Illustrated by Christine Hipp

Entrepreneurs bridge the gap between innovation and the marketplace. A new emphasis on entrepreneurship at UC Santa Cruz highlights the importance of this connection.

Narinder Kapany, known as the father of fiber optics, recently donated $500,000 to the Jack Baskin School of Engineering (Jack Baskin) to establish an endowed chair of entrepreneurship.

“My association with bright UCSC students and visiting lectureship by established entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, corporate lawyers, patent attorneys, financial experts and marketing persons made the entire process very attractive to me,” Kapany said.

The creation of an endowed chair will increase the opportunities for UCSC students to learn entrepreneurial skills.

“[The chair] can use [the endowment] to cede research, or they can use it for travel, or they can use it to bring in visitors,” said Arthur Ramirez, the dean of engineering at Jack Baskin. “It’s money that’s fairly unrestricted by other programmatic needs that they can use to develop the program.”

The creation of the chair required not only the donation, but also the approval of the campus provost, Alison Galloway. This reflects the university’s support of programs that teach students how to manage technology and information, Ramirez said.

That the chair was established through the school of engineering is no coincidence. Ramirez said entrepreneurship skills are highly useful to engineers, who design much of the technology demanded by the modern marketplace.

“Entrepreneurship has become one of the most commonly used routes to bring technology into the marketplace,” Ramirez said, “but it requires a different set of skills. It overlaps with traditional management, but an entrepreneur is a different kind of manager than you would find in a big corporation. And so, just like regular management need to be taught, we thought entrepreneurship would be a good match for this campus.”

Although entrepreneurship is not restricted to the field of engineering, the donation was given to Jack Baskin because it has a history of encouraging entrepreneurship.

“We’ve had the plurality of entrepreneurship activities,” Ramirez said. “We started the center of entrepreneurship two years ago, and there are several faculty and students in engineering who have started companies. I wouldn’t say the majority, but I think there’s more entrepreneurship activity in engineering than any of the other divisions.”

In addition, the Technology and Information Management (TIM) program is part of the school of engineering. This program offers instructional courses on technology and information management, which are integral parts of entrepreneurship in the sciences.

“These days, [science and technology] are the quickest routes to commercialization,” said Brent Haddad, associate dean of engineering for technology management. “Some of the obvious connections to the private sector will come out of engineering, chemistry, biochemistry and so forth because they’ll be medical and electronics applications.”

Kapany typifies a scientist who used entrepreneurship to move technology that he developed into the marketplace. His innovation in fiber optics revolutionized communication technology in the 1970s, and continues to have a major impact on computer networking and telecommunication technologies today.

“His own life provides a prime example of that because he did some of the seminal, original research on fiber optics,” Haddad said. “And then he was able to move that into the private sector and really change electronics by introducing these amazing innovations that took hold and became important products used all over the world.”

During the 1970s, Kapany worked at UCSC as a research professor. While at UCSC, Kapany taught courses in entrepreneurship. This was ahead of his time, Ramirez said.

“[Kapany] is a pretty inventive guy,” Ramirez said. “He invented the idea of bending light, carrying light in a very pure fiber, but then he went on to create companies after that.”

UCSC started to focus on entrepreneurship research soon after its founding, Haddad said. Kapany’s presence at UCSC enhanced this focus.

“[Kapany] saw the importance of moving good ideas out of the laboratories and universities and into broader use,” Haddad said. “There are uncounted great ideas that emerge from universities that just don’t go anywhere outside of universities … Dr. Kapany realized this is an area where you could actually take productive steps to move those good ideas into broader use, and everybody would benefit if we did.”

Kapany is most closely aligned with engineering, Ramirez said, which influenced his decision to donate to the engineering school. Entrepreneurship, however, is not exclusive to the hard sciences.

“When we think about entrepreneurship, we’re thinking campus wide,” Haddad said. “Anyone can be an entrepreneur, it’s just moving a good idea from the good idea stage to a practical application that helps society. That could be a good idea about anything.”

