Gatorade is a refreshing sports drink enjoyed by millions around the world. Few consumers realize that university research was the genesis for this successful product and the University of Florida has received over $150 million in royalties since the product was invented.
J. Robert Cade, a University of Florida professor of medicine and physiology, and a team of four researchers developed Cade’s Cola to help athletes stay energized during competitions in the hot, humid Florida climate. A football coach had expressed frustration that his players had trouble with their endurance late in their games. Researchers realized that the athletes were losing as much as 10 pounds in a single practice session.
Cade’s Cola had a mixture of water, sodium and sugar that addressed the problem, but tasted awful. Some lemon juice and artificial sweetener and a legend was born.
PepsiCo acquired Quaker Oats in 2001. Included in the acquisition were the rights to Gatorade. Gatorade’s worldwide sales were already in the billions of dollars. According to Beverage Digest, in 2006 Gatorade accounted for more than 80% of the $7.5 billion annual U.S. sports drink market. Over 12 million bottles are guzzled daily by athletes and post operative patients. Gatorade is now sold in 80 countries and dozens of flavors.
Dr. Cade, the trust of people who worked on the project, and their heirs have received over $500 million in royalties.
Google is the worlds most utilized internet search engine. Google was founded by two Stanford University graduate students in 1996 originally calling the project BackRub. Their unique link analysis approach quickly gained the attention of those who saw it. In September 1998, Google opened its doors answering 10,000 searches per day.
After complete utilization of internal funding, the first outside investment came in 1998 in the amount of $100,000. In 1999 Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers invested $25 million. At the end of 2000, Google was handling more than 100 million search queries per day. Google continued to grow and went public in August 2004. The market cap of the company after the first day of trading was over $240 million. As incredible as that seems it was only the beginning.  Google’s stock price grew from $200 to $700 per share in 30 months.
As of November 2007, Google was the 5th largest listed company in the U.S., with a market cap over $220 billion.
The most important part of this story for technology transfer companies is that Stanford University received over $330 million for its stake in Google.
The Google story is one of the reasons universities around the globe are searching for technology transfer partners.
UTEK CORP. (AMEX – UTK) is a transfer technology business that completed 29 technology transfers and 44 strategic alliance agreements in 2006. UTEK received over $50 million in equity securities as a result of these transactions. At the end of 2006, UTEK held equity securities in over 60 companies.
UTEK was formed in 1997 to facilitate the transfer of new technologies developed by universities and other research institutions to commercial enterprises.  UTEK was taken public in 2000 by Schneider Securities. The initial market capitalization was approximately $22 million.
Chris Trina, CEO of Transfer Technology International was introduced to UTEK in 2002. Mr. Trina raised almost $1.5 million of a successful $6 million raise for UTEK while he was Senior Vice President of Sales at GunnAllen Financial. Immediately intrigued by UTEK, Chris followed the corporate developments very closely. After 5 years of watching and studying UTEK, he was ready to take the successful strategies of UTEK and build on them while replacing the weaker UTEK components with stronger, more value enhancing plans. Early UTEK investors have enjoyed success as the company has grown from an initial market capitalization of $22 million in 2000 to over $100 million in 2008.
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