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Stanford
Office of Technology Licensing

About the HIT Fund

Who Should Apply

  • The fund is open to faculty, students, postdocs, and staff from any Stanford School or Institute.
  • We seek innovations that have disclosures filed with OTL, and have the potential to provide a superior solution to a significant market or customer need.

Expected Outcome

Acceleration of the transition of the Stanford technology from the lab to the marketplace through:

  • Faculty, students, postdocs, or staff incorporating a new startup focused on the intellectual property (IP)
  • An existing company licensing the technology to generate new products or solutions
  • An industrial collaborator sponsoring further application focused research to address their needs

Advisory Support — Customized HIT Fund Team

The fund provides resources and hands-on support in navigating the opportunities and challenges that arise in preparing for commercialization, which may include:

  • Industry-specific executives and domain experts as Advisor(s) through the award term. 
  • Connections to industry experts who can share actionable insights on key requirements, prototype building, industry standards, and manufacturing at scale. 
  • Introductions to potential partners, customers, suppliers, collaborators, investors, and advisory board members.
  • MBA Interns to help with customer discovery , identifying go-to-market approaches, and analyzing the market opportunity and competitive landscape.
  • Patent attorneys and technology licensing experts to help with patent strategy and white space mapping.
  • Friendly VCs to offer feedback on go-to-market strategy and investment pitches.
  • Business ideation sessions with Industry and domain experts to help identify promising market opportunities and go-to-market approaches.

Funding — Milestone-based, up to $250,000

Funding is intended to address only the key technical or market risks as necessary to attract collaborators and investors by the end of the HIT Fund project. Funding can be used for activities including:

  • Building customer prototypes
  • Conducting pilot studies
  • Materials purchases and contract manufacturing for customer samples
  • 3rd party reliability and performance validation
  • Regulatory and reimbursement consultants
  • Techno-economic analysis
  • Market development activities and consultants
  • Stipends and salaries for students and postdocs
  • Other pre-approved activities.

Commercialization Seminars

Awardees are invited to participate in focused learning sessions on topics including patent strategy, regulatory and reimbursement strategy, techno-economic analysis, and SBIR funding.