Haddad supports the spread of entrepreneurship to different departments on campus. “There are other areas of innovation, such as helping development projects in developing countries,” Haddad said. “That’s happening as well — here on campus, and we want to encourage that kind of entrepreneurship.”

While the possibilities created by having an endowed entrepreneurship chair are broad, currently, there are no candidates for the position.

“They have the requirement of having a PhD,” Ramirez said, “but also having been a successful entrepreneur and are at the stage in their life where they want to give back as opposed to starting another company.”

The search for someone who meets these requirement will not be taken lightly, Haddad said.

“It usually takes a long time to establish a new faculty member because the commitment is so long-term that you just want to take your time and do a really thorough job,” Haddad said. “It’s like you’re hiring a family member, you want to get it right.”

Peter Hunter, a founder of Team Krinoid and designer of “Syz: E.G.,” shows off the multi-touch technology that allows players to simultaneously control both how their spaceship flies and the direction in which it fires. Photo by Toby Silverman.

You are zipping through the cosmos in the Syzygy, a hyper-advanced starship boasting an array of weapons, all manned by seasoned specialists. You jet past asteroids and stardust with relative ease, engaging in friendly banter with your crew, until suddenly you’re ambushed by a fleet of enemy fighters. What was once an empty starscape is suddenly filled with cascading laser beams of every color of the rainbow. Only your commanding expertise and lightning-fast reflexes can save you from a gruesome death in the vast vacuum that surrounds you.

Thus begins “Syz E.G.,” the first installment in a series of space shooters produced by Team Krinoid, an independent game development studio founded by three UC Santa Cruz alumni. In addition to a fully voiced cast of characters and an invariably slick soundtrack, “Syz E.G.” boasts a number of other distinctions that set it apart from your typical iPad game, like an innovative multi-touch targeting system and a compelling story.

“Most iPad games are ‘sit here’ or ‘touch that,’” said John Peters, CEO of Team Krinoid. “But I feel that the platform has much more potential than that.”

Work on “Syz E.G.” began in the summer of 2010. It was then that Peters moved in with fellow students (and avid gamers) Peter Hunter and Max Weinberg. The trio soon discovered they shared an interest in gaming, and between them they had the skills necessary to begin developing a game of their own. By the time the school year started, the team already had a solid foundation upon which to build. In the interest of time management, Peters made the game his senior project, allowing the team to recruit seven other programming students and expedite the process.

“A team of that size helped balance things,” Hunter said. “We had one team member working on Lynn’s shields for three months.”

By the end of the school year, the group had produced a polished, innovative and wildly entertaining mobile game, one that ultimately won them the grand prize at the UCSC 2011 Sammy Awards, a prize awarded for the best games created by students in the program. Since graduating, Peters, Hunter and Weinberg have spent their time establishing Team Krinoid as a legitimate game development studio, allowing them to market the game and pay their fellow programmers royalties. After jumping through all the legal hoops necessary to form a company, “Syz E.G.” was released on the iTunes app store at the end of September, and has since yielded a steady stream of sales.

Team Krinoid has already begun work on their next venture, a side-scrolling platformer called “Bunny Run,” which they plan to release on every mobile gaming device they can. They are simultaneously working to make “Syz E.G.” compatible with Blackberry’s Playbook.

“Mobile gaming is becoming a much more influential part of the gaming industry,” Weinberg said. “We want to make the games that we want to play. If there’s a game we want to play that doesn’t exist yet, we’ll make it.”

An iPhone 4 displays the new UCSC iPhone application. Photo by Prescott Watson.

In their T-shirts and jeans, Kushyar Kasraie, 24, and Jamieson Johnson, 22, certainly don’t look like CEOs of their own company. Kasraie, who graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a degree in business management and economics in spring 2009, and Johnson, who is currently a part-time senior also majoring in business management, are the co-creators of UCSC’s own iPhone application. Their company, aptly called EZ Axess, is aimed at creating iPhone apps for colleges in order to make campus life a little easier for students and also to keep alumni and parents up to date on school news. The app was officially released by the iTunes App Store Sept. 21.

