An Introduction

The American Technology Venture Lab (ATVL) draws significant inspiration from the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) with a few significant differences and has influences from NEXT (Greenville), the ATDC at Georgia Tech, and other incubator, accelerator, and mentoring programs. The Creation Destruction Lab was founded in 2012 at the Rotman School of Business in Toronto, Canada and has grown to now have 1 locations where it is hosted by a business college that is associated with an engineering school. The founders of the American Technology Venture Lab have participated in the CDL program for three years and live in Spartanburg, South Carolina where there are nearby business schools. However, engineering schools are miles away, so Spartanburg will never qualify as a location for CDL. The Creative Destruction Lab also has each location focused on a particular area of technology which is referred to as a stream. The topic for each stream creates a focus around that technology which has some benefits but does not gain the advantages of sharing analogies from one technology to another. This leads to the definition of the American Technology Venture Lab having the following major differences with CDL:

1. Business focus instead of academic leadership: The ATVL is being organized and managed by an Executive Committee composed of experienced business executives, economic development professionals, incubator managers, and corporate leaders with varying backgrounds. While academic involvement will be included, business-focused leadership is a major difference.
2. Regional participation: Starting the ATVL in Upstate South Carolina, being based in Spartanburg provides a regional approach to working with business schools and research, technical, or engineering universities, bringing the broader ecosystem together in this focused activity.
3. Multiple corporate and community sponsors: We have observed that the CDL stream has typically been sponsored by one large sponsor setting the agenda for the overall stream. ATVL will develop a community of sponsors providing continuity and diversity of interest from corporations, foundations, and other community stakeholders.
4. Wide technology appeal: Each CDL stream focuses on a technology topic, but the ATVL approach will be to bring together several technology topics into the same program including a variety of ventures, several research universities, several specialties of Subject Matter Experts, a variety of corporate participants and venture capitalists recruited from across the region and selected to match up the ventures in each cadre.

A website has been established and is being promoted on a regional basis where new ventures, experienced entrepreneurs, academic or commercial subject matter experts can apply to participate. The managing Executive Committee and the broader Board of Directors will all work to identify and contact participants throughout the region to participate in the program each annual cycle. Once all the applications have been received and reviewed, the participants will be notified and will be invited to attend the events. The key events for the 2023/2024 cadre will consist of a one-day meeting starting on December 1st, and then every 8 weeks, continuing on January 26th, March 22nd, and May 17.

On the day of each session, we will start with breakfast giving everyone time to assemble followed by the day’s agenda with a short morning and afternoon break, onsite lunch, followed by a thirty-minute recess, and then a two-hour reception. Following the reception, participants may make their own dinner plans for further networking and continuing discussions.

During the day-long event, mentors will volunteer to work with ventures for 4 hours during each 8-week period between meetings. Any venture that does not recruit a mentor will be dropped from the program and will not graduate. Every venture that goes through all four one-day meetings and is supported by a mentor each time will become a graduate of ATVL. When the mentor(s) raise their hand to work with you after graduation, during the 8-week period your founder’s team and the mentor may decide to continue the relationship. At this time the mentor can transition into a fractional executive as a senior member of your management team. Participation in the ATVL cadre or the follow-on mentor/advisor engagement will not include any equity from your venture.

The technology focus of ATVL will start with four major categories (link to blog) consisting of Information, Life Sciences, Transportation, and Materials. Each cadre consisting of early-stage startup ventures will be selected from the applicants and start with 20 members, and the process will determine the number that graduates. Not every category may be represented in every cadre and specific attention will be paid to aspects important to the region such as Commerce, Supply Chain, Manufacturing, Distribution, Robotics, and Artificial Intelligence.

Ventures will have submitted ahead of time their initial 3 objectives for consideration by mentors at the session. During each of the four one-day sessions, the program after breakfast will begin with Small Group Meetings (SGM) where all of the ventures are scheduled to meet with some of the mentors to learn about the venture’s business. During these 15-minute introductory meetings, objectives that were submitted ahead of time by the venture will have a mentor assigned to be the recommender who introduces the venture to the Large Group Meeting (LGM) later in the day and explains the objectives. A mentor will also be assigned to that venture to be a reviewer of the objectives and during the Large Group Meeting will respond to the mentor who recommended the objectives. These objectives should be the three most important things for the venture to work on and complete during the 8 weeks prior to the next full-day work session. At the beginning of the program each year, the new ventures accepted into the program will need to commit to having at least one founder attend all four work sessions or the venture will be dropped from that year’s program, unless an exception is approved by the Executive Committee.

Any presentations or panels along with the Large Group Meetings setting objectives will be recorded. The private Large Group Meeting where mentors discuss and decide whether to work with a venture will be private to the participants and not shared with the ventures so candid discussions can be encouraged.

We are reaching out to the Upstate technology ecosystem to ask for your support and participation. Please visit our website to learn more about how ATVL is implementing objectives-based mentoring and educational programs for scalable, early-stage, science and technology-based ventures. If you are one of these ventures, please submit the ‘Venture Application’ or if you are a potential mentor or sponsor please use the contact page on our website. For other donations please visit our GiveSendGo.