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Columbia University Spin-Off Takes First Place in Start-Up Competition

Newswise - Columbia University spin-off company, StackSafe, Inc., is the winner of the 2008 National University Start-Up Competition.

Beating out more than 400 entrants from across the country, StackSafe was awarded first prize after a rigorous assessment by an online panel of over 300 venture capitalists, angel investors, and university judges.

"We are honored to receive this recognition from such a tremendous group of experienced investors and entrepreneurs," said Loren Burnett, StackSafe's CEO and President. "We extend special thanks to Columbia, which encouraged us to take part in the competition. They've been supportive from the very early days of our company and continue to be strong champions as we build and grow our business."

StackSafe, based in Vienna, Virginia, leverages virtualization technology to reduce costly IT production problems and downtime. StackSafe's flagship product, Test Centerâ„¢, enables IT departments to stage their existing software infrastructure, conduct pre-deployment tests, and predict IT complications in a secure environment. The company employs patent-pending network security and intrusion detection technologies developed by Angelos Keromytis and Salvatore Stolfo, both professors in the Department of Computer Science at Columbia University.

"We are very pleased to have our technologies being brought to market by such a professional and competent business team," said Stolfo. "It's incredibly fulfilling to see the fruits of our research bringing value to the world outside of academia."

Both professors applaud the efforts of Science & Technology Ventures (STV), Columbia University's technology transfer office, in nurturing the spin-off process. "We knew launching a start-up would be a challenging endeavor," said Keromytis. "STV has been a solid and essential partner in getting this off the ground."

In a given year, a dozen or so start-ups are formed by Columbia University faculty and students. David B. Lerner, STV's Director of New Ventures, said, "It is a great privilege working with our faculty founders and the experienced team at StackSafe. We are proud to have a Columbia spin-out recognized in this prestigious forum."

Columbia University's technology transfer office, Science & Technology Ventures (STV), serves as a bridge between Columbia's researchers and the business community. STV's core objective is to facilitate the transfer of inventions from academic research to outside organizations for the benefit of society on a local, national and global basis. As such, STV's primary mission is to identify, evaluate, protect, and license or spin-out Columbia's intellectual property. STV at Columbia University is considered one of the leading technology transfer offices in the world, with more than 300 invention disclosures from faculty, 70 license deals and 12 new start-ups each year, as well as approximately 35 multi-disciplinary, full-time staff across Columbia's two campuses. For more information on STV, please visit www.stv.columbia.edu.

 

Source: Columbia University Science and Technology Ventures