Skip Rung: Habits of Highly Successful Science Entrepreneurs

Aug 31, 2021

31:15

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Skip Rung is the founder, President, and Executive Director of ONAMI, Oregon’s first “Signature Research Center”. ONAMI’s mission is to accelerate research commercialization via startup and spinout companies in order to extend the success of Oregon’s "Silicon Forest" and other technology clusters. ONAMI’s commercialization “gap” fund has made $12.6M in grant disbursements, enabling over 60 portfolio companies to raise over $850M (90+% of which is private capital) in leveraged funding and revenue.

In October 2012, ONAMI received the State Science and Technology Institute Excellence in TBED (Technology-Based Economic Development) award for Commercializing Research.

Mr. Rung was a member the National Science Foundation SBIR/STTR Advisory Committee (now a subcommittee of the Engineering Advisory Committee) from October 2012 until July 2020.

Mr. Rung was a member of the Oregon Venture Fund Investment Committee from 2012-2020 and the Willamette Angels (WAC 2015 LLC Managing Member).

From 1987 to 2001, Mr. Rung was Director of Advanced Research and Development at Hewlett-Packard’s Corvallis, OR facility, responsible for multiple generations of HP’s world-leading inkjet printing technology.

Mr. Rung began his industrial career in 1977 at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto, CA, after receiving his BSEE and MSEE co-terminally in 1976 from Stanford University, where he was elected to both Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi in his junior year.

In this episode, Dean Newlund and Skip Rung discuss:

What is the Deep Tech approach?
Getting a group of people to agree what the problem is
Knowing what the real problem is through market research
Intuition in deep science

Key Takeaways:

Deep Tech approach is all about keeping a clear eye on the goal, having the right expertise in the room, knowing what the problem is, being able to fail and iterate many options in order to get to that outcome.
Leaders must focus on identifying and solving customers’ problemsmore than forcing an idea into being made.
It takes a lot of time researching and interviewing to know what the problem is or if your people think the problem you’re currently trying to solve is even worth solving.
The beginning of every big breakthrough is seeing every problem differently and turning out to be correct. You need intuition to think of problem-solving solutions and to be able to lead people.

"You don’t wanna fall in love with your idea; you wanna fall in love with the problem." — Skip Rung.

See Dean’s TedTalk “Why Business Needs Intuition” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEq9IYvgV7I

Connect with Skip Rung:

Website: http://onami.us

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Skip_Rung

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/skip-rung-bb4baa3/

Connect with Dean:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgqRK8GC8jBIFYPmECUCMkw

Website: https://www.mfileadership.com/

The Mission Statement E-Newsletter: https://www.mfileadership.com/blog/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deannewlund/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/deannewlund