We consider PARC to be our advanced research group,” said Barney Pell, CEO of Powerset, Inc., the natural language search company that has a licensing and collaboration agreement with PARC to develop and commercialize consumer search technology. “We sought out PARC as our partner because of its 30-year experience of innovation in natural language processing. PARC has given us a tremendous head start over our competition.”

To learn more and inquire about potential participation in Startup@PARC, please visit www.parc.com/startup.