Kasraie and Johnson met in an economics class they shared together. It was Kasraie who first brought up the idea of a UCSC iPhone app to Johnson as the two were in the library studying together.

“We had a midterm that day,” Kasraie said. “I was sitting in the library and Jamieson walks in. That’s when I brought up the idea of creating a UC Santa Cruz app. Jamieson goes home, and that evening he e-mails me back and says, ‘I thought about the idea. It’s great. Let’s do it.’”

Thus, the UCSC iPhone app was born — well, at least the idea.

“We had a prototype running within the first four months,” Kasraie said, “and we started engaging the school sometime in February 2009.”

The process, however, was not simple. In fact, UCSC was reluctant to approve the idea at first. Also, in addition to the valuable amount of time and hard work they put in, Kasraie and Johnson had to contribute a fair amount of money to buy tools and equipment, incorporate the company, make contracts and pay legal fees. It took a sum total of 16 months for the app to go from concept to reality.

“When we first went to the administration, there were only two schools that actually had apps,” Kasraie said. “The idea was really new to them, and they hadn’t done anything like that before, so they didn’t know exactly how to approach it.”

“It was such a new idea on campus, they didn’t have a precedent for who should be in charge,” Johnson said about the 16-month process. “We went to IT, and they told us to go to public affairs. Then public affairs told us to go to the registrar, then we were told to go to marketing, then back to IT. It took a while to get the right people in one room to even advance it to a real stage.”

The app itself has a simple and easy-to-use design. As it starts, a smiling, bespectacled banana slug welcomes app users. The main menu — with a background of a photograph of the Porter Squiggle at sunset — features news, a campus map that marks the user’s exact location, photos of the campus, a link to the UCSC YouTube page, upcoming events and an emergency RSS feed.

Avid iPhone user first-year Gerald Knoble is a fan of the app. He said he uses it often in his day-to-day campus life.

“I primarily use the map feature. It helps me from getting lost all the time,” Knoble said. “The only thing that I think could improve it is if they could add a compass feature. I have it on my iPhone 4 map, and it’s great.”

The app will not permanently stay in its current form, however. Kasraie and Johnson are already in the planning stages for its further development and improvement. The more feedback flows in, the more ideas the pair gets. Some of these ideas include the ability to search for classes, as well as an advanced map that has a feature allowing students to look up a campus location by its student-known name, and not just the school-given name.

“We’re already doing a lot of new stuff,” Johnson said. “We’ve had a lot of feedback so far, from both students and alumni. It’s awesome, because then we get an idea of what people want. We want as much feedback as we can get.”

Mike Kershnar's art is displayed on the walls of The Krate, an apparel, vinyl and art supply store located on Pacific Avenue in downtown Santa Cruz. Photo by Rosario Serna.

Mike Snyder (left) and Brandon Spector (right) opened The Krate with the hope of bringing their passions and lifestyles to their daily work. All art displayed is by Mike Kershnar. Photo by Rosario Serna.

Friday Night, South Pacific Avenue

The crowd amassed in a store on South Pacific Avenue. They were an eclectic bunch: urban art buffs, streetwear enthusiasts and midnight marauders out to revel in the Friday night. Many of them held plastic cups in their hands filled with the kind of beverage known to keep the good times going — drinks were on the house. Artwork of various mediums and sizes decorated the walls and the people orbited around them, studying the color, composition and message of each.

Mike Kershnar stood out in this crowd of 80-some people. And it wasn’t difficult to tell he was the man of the hour. He wore a blue wharfsman beanie, roamed the store with his husky, Lavender, by his side and had a certain live-life attitude about him.

The event on that November Friday night was titled “Signs and Symbols,” a pop-up art gallery being held at The Krate. And Kershnar was the artist responsible. The Krate is a South Pacific Avenue-based boutique founded by high school friends Mike Snyder and Brandon Spector in 2007.

