By Geoff Morgan
Sitting in a wired office four stories above Jasper Avenue, TEC Edmonton’s executive VP of business development is equipped with two computers, a well-used Blackberry and, unobtrusively off to one side, a much-scribbled-on whiteboard. The writing is a clue to Dr. Randy Yatscoff’s roles, past and present: he combines his technical PhD and real world business experience to grow new companies.
“This is like a third career,” Yatscoff says with a smile. “I was a university prof; I moved up to CEO of a biotech and have been a member on a number of boards; and now I’m able to use the skill set I developed to help other people move their companies forward.”
For the past three years, Yatscoff has been at TEC, first as a CEO in residence and now in his current role of leading business development. TEC is a joint venture between the University of Alberta – where Yatscoff maintains a position as an adjunct professor in the faculty of medicine – and Edmonton Economic Development Corp. TEC forms a community of small businesses with shared meeting rooms for accessibility in downtown Edmonton. The organization’s mandate is to diversify the economy and provide stimulus by developing new technologies.
“You have great technologies that are coming out of the university, but they need to get some traction in the city,” says Nadia Andersen, communications manager at TEC. The organization is geared to help new companies commercialize their ideas and get off the ground. There’s subsidized office space in the business incubator and a stable of more experienced business and tech mavens – like Yatscoff – to help out. TEC keeps four CEOs and two entrepreneurs in residence on staff to advise young executives as they grow their businesses and monetize their ideas.
“Of any part of my job that I find most satisfying, it’s the mentorship,” Yatscoff says. Wearing a crisp suit and tie, he talks about potential pitfalls that young companies might stumble into, for example, a company’s founder should not continue on as CEO. It’s hard, he says, watching a company neglect sound business advice – but they need to make the decisions. “You get scars on your back, and you need to learn from that, and you need to learn quickly,” he says. “Mentorship helps prevent you from making these mistakes.” On the other hand, watching companies grow and seeing ideas get wings, “that’s where I get my job satisfaction from: seeing new technologies being developed – but seeing individuals being developed too.”
More than 650 people approached TEC Edmonton for help in 2009. Those companies, projects and ideas, Andersen explains, have a four-stage process to pass before they can benefit from the up-close-and-personal mentorship that business grey-hairs like Yatscoff can provide. As a result, she explains, the final pool shrinks considerably from 650. After an initial assessment, TEC’s VenturePrize and Alberta Deal Generator programs give companies resources to develop good business pitches. The third stage involves developing business plans and financing strategies before, finally, signing an agreement with TEC. “That’s where we say: we’re going to work with you and we’re going to give you some deliverables,” Andersen says.
Those deliverables might include space in TEC’s business incubator and access to the experienced talent of veteran CEOs and their business networks. Both of those deliverables continue to benefit Maziyar Khorasani, a VP with Biolithic, and the company that won last year’s VenturePrize. Biolithic’s office is down the hall from Yatscoff, whose networks and advice have been a resource to Khorasani for the last year. “It’s hard to find someone with life science experience in Alberta – especially successful life science experience – so I think Randy has done well in that space.”
Yatscoff was the CEO of Isotechnika, an international pharmaceutical company based in Edmonton and publicly traded before his current role at TEC. “I think he likes to help, but he evaluates companies too. He tries to pick and choose companies that he thinks have a chance at success,” Khorasani says. Just a year into its corporate life, Biolithic is developing low cost diagnostic devices that would eliminate the need for doctors to send medical samples away to an offsite lab. Biolithic’s relationship with Yatscoff began after the company consulted a number of other CEOs in residence. In the end, the four person team connected with Yatscoff at a business presentation, and felt that he was the best fit as a corporate mentor for their company. “He’s definitely passionate about what he does,” Khorasani says, “he’s definitely there when you need him and he goes the extra mile.”
Yatscoff’s relationship with Biolithic reflects the careful selection process that needs to happen between companies and their corporate mentors. Yatscoff says there’s a definite selection criteria that a company should look for in a mentor; a mentor should give advice not directives.
“You have to trust a mentor and be open minded – they might tell you things you don’t like – but you still need to think for yourself. Make decisions. Don’t let the mentor overpower you,” he says. “Have a network – don’t just rely on one mentor – because no one approach may necessarily be the right approach.” TEC uses a lead mentor for each company they deal with, but also use a team approach.
Rod Precht, president and founder of Exciton Technologies Inc., a company that applies silver to medical devices to prevent the spread of disease, approached Yatscoff in 2007. At the time, Exciton had just received its first patent and was looking for a way to grow. After a business pitch, Yatscoff came on board and helped Precht and Exciton raise over $4 million. “That money has allowed us to bring a product to market.” Exciton now has 13 employees across offices and wet lab space at TEC.
Nine years ago, when the company was getting started, Precht says that Exciton had a hard time attracting interest and capital from established firms. “Now we have a product on the market and we’re getting the feedback that it’s working the way it was designed to work. And we’ve got a lot of the companies we originally approached coming back to us saying: what are the terms for marketing and distribution?”
For young companies and young entrepreneurs that want to benefit from having a corporate mentor, Yatscoff has a few words of advice: “Take risk, be open and do things differently, and be mobile.” Yatscoff says these were lessons that he learned throughout his career even though he had to learn without the help of a mentor. He learned to be mobile in moving from southern Ontario to Winnipeg and then to Edmonton as a university professor. He also had to take risks in order to move ahead, “I took a big risk: I gave up a tenured faculty position to go to a biotech that didn’t have a lot of money.” It was a no-guts-no-glory type of move. “There was no financial security,” he says of the move made away from a tenured position in his early 40s. “It was a big risk to go to something that had less than six months cash.” With a smile he says, “I look back on what I did and think… whoa.”
When he looks at young companies and young executives with new ideas, he likes to see the same sort of passion and burgeoning ideas. “A young person is all over the place – they’ve got a lot of ideas, but I’d rather have a person like that, who’s creative, where you have to focus them, rather than an individual who has tunnel vision.”
Part of his job as a corporate mentor is to focus people and help them hone in on their passions. “Good entrepreneurs have vision,” and he jokes, “but maybe too much.”
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