Fostering Home Grown Businesses

photo by Beth Wynn

FALL 2018 | DIVIDENDS

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Fostering Home Grown Businesses

By Carolanne Roberts

Who better to inspire young Mississippi State University entrepreneurs than someone who has started four businesses, successfully sold two and licensed the technology for the others? Who better than a forward-thinking inventor who is named in 20 patents? Who better than an active alumnus who cares deeply for our students, particularly the impressive talent in the Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach? And who better than a professional who easily and expertly dispenses strategy and stepping-stone knowledge to students aiming to launch their own businesses?

Wade Patterson is all that. But he wasn’t always.

First of all, this accomplished businessman, with his keen eye for development, deals, sales and success, graduated from his alma mater with an engineering degree.

“I designed computers – that was my goal,” he says from his Huntsville, AL, home. “My time at State was a lot of school and a lot of work, with tomato soup dinners so I could save money and earn my degree. I didn’t get any business experience.”

As an engineering co-op student, the 1983 alumnus worked at the Kennedy Space Center during the first Space Shuttle launch and, back on campus, soaked up hands-on experience with technology in the College of Engineering.

Then, in his 20s and several years along in his career path, opportunity literally knocked on his door. There stood a man asking Patterson to design a particular computer. Patterson suggested on the spot that they start a company.

“That’s where I learned my business skills,” he says. “You don’t know what you don’t know when you start, though I realized I needed to learn a lot. It would’ve saved me 10 years if I’d had something like the E-Center [MSU Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach].”

COLLEGE OF BUSINESS | MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY

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That first business ultimately sold to a company in Chicago which, in turn, sold to a concern in Switzerland. The by-product for Patterson was knowledge.

“I’d learned how to take technology and turn it into products that a larger company would be interested in purchasing,” he says.

Today, as a member of the E-Center’s Advisory Board, Patterson shares that real-life learning. The skill sets borne from engineering resonate when he talks to students about their companies.

“First, I listen,” Patterson says of his approach. “I hear what their plans are and how they’re going to accomplish them, and I see if there’s something that will help them do it better or faster or do it differently to make more sense.”

Patterson launched the Bulldog Angel Network last year, offering alumni the opportunity to invest their time, money and experience in MSU's young entrepreneurs.

photo by Megan Bean

Last year, he launched the Bulldog Angel Network (ban. clubexpress.com) which provides students with investment dollars. The consortium of 25 MSU alumni provides time and advice to students, in addition to money. Many members also serve on due diligence committees, advisory boards and boards of directors for the companies in which the Network invests.

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“Without these MSU ‘angels,’ none of what we’re doing would be possible,” says the founder.

The Bulldog Angel Network and Patterson’s E-Center advisory capacity take different roads to the same goal. In the early stages of the process, it is about educating students and leading them to the final platform through advising.

“We educate them as they go through set stages with gatekeepers,” says Patterson. “When they clear a gatekeeper [usually academics and business people in tandem], they advance to the next stage and on to the next. The last of the five stages is an Investments Review Committee, which approves the proposed business for launch.”

This is the point at which the Bulldog Angel Network comes into play.

“This is the students’ opportunity to raise money, launch the business and take it forward,” Patterson says, citing the three very different student businesses to have earned Network attention and investments to date. “These are businesses that have launched and raised money to grow or eventually have good exits.”

For instance, the first Network “winner” is a video game-in-progress from an MBA student highly recognized for player skills in the gaming world.

“He is developing a PC game on the Steam digital distribution platform – they sell around $4 billion worth of games worldwide,” says Patterson.

Next is Vibe, which emerged from the E-Center with Glo, lighted plastic cubes that infuse liquids with varying bright colors. Its uses range from bath balms to drinks served in dark restaurants and bars.

The most recent is WISPrSystems, a drone-based solution to Internet delivery in rural communities.

“In these areas where users need to receive Internet from towers via antennas, the key is placing the actual antenna,” Patterson explains. “Until now, this always involved a few hours of searching from a bucket truck, but with drones you can identify the area of signal strength in as few as two minutes, which obviously saves time and money.”

Drone robotics, glowing water, games predicted to sell throughout the world – they are the products of businesses artfully enabled under the leadership of E-Center Director Eric Hill and the Center environment itself.

“These three companies alone raised $610,000,” Patterson says. “Eventually I want to get venture capital into the area to look at later stage investments, as companies like these get larger

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and need growth capital.”

When it comes to working with millennials, Patterson is all in.

Patterson launched the Bulldog Angel Network last year, offering alumni the opportunity to invest their time, money and experience in MSU’s young entrepreneurs.

Photo by Megan Bean

“The only difference I see between them and the students when I was in school is that they are a lot farther ahead than we were,” he observes. “The E-Center students execute with patience, all while balancing their classes and exams. It’s pretty amazing what they’re doing. They’ve got the opportunity to launch real businesses.

“I would love to have started a company during school,” he continues with a faint tinge of envy. “And to have had that kind of guidance, too.”

Today, rather than looking back, Patterson directs his efforts toward the future. The patent involving water heaters (you canbuy his technology at any Lowe’s) and the motion-detecting faucets in public restrooms are in the “done” column, along with many other contributions. Today, Patterson teams with his daughter. While he is not disclosing exactly what they are working on, he does throw out phrases like “may take years” and “amazing to see what can be done.” He hints that their work world revolves around machine learning (think Siri, Alexa and talking Google).

In the meantime, Wade Patterson, the former engineering student from Columbus, MS, will continue to advise E-Center students, will grow the Bulldog Angel Network (offering students four pitch sessions a year to strut their stuff) and will applaud Mississippi State University again and again for the opportunities offered by the Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach.

“It used to be that only the large schools had programs like ours – Stanford, Duke, Notre Dame and so on,” he says. “But there’s no reason that State shouldn’t have it too. Our students are just as smart, and there’s nothing holding them back from developing their businesses. With the Internet, geography doesn’t matter anymore.”

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He goes on, “I don’t want students to spend that 10 years of learning that I went through after college. They can learn it in school and hopefully launch a business and be successful right out of school. And the best part is: they can do it in Mississippi.

“This means we can hold onto our talent.”