In the past, Kershnar has worked with Obey — the street-art campaign turned print, fine art, and clothing icon — Element Skateboards, and the Beastie Boys.

The scene that night in downtown Santa Cruz is indicative of a new generation. Kershnar, the founding duo of The Krate and aspiring UC Santa Cruz students represent a new breed of entrepreneur. Exactly what kind of entrepreneur they are is difficult to categorize.

They are the start-ups, the underground, the anti-corporate, the rebels, the non-mainstream, the independents, the 20-somethings, the young and the ambitious. Though they may have different names, they all share one thing in common: they are setting a new standard for business models and strategies and are causing old-timers to rethink their traditional ways. They represent the great strides that start-up businesses and brands are making in this day and age, by turning to collaborative trends and taking advantage of new technology and the Internet to turn their lifestyle, passions and interests into a business.

Photo by Rosario Serna.

For the Love of the Game

The Krate founders Snyder and Spector refused to settle for a 9-5 job. Before founding the shop, they conceded they worked “random meaningless jobs” — from landscaping to pizza delivery to construction work.

Then, after preparation, planning, attending business seminars, working side jobs, and meeting with banks and real estate agents who were skeptical of their cause, they finally proved the doubters wrong and opened up a shop in 2007 that brought together apparel, music and art.

However, both Snyder and Spector will tell you that the kind of apparel, music and art they carry is not something that can be classified into one genre or industry. They avoid labels, though some may think the style of their store simply fits into one mold or another.

“It’s not a hip-hop shop,” Spector said. “But we do have elements of hip-hop.”

The moment you step foot in The Krate, you’ll immediately see, hear and feel how the shop is directly influenced by the lifestyles of Snyder and Spector. You’ll see, hear and feel the hip-hop, but you will also see, hear and feel the skateboard, music and art culture that Snyder and Spector grew up in. Their lifestyle inspires the mission statement.

“We’re just bringing the elements together that belong together already,” Snyder said.

One section of the shop is devoted entirely to vinyl records. Another looks like an armory of art supplies catered to the urban guerrilla artist. Walk a couple of steps in the other direction and you’ll find shelves of street-inspired apparel, featuring everything from the basic graphic tee to the raw denim, from the cut-and-sew garments to the fitted caps.

Today’s start-ups turn their passions and interests into profits. As seen in the case of Snyder and Spector, The Krate was a way for the two to turn their lifestyles into a business.

“If you’re not in it strictly for the dough, then you’re given a certain amount of freedom that you wouldn’t otherwise have,” Spector said.

Snyder and Spector put themselves in a unique position. Profits became secondary, a surplus reward to the start-up business. What came first was passion.

And as Spector said, it is this passion that gave them the freedom that a suit-and-tie type of career wouldn’t be able to offer. They loved what they were doing, and they were able to make profits out of it at the same time.

Ray Licardo, a second-year information systems management major at UCSC, sings the same tune as Snyder and Spector. In 2005, he founded his own clothing brand, Western Vibe. The brand was born from a passion for graphic design that he developed his freshman year in high school, when he visited a screen-printing company.

“After seeing the whole process of designing and printing the graphics onto the shirts, I knew I wanted to start designing and printing my own,” he said. “Since then, I got into Photoshop and Illustrator and designed graphics for my high-school music program, many of my high-school organizations, dance teams, my high school’s sports teams, then soon my own line, Western Vibe.”

Licardo hopes to follow in the footsteps of many start-ups like The Krate and turn a personal passion and interest into a profitable business.

“Because I love designing and fashion, I have no problem turning what I love to do and — am very passionate about — into money,” he said. “It’s much more enjoyable doing what you like and it’s way easier to motivate yourself.”

UCSC student Ray Licardo (front right) turned his passion for graphic design into a profitable clothing line, Western Vibe. Daniel Aclan (back left), Garrett Jay (back center), and Katrina Cabuatan (front left). Photo by Rosario Serna.

