Mainebiz

V O L . X X V I I I N O. X V I I A U G U S T 8 , 2 0 2 2 22 ainebiz: Did you have a mentor who was particularly influential? Renee Kelly: When I was really young, I was interested in history. We had a chimney fire in our house. [Going through the debris] I found a trove of documents and ads for Model T's stuffed in the walls of the house. I brought them to school. e librarian, Alice Hawes, said, 'I do genealogy every Saturday morning,' and asked if I wanted to join her. She started taking me to the library. It showed me the power of someone sharing your interests. MB: How did you get interested in startups? RK: After my husband and I got married, he was in the Navy and stationed in San Diego. I worked for a financial services startup, in marketing. It was a firm that devel- oped techanology to read docu- ments electronically and was even- tually acquired by SafeCo. I worked directly with the founders and learned a bit of everything. I was there through the process of selling. Later, when my husband was trans- ferred to Connecticut, I worked for Manpower, which gave me an idea about the importance of systems. e work I do now is to try to build systems. Sometimes innovation is not associated with systems, but we came up with three to four priori- ties covering commercialization, training and programs. If you have a systematic approach to an idea coming out of a lab, you can figure out if it's a good idea. You can ask, 'Are you actually solving a problem people care about?' MB: How does the process of 'starting a startup' happen? RK: First, I never tell the student, 'at idea won't work.' Prove me wrong if I think it's a bad idea. I teach them a process, or an approach. Nine times out of 10, they will change their idea significantly, and 90% of the time they pivot. We ask, What are the death threats to the idea? What could kill the idea as you develop the idea or bring it to market? Is someone already doing this? Will customers want this? What are the ideas that are out there? Can you bootstrap this? Can you get funding? Can you build a team? e biggest death threat is building some- thing no one wants. MB: How did Maine's startup culture get its start? RK: When I came to UMaine [in 1997] the state was just beginning to invest in innovation. We started to see some spinoff activity, but there wasn't a network or experi- enced base to support growth. For instance, there were very few intel- lectual property lawyers. [Maine Technology Institute] had just been created. e Maine Venture Fund was just getting going. People didn't have aspirations in that way. Maine was entrepreneurial in starting its own companies, but not in that way. We needed more of a resource network and culture. at was the genesis of the Foster Center for Innovation. UMaine has 11,000 stu- dents, and many stay in Maine. Our idea was to seed the culture with students. Culture change takes time, but we could give them the skills. Created curriculum we could license to other universities … Maine has a ton of opportunity, but we needed to build this culture. » C O N T I N U E D F RO M PA G E 2 0 D a m a r i s c o t t a S h o w r o o m H A M M O N D L U M B E R . C O M | 1 - 8 0 0 - H A M M O N D L o o k i n g t o s t a r t a w i n d o w s & d o o r s p r o j e c t ? W e ' d l o v e t o h e l p ! V i s i t o n e o f o u r s t o r e s t o g e t s t a r t e d ! 22 LOCATIONS ACROSS MAINE & NEW HAMPSHIRE SHOWROOMS M In the past two years, lots of people have come to Maine. But a lot of them still think of Maine as a vacation place, not as a place to do business.

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