Darren Cox
Contractor, University of Minnesota, and Founder, CEO and Chief Evangelist
CaSTT
Founder, CEO and Chief Evangelist – CaSTT™ - Commerce and Search for Technology Transfer CaSTT™ was originally developed for the University of Minnesota’s Office for Technology Commercialization, to address the slow, inefficient, arduous and occasionally contentious licensing processes and thwarted marketing efforts that TTO's are faced with, due to time, budget and manpower constraints. CaSTT™ helps Technology Transfer Organizations at Universities, Hospitals, National Labs, Large R&D Facilities and Corporations leverage the power of the Web to bring potential licensees to the universe of amazing technologies that often lay dormant waiting for someone to discover them. By using CaSTT™, industry can find out about available technologies and, in many cases, actually license them, with no human intervention, no phone calls, no negotiation and no paperwork.
In 2010 using the CaSTT™ system, the University of Minnesota executed more online licenses, for a single technology, than all of the Big Ten Schools did for all of their technologies, combined, in 2008.
Before spinning out CaSTT™ Darren was General Manager of the Innovation Incubator for the Office for Technology Commercialization at the University of Minnesota. He spent much of the previous 14 years as an independent consultant and entrepreneur. Prior to becoming an Entrepreneur, Cox held several senior management positions. He is formerly the Vice President of Public Communication Services for GovDelivery, the Senior Higher Education Market Manager for US WEST (now Qwest) and the Director of Strategic Development at MyPersonal.com. He successfully founded, financed, grew and profitably exited from two of his own, self-funded, ventures; StuffYourBrain and GetWork.com, and has worked as a contract consultant, in various leadership roles, with at least 30 different start-up companies. Darren earned BA degrees in Political Science, Public Relations and Creative Writing from the University of Minnesota, a Masters of Arts in Organization Leadership from George Washington University and a Master of Science in Telecommunications Technology from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
In February 2011, Darren Cox will be a featured panelist at the Technology Transfer Industry’s largest and most important trade gathering, the Association of University Technology Managers’ (AUTM) Annual Conference. He will be speaking alongside the Associate VP for Research and Technology Transfer at Columbia University, Orin Herskowitz, and the Director of Technology Commercialization at Carnegie Melon University, Robert Wooldridge.
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