No Room for Lone Wolves

The success of today’s start-ups can also be attributed to their collaborative trends. They understand teamwork and know that in order to survive, they must lean on each other’s shoulders.

Ever since they opened shop, The Krate has hosted monthly art galleries with artists of local talent to artists of renown. They’ve worked with graffiti artists, graphic artists, and muralists like Saber One, David Choe, Alex Pardee, and recently, Mike Kershnar.

“When we do an art show once a month, it’s good for everybody,” Snyder said. “The artists are inviting friends that may never come to our store. We gain exposure. And we’re exposing their art to the community all month. It’s a trade, you know.”

The “Signs and Symbols” gallery put together by The Krate and Kershnar demonstrates how two parties in the creative industry can work together to compensate for each other’s weaknesses and capitalize on each other’s strengths.

“The Krate did a lot of great publicity for the event such as flyering and printing,” Kershnar said. “They also got the word out to the local media and made YouTube videos of me painting the wall. I created all the art for the event, designed the poster and got it covered by Element and Juxtapoz. Now they are taking care of sales and shipping.”

Gone are the days when exclusive behind-closed-doors and lone-wolf mentality businesses thrived.

As Snyder explained, it is these dynamic and creative partnerships that keep start-ups like The Krate afloat in a very competitive, complex and colossal business atmosphere.

Even the corporate giants are starting to see the opportunities in collaboration. Nike and Apple are one such example.

In 2006 they debuted Nike + iPod, a personal training system that allows you to “hear how you run” and “hear the burn” through four steps: Ready. Set. Go. Sync.

In addition to the business incentive, entrepreneurs and artists also seek to incubate each other’s think tanks and innovation kitchens through their collaborations.

“One of the most rewarding things for me as an artist is to collaborate with the people that have inspired me deeply,” Kershnar said.

He has collaborated with Shepard Fairey, the mastermind behind Obey, and created artwork for Element Skateboards and rock posters for the Beastie Boys.

Licardo, founder of Western Vibe, shares similar thoughts with his clothing brand.

“One can gain a lot of inspiration and networking through collaboration,” he said. “You also get other ideas that can make your design or business more effective and more sellable.”

Get The Word Out!

The Internet allows start-ups to project themselves on a global level. It gives them the visibility that they would not otherwise have.

“No matter how small a business may be, it has the ability to immediately share information with the entire connected world,” said Jon Adams, lead developer at Iluminada Design, a Santa Cruz web design studio. “Young businesses have no more, and, more importantly, no less of an advantage than the most successful and established businesses out there, as far as accessibility is concerned.”

Just last month, The Krate launched TheKrate.com, a revamped website complete with an online store. Already Snyder and Spector are noticing the bigger, wider customer base of e-commerce.

“Some dude in London found we were the only store left on the Internet with a certain hoodie that was huge — 10 Deep made a nice cut-and-sew jacket,” Spector said, talking about their latest sale: a limitedly produced sweater that found its way to a happy customer overseas.

Links to The Krate’s Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube pages can also be found on their new website. Let’s not forget about a link to their blog, which features posts on product updates, pictures from last night’s pop-up art gallery, and anything that might happen in “a day in the life” of The Krate.

The social media of the Internet allows start-ups to connect to their customer base on a personal, more intimate level.

Likewise, Licardo uses these tools as avenues to reach out to Western Vibe’s community.

“These social networks help me spread news about updates on Western Vibe,” Licardo said. “I’m always keeping my supporters posted on new designs and apparel that I’m coming out with through my Facebook group, Twitter, Tumblr, BlogSpot and AIM profile.”

Licardo says that starting up a business would have definitely been much more costly, if not impossible, without the Internet.

“Without the Internet, I would only have to rely on posters, fliers, and word of mouth,” he said. “It would be more expensive trying to expose my brand through these means of advertising.”

