Ep. 172 - Ikove Capital’s Flavio Lobato on Commercializing Technology

In this episode, Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder talks with Flavio Lobato of Ikove Capital. Ikove is a venture development company founded to pursue early-stage investments with an emphasis on technology commercialization. Brian and Flavio discuss investing in the Midwest, identifying and validating high-impact technologies, bridging the gap between R&D and VC funded rounds, and innovation talent.

Read the interview transcript at insideoutside.io

Brian Ardinger: Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast that brings you the best and the brightest in the world of startups and Innovation. I'm your host Brian Ardinger, founder of insideOutside.IO a provider of research events and consulting services that help innovators and entrepreneurs build better products launched new ideas and compete in a world of change and disruption each week will give you a front-row seat to the latest Thinking, Tools, tactics, and Trends and collaborative Innovation. Let's get started.  Welcome to another episode of inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host Brian Ardinger. And as always we have another amazing guest Flavio Lobato. He is a co-founder and principal at Eco of capital. Welcome to the show 

Flavio Lobato:  Hey, Brian, thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Brian Ardinger: Hey, I'm excited to talk to you because, couple different things. You've been in the space for a bit of time and this new model around Venture development rather than a kind of venture capital. I really wanted to dig in on this particular episode. Maybe for the audience, let's start with a little bit about your background and a little bit about Eco Capital. Flavio Lobato: I'm originally from Brazil. I've been in the states for 35 plus years really begin my career in Investment Management Investment Banking back in the 90s after business school, working at places like Goldman Sachs, Credit Swiss. And then really my career focus quite heavily on alternative Investments and hedge funds. I launched a very successful alternative investment shop in Switzerland called Swiss Capital Group, which was a part of a very sizable fund of hedge funds Liongate Capital that eventually sold to a large insurance company. Really after 25 plus years in both traditionsal and alternative spaces. Me and my partners Adolpho Balazi, Rodolfo Bellesi, John D'Orazio, Dr. Rob Lee and David Moritz decided to put together IKove Capital to take advantage of what's happening in technology commercialization and adventure as a whole 

Brian Ardinger: Excellent and my understanding is you're five years old. You probably invested in 14 startups in the Stem, Medtech, Agritech vertical and you’re based in the Midwest where we are as well. I want to talk a little bit about investing in particular markets Like the Midwest is different. Obviously investing in particular markets like med tech or ag tech and that are different. So what are some of the things that you're seeing that set you apart and set the ecosystem apart in the Midwest versus some of the tech hubs.

Flavio Lobato: What we do is we actually go directly to the source of innovation and we partner with research institutions like Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio where we identify and vet technology that's been in development through their research programs. And once we identify a technology that we really like and that and go through that process we go out and build teams around IT technology and spin them off as independent companies. What's unique about what we do is that we identified and we saw that about 25% of the US research budget, which is about 70 billion dollars invested each year to universities to front their R&D.  Very little of that less than 1% of that amount is actually invested in commercialization of these Technologies.

Read the interview transcript at insideoutside.io