Later That Friday Night, South Pacific Avenue

As the night wore on, the crowd continued to soak in the revelry of good company, good people and good song.

But somewhere among the orgy of people, and somehow among the noise of constant chatter, Dylan Christopher managed a quick jeer at his childhood friend, Mike Kershnar.

“He was a dirty skate rat like all of us — he had dreads,” Christopher joked.

Kershnar may be the same skate rat he was back in the day, but this time he transformed his personality, lifestyle and passions into profits.

~~~~~

Make sure to check out The Krate’s next art show, “Friends and Family,” Friday Jan. 8 at 5 p.m. Stay connected at thekrate.com, westernvibe.bigcartel.com and mikekershnar.com.

At the end of Friday night Jackie Olin, the creator of the business Sustainabites Baby Food, was announced the winner of UCSC’s first Business Plan Competition. Photo by Morgan Grana.

“Do you know what’s in your food? What about your baby’s food? The average baby food sits on a shelf for two years before ending [up] in front of your child,” said Jackie Olin, one of seven finalists in UC Santa Cruz’s first-ever Business Plan Competition (BPC), as she presented her business plan to a panel of judges. “Sustainabites is a local, fresh and seasonal baby food company that will work to provide consumers with ‘farm-to-fork’ information, where you can trace your child’s food back to the farm.” 

Olin, a recent UCSC graduate, was not only a finalist but also the winner of the competition. After all seven teams presented their future companies and entrepreneurships, a panel of eight judges, — constituted of successful CEOs, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and lawyers from Santa Cruz and Silicon Valley — retired to a quiet room to decide on a winner. 

The Ringold Rotunda, where the reception was held, was anything but quiet. The event was a success in attracting people from the city, the university, and “over the hill.” Everyone mingled noisily in this ambitious and creative atmosphere, as students rubbed shoulders with CEOs and inventors.

Santa Cruz mayor Cynthia Mathews attended the event. 

“The energy, the excitement and the potential in this room is amazing,” Mathews said. “It’s everything we hoped it would be.”

As for Olin’s Sustainabites, Mathews said she is happy with the judges’ choice. 

“Our goal and motivation in this competition was to help a business that would stay and prosper in Santa Cruz,” Mathews said. “It’s a perfect match.”

The BPC was organized by a group of seven highly motivated UCSC students led by Eric Gonzalez, a recent UCSC graduate and former president of the University Economic Association. 

Divya Sharma is the co-chair of the BPC and a second-year majoring in business management economics and industrial engineering and operations research. 

“There have been some ups and downs, and I’ve loved every second of it,” Sharma said. “I’ve had students come to me and say that having this competition has changed the direction they were heading towards. It’s been a very rewarding four months, and the competition has far exceeded our expectations.” 

Although Sharma is transferring next year, this competition, she said, will be her lasting legacy at UCSC. 

Chancellor George Blumenthal said he was enthusiastic about the effort put into the BPC by the team of students. 

The competition represents “what we are as a university — encouraging students and their ideas,” he said.

“Who knows, maybe they’ll create the next Microsoft,” Blumenthal joked. “On second thought, maybe not something that big. Maybe just the next Google.”

With other teams boasting online services, video game programming, pharmaceutical compliances and biomolecular engineering, Olin said she saw herself as the local underdog. But in the end, her hard work was rewarded with a $12,000 jumbo check. 

“This is awesome,” Olin said. “Don’t ever worry about being the dark horse. This is it right here — this is what will enable us to stay in Santa Cruz. I have all the permits, the knowledge, the kitchen, everything lined up.”

Thanks to the competition, Olin said, Sustainabites will become a reality, and “you will see us in the farmers market two months from now.”

This premier BPC was an immense success, creating important partnerships and generating over $20,000 in funding and donations. BPC founder Gonzalez has big plans for the young competition as preparations are made for next year. 

“I hope it becomes a foundation for the university,” Gonzalez said. “The students here are entrepreneurial, creative and the best people I’ve ever met. They’re people I can count on to make